Book notes from the book "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced as Sixcentmihaly)
Why we get enjoyment from games and not by the ordinary chores of the day-to-day life when they are also productive for us? Because games and sports have rules. They bind us to achieve a goal, make us fight the target, give us an impression of being in control while we are fighting to stay in control. We find flow when we achieve the goal. At job too or in normal life, unless you set rules and pursue goals, achievement of flow is impossible. Without rules, we shall get bored, even on vacation.
Four forms of play
Agon: contest, "competition at games which creates tension.
Alea: uncertainty or chance which creates replayability and tension.
Ilinx: A form of play that creates a temporary disruption of perception; induces dizziness creates anxiety, adrenaline, and fear.
Mimicry: to provide a way for imagination and creativity to flow, be it by narrative, fantasy, allowing the player to create.
Even the most primitive of the societies have developed some art, play which provide the pleasure of flow experience.
Most of our time is consumed in art, culture and play rather than in work.
Now we know we know why cave paintings were drawn 30 000 years ago. Mainly to have the flow experience for the painter and the viewer.
Religion is the oldest and the most ambitious attempt to find order in consciousness. Whatever was done like ceremonies, prayers, art, dances were meant to produce flow, to put simply, fun.
Optimal experience. Say a dance like kathakali. Does it give flow? It seems inherently ritualistic, dramatized, and exaggerated. The difficulty of dressing the part, the makeup and staying there for the act, makes it a possible optimal experiencing activity. But simpler acts can be devised as well.
Culture can provide optimal experience, at least for the prime players...
Music, which is organized auditory information, helps organize the mind that attends to it, and therefore reduces psychic entropy, or the disorder we experience when random information interferes with goals.
Gluttony is one if the seven deadly sins.
Uncontrolled eating can take us away from the other necessary routines of life.
However, repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain too much out of fear, their life gets diminished. Rigidity and defensive approach retard growth. Life can be enjoyed only by freely chosen discipline, kept well within reason.
If a person learns to control his instinctual desires, not because he must but because he wants to, he can enjoy eating anything without getting addicted.
Rote learning has some advantages. It gives us the chance to remember things which my look foolish but in effect is an integral part of consciousness.
If we do not have anything to remember...imagine how impoverished our life would be.
A person who remembers dates, songs, stories, scores of games, historical dates, quotations, passages from holy books is a great companion than a one who does not possess all this.
Is this why I feel suffocated today when I talk to surface people today? People who have no depth whatsoever. They are afraid to talk about anything.
Amateur or dilettante have become negative terms whereas they originate from amour or to love and delectate or to find delight in.
Today, we do not try to find love or delight in activities. Instead, the pressure is to reach a level or prevalent standard or achievement. I did ABRSm grade 4 before leaving piano. What gave me more pleasure? The passing of grade 4(with distinction) or just learning piano?
From the polio campaign, what I learn is that it is a program not run by Indian or state government but by the WHO. It is they who have employees in every country, and it is their pledge to remove the polio from the face of our planet. Yes, advertisements are necessary and are indeed aired, published, bellowed from loudspeakers, and spread but a lot of other issues if focused, can bring benefits far greater. Clean water, nutrition, working septic systems and irrigation.
Now, no World organization will focus on these issues, but for polio, there is a clear focus. Why?
If you are paralyzed, you do not care if you are starving or not. But if you are starving, the least you need is to get paralyzed. So, avoiding paralysis gets priority.
Tasting food is also a form of flow.
Most times we don’t even try to see what goes into our mouths.
Food tasting wasn't just left to the kings or affluent classes, but it was a skill for peasants too. The women of eastern Europe were not considered ready for marriage until they learnt how to cook a different soup for each of the day of the year.
Flow of thought
Some persons are so adept at reading music that they do not need to listen to the music. Instead, they prefer to read notes to enjoy it.
In Barcelona, after we had gorged over the Casa Milà La Pedrara, we got a chance to visit one of the galleries which was on show over there. It was an experiment in photography. An everlasting image was a picture of five people. At first, it looked a still. A normal glance of a person over such piece of work can be 10 seconds or 15. But when I looked longer, those people were alive. It was not a painting but a live picture. The expressions were frozen but slowly melting. A woman in front was angry, later distressed and then filled with vengeance. A man behind her consoled her. Another man was in a deep state of agony and the later broken down.
The colors were decidedly earthy, the backdrop that of a studio, hues of purple, brown and ochre spread around.
I got so engrossed that I watched for 25 minutes!
Work as Flow
Work can be a source of flow. People living coastal regions of Alps love to do what they do the entire day like getting up a 5, taking the cows to graze, milk them, come back and cook breakfast, clean the house, tender the orchards, listen to the songs or sing, tell stories to grandchildren, and sit by the fire.
This life has its own demands. You must know the terrain, the trees, the fruits, the rocks, artworks, traditions, the songs, the people and even the animals. Such people often claim they talk to every flower or leaf they encounter. Even to rocks.
Hunting is a form of work that involves flow. For a long time, hunting in some form, be it for food, to kill and dangerous beast or to chase an animal for vengeance was an enjoyable activity. One that was an end to something and a means.
Fishing is the same. People do it despite the absence of practical aspect of it.
A weaving family enjoyed the activity. It is challenging and gives each family member a chance to try his or her creativity. And it is work for them. Now comes the industrial looms. Families are unable to compete with them. Family members, instead of working for themselves are forced to go to work for looms. Boys as young as seven would work in demanding conditions.
The challenge is gone. At most the worker looks at a few dials and manipulates, if needed. There are fixed designs to work with.
Same with our corporations, workers are mechanized, robot like in their duties. No thinking, no creativity, no innovation. Job is determined by others.
Managers and leaders too have dull jobs, which they refuse to accept, and act occupied with wordplay.
Idiot in ancient Greek means private person. Someone unable to learn from others.
Human relations are malleable, if the person has appropriate skills, they can be transformed.
How the aliens in the comics and movies keep wondering? Neither strength, nor sharpest skills, speed, or any other power, yet humans together with their wits, outsmart the tricky situations.
Psychic entropy is what one feels when goals need to be realigned when in relationship. What one used to do freely is no longer valid as the presence of spouse or child modifies it. The best is that the individual must revisit the old goals and revise and thus come to peace.
The disintegration of families has extrinsic factors. Women no longer need a man to bring food home and men do not need a woman to cook. The family values were in fact an extension of this reality.
Cicero wrote that to become completely free, one must become slave to a set of laws.
If one is completely immersed in a monogamous marriage, and puts all psychic energy into it, regardless of all obstacles and attractive options, he or she will be liberated from the constant pressure of trying to maximize the returns.
To be limited is liberating.
In a way, when we were limited to one TV channel in the 80s, we were actually better off.
If a family decides that one week we shall be going to a concert while the next week to watch a movie, both movie lover and concert lovers will kind of compromise, but the family will be together, and they will ger some appreciation of both concert and movie. If left to individual choices, they will hardly get any exposure and discover nothing.
The integrity of the self depends upon the ability to turn neutral or destructive events into positive ones.
Likelihood of only good things happening in your life are very slim.
Self-control feel part of everything going around you, don't militate against what's happening.
Your goal your desire matters so just focus on it. If you have an exam and power goes away, don't fight the heat, focus on exam.
Easy to say but....
When your car doesn't start, don't slam the dashboard but calmly call a cab and make alternate arrangements for work. What if the pilot starts hitting the dashboard when something unexpected happens? He or she is one unit and must act in that larger entity for the safety of passengers.
We need to watch and pay attention to what is going around us.
A person who is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what is going on, and in flow for most of the time is said to be in autotelic (having an end or purpose) self.
An autotelic person gets immersed in the activity. Whether flying airplane or washing dishes after dishes, he or she invests all attention on the task at hand.
Now some people start with too lofty goals like solving world poverty and go nowhere while some get bored easily and arrest the complexity of growth at an early level. Such people stagnate.
Flow drives individuals to creativity and outstanding achievement. The necessity to develop increasingly refined skills to sustain enjoyment is what lies behind the evolution of culture.
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