flow

Two good books I read last year, recommended by two good friends, deal with happiness and success.

"Flow," a book written by Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a renowned scholar/professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, is a serious work on the science of what constitues happiness and how it can be achieved for people. In its anatomy of human consciousness, it somewhat borrows the information theory model to define consciousness as "intentionally ordered information," attention as "psychic energy," and disorder in consciousness as "psychic entropy;" the goal then is to direct one's psychic energy away from psychic entropy to achieve order in consciousness, or the "flow" experience. It also examines what constitutes "I", and concludes it is both part and sum of the contents of consciousness that "I" directs its psychic energy to accumulate for--a circular process that constantly feeds and evolves on itself.

The book then goes on to analyze how "flow" state can be achieved in both physical and mental realms--resulting in sports, games and various scholastic disciplines we have in our civilization--as well as in our daily work, and how one can become an "autotelic" personality that self-motivates and enjoys the work he/she does.  

  

Evidence that this is not a quick-way-to-happiness book is in its discussion on the need of balance between self and group, or differentiation and integration: As one takes on and excels in more and more challenges with the "flow" experiences, he/she becomes more unique or different from others, but keeping union and harmonious relationships with others is still a very essential part of the overall happiness for the individual. (The old Confucius saying "君子和而不同" comes to mind, with emphasis tilting toward the other end, though). The same assertion is made again in its concluding chapter on the subject of the meaning of life:

"In the past few thousand years, humanity has achieved incredible advances in the differentiation of consciousness... We have invented abstraction and analysis--the ability to separate dimensions of objects and processes from each other, such as the velocity of a falling object from its weight and its mass. It is this differentiaion that has produced science, technology, and the unprecedented power of mankind to build up and to destroy its enviornment.

"But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. The task of the next decades and centuries is to realize this under-developed component of the mind. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality. The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual's purpose merges with the universal flow."