Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - The Flow of Thoughts

The good things in life don't just come through the senses. Some of the most euphoric experiences we ever experience are generated in our minds, triggered by information that challenges our ability to think, rather than from using the skills of our senses. As Sir Francis Bacon noted nearly four hundred years ago, reflection – the seed of knowledge – is a reflection of the purest form of pleasure. Just as flow activities correspond to every physical potential of the body, every mental activity can also provide their distinct experience of enjoyment.

Among the many mental activities available, reading is probably the most talked about flow activity worldwide. Solving intellectual puzzles, the oldest form of enjoyment activity, was a precursor to both philosophy and modern science. Some individuals have become so proficient in interpreting musical notation that they do not need to hear the notes actually sung to still enjoy a piece of music, preferring to read the phonic signature of a symphony in order to "hear" it in their mind. The imaginary sounds dancing in their minds are more perfect than any actual performance. Similarly, people who spend a lot of time with art will increasingly appreciate the emotional, historical, and cultural aspects of the work they are contemplating, sometimes even more than if they enjoy its purely visual aspects. As one art expert put it: "[The work] of art that I receive personally, contains behind it a lot of cognitive, political and intellectual activity... These visual performance activities are truly signposts for this beautiful machine that has been created, unique on earth, and not only a refresh of visual elements, but also truly a new thinking machine, but an artist, through visual means and the association with the eyes, with their perceptions, has been created."

What this person sees in a painting is not just an image, but also a "thought machine" that includes the artist's emotions, hopes, and ideas — as well as the spirit of the culture and historical period in which he lived. With careful attention, one can recognize a mental dimension similar to that of pleasurable physical activity such as, athletics, cuisine, or sex. We can say that it is impossible to distinguish flow activities related to bodily functions and those related to mind functions, to some extent, since all physical activities must involve at least one element of the mind, if they are truly enjoyable activities. Athletes are well aware that, in order to improve their performance beyond a certain point, they must learn to discipline their minds. And the intrinsic rewards they receive include more than just physical well-being: They experience a sense of self-fulfillment and increased self-confidence. In contrast, most mental activities also rely on the physical aspect. Chess, for example, is one of the most brain-intensive games; But the best players are trained by running and swimming, because they are aware that if they are not physically healthy, they will not be able to maintain mental focus for the long term that chess tournaments require. In Yoga, conscious control is prepared by learning to control the processes of the body and the former blends seamlessly with the latter.

Thus, while flow always involves the use of muscles and nerves on the one hand, on the other hand, willpower, thoughts, and emotions make sense to distinguish a group of pleasurable activities, because they dictate to the mind more directly than through the mediation of bodily sensations. These activities are mostly symbolic in nature, in that they depend on natural language, mathematics, or some other abstract sign system, such as computer language, to effectively achieve order in the mind. A symbol system resembles a game in that it provides a separate reality, a world of its own, where one can perform actions that are allowed to occur in that world, but would not make sense anywhere else. In symbolic systems, "action" is often limited to the mental manipulation of concepts.

To enjoy a mental activity, one must meet the same conditions that make physical activity enjoyable. There must be skills in a symbolic field, there must be rules, goals, and a method of receiving feedback. He or she must be able to concentrate and interact with opportunities commensurate with his skills.

In fact, achieving such an orderly mental condition is not as easy as it seems. Contrary to what we tend to assume to be true, the normal state of mind is chaos. Without training and without an external object that demands any attention, people will not be able to focus their thoughts for more than a few minutes at a time. Concentration is relatively easy when attention is structured by external stimuli, such as when a movie is playing on a screen or as when driving in the middle of a heavy amount of traffic. If someone reads an interesting book, the same thing happens, but most readers start to lose focus after a few pages and their minds wander away from the plot. Then, if they want to continue reading, they must make an effort to get their attention back to the page.

We often fail to notice how little control we have over our minds, because mental energy circulation habits are so good that thoughts seem to follow each other without a hitch. After sleep, we wake up in the morning when our alarm goes off, then go to the bathroom and brush our teeth. After that, sociocultural roles continue to shape our minds and we often put ourselves in automatic control until the end of the day, when, once again, we lose consciousness in our sleep. But when we are left alone, with no demand for attention, the basic disorder of the mind automatically reveals. With nothing to do, the mind begins to operate in random patterns, often stopping to focus on something painful or distressing. Unless an individual knows how to dictate his thoughts, attention will be drawn to whatever is most problematic at that moment: it will focus on some real or imagined pain, on the nearest grudges or on lingering frustrations. Entropy is a normal state of consciousness—a state that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

To avoid this situation, one is naturally eager to fill their mind with whatever information is available, provided that it distracts attention from being introverted and indulging in negative feelings. This explains why a large proportion of time is invested in watching television, despite the fact that it is very rarely enjoyed. Compared to other sources of stimulation — such as reading, chatting with others, or pursuing a hobby — television can provide continuous and easily accessible information, which will structure the viewer's attention with very little investment in mental energy. While people watch television, they need not fear that their drifting minds will force them to face distressing personal problems. It is understandable that, once one develops this strategy to overcome mental turmoil, it becomes almost impossible to give up this habit.

Of course, a better path to avoid chaos in consciousness is through habits that bring control of mental processes to an individual, rather than using some source of external stimuli, such as television shows. However, acquiring such habits requires practice and the kinds of goals and rules that are inherent in flow activities. For instance, one of the simplest ways to use the mind is daydreaming: creating several sequences of events in the form of mental images. But even this seemingly easy way of setting order is beyond the bounds of many. Jerome Singer, a Yale psychologist who has studied daydreaming and mental imagery more intensively than any other scientist, has shown that daydreaming is a skill that a lot of kids never learn to use. However, daydreaming not only helps to create emotional order by compensating for unpleasant realities with imagination — like when one can reduce frustration and aggression toward the person who has hurt him by visualizing a situation in which he or she is punished — but also allows children (and adults) to rehearse Imaginary situations in order to be able to apply the best strategy when confronting them, alternatives are also considered, unpredictable consequences are discovered, – all outcomes help to increase the complexity of consciousness. And, of course, when applied with skill, daydreaming can become incredibly fun.

To look at the conditions that help establish order in the mind, we will first look at the extremely important role of memory, then how words can be used to create a flow experience. Next we will look at three symbolic systems that are very enjoyable if one understands their rules, namely: history, science and philosophy. There are many more fields of study that can be covered, but these three can serve as examples for others. Each of these mental games, anyone who wants to use them is accessible.

MOTHER OF SCIENCE

The Greeks anthropomorphized memory into the goddess Mnemosyne. As the mother of nine Muses, she is said to have given birth to all fields of art and science. Memory can be considered the oldest mental skill, from which all other skills are created, because if we cannot memorize, then we cannot follow the rules that make other mental activities possible. Neither logic nor poetry will survive and the elementary principles of science will be forced to be rediscovered in each new generation. The leading position of memory is valid, above all within the context of race history. Before written notation systems were developed, all knowledge information had to be transmitted from one person's memory to another. And it is also historically true of each individual. A person's inability to remember will be cut off from all knowledge of previous experience, making it impossible for them to construct conscious patterns to bring order to the mind. As Buñuel said, "Life without memories is not life. Memory is our glue, our reason, our feelings, and even our actions. Without memory, we are nothing."

All forms of mental flow depend on memory, directly or indirectly. History has hypothesized that the oldest way to organize information consists of recalling one's ancestors; Lineage gave identity to each individual as a member of a tribe or a family. It is no coincidence that the Old Testament, especially in the first books, contains a great deal of genealogical information (e.g., Genesis 10:26–29: "The descendants of Joktan were Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, Obal, Abimael, Sheba, Ophir, Havilah, and Jobab..."). Knowing one's origins and the people with whom they are related is an indispensable method of creating social order when no other foundation for order exists. In prehistoric cultures, reviewing ancestral name lists was a very important activity, even today, and it is one that one can do with pleasure. Memorization is indulgent because it requires the accomplishment of a goal and thus brings order to consciousness. We all know that little spark of satisfaction still appears when we remember where we put our car keys, or any other item that is temporarily missing. Remembering a long list of elders, going back dozens of generations, is particularly interesting in that it satisfies the need to find a place in the ongoing lifeline. Someone's recall of his or her ancestors puts him or her as a link in a chain that starts with the paranormal past and extends into the unpredictable future. Although in our culture lineage history has lost its practical importance, people still like to think and talk about their roots.

Not only are the roots entrusted to memory by our ancestors, but there are also all the objective truths that are related to the ability to control the environment otherwise. The list of edible herbs and fruits, health advice, codes of conduct, models of heritage, laws, geographical knowledge, the fundamentals of technology and all understanding are encapsulated in easy-to-remember sayings or verses. Before printing became as easy and readily available as it has been in the past few hundred years, much of human knowledge was condensed in forms similar to the "Alphabet song" that puppets now sing on children's television shows like "Sesame Street."

According to Johann Huizinga, the great Dutch cultural historian, one of the most important precursors of systematic knowledge was puzzles. In the earliest cultures, tribal elders would challenge each other to competitions in which one person performed a theme filled with hidden innuendos and the other had to interpret the encoded meaning in the performance. A competition among puzzle experts is often the most intellectually stimulating event the local community can witness. The form of the puzzle motivated the rules of logic and its content was intended to convey the practical knowledge our ancestors needed to preserve life. Some of the puzzles are quite simple and easy, like the tunes sung by ancient Welsh buskers and translated by Lady Charlotte Guest below:

Find out, what it is:

The powerful entity dates back to before the flood came,

No meat, no bones,

There is no pulse, no blood,

No head, no legs...

There in the field, in the jungle

There are no arms, no legs.

It's also spread across

Like the surface of the earth,

And it was not born,

Also not visible...

The answer in this case is "the wind."

Other puzzles that monks and buskers have commissioned into memory are longer, more complex, and contain important pieces of secret knowledge disguised in elaborate verses. For example, Robert Graves argues that the first wise men of Ireland and Wales stored their knowledge in memorable poems. Often they use complex ciphers, like when the names of tree species are represented by letters and a list of plants is spelled out into words. Lines 67–70 of the poem The Battle of the Trees, a long, strange poem, sung by ancient Welsh buskers:

Alders on the front lines

Start the fight.

Willow and rowan

there was a delay in the deployment of troops.

Encoded the letters F (which is represented by python in the mystical druidic alphabet), S (willow) and L (rowan). In this way, a few literate buskers were able to sing a song that seemed to be referring to a battle between forest trees, but actually emitted a message that only people with similar understanding could interpret. Of course, the answer to the puzzle does not depend entirely on memory; but specialized knowledge and a lot of imagination and problem-solving ability are also required. But without a good memory, one cannot be a puzzle master, nor can one master any other mental skill.

According to the records of human intelligence, the most prized spiritual gift is a well-nourished memory. My grandfather in his seventies can still recall passages from three thousand lines of the Iliad in Greek that he had to memorize in order to graduate from high school. Whenever he remembered them, his expression glowed with pride, darting his distant gaze toward the horizon. With each beat of poetry presented, his mind returns to his younger years. Words that recall in him the experiences he had when he first studied the work, remembering these poems, for him was a kind of time travel. For those of his generation, knowledge was still synonymous with memorization. Only in the last century, as forms of written storage have become less expensive and easier, that the importance of memorization has decreased dramatically. Today, a good memory is considered useless except for performing on some entertaining television show or to play Trivial Pursuit.

But for someone who has nothing to remember, life can become especially poor. This possibility was completely ignored by the education reformers of the turn of the century, who, armed by research findings, demonstrated that rote learning was not an effective way to store and gather information. As a result of their efforts, rote learning was excluded from schools. These reformers would have been proven right if the purpose of memorization had simply been to solve practical problems. But if conscious control is assessed as at least as important as the ability to get things done, then memorizing complex patterns of information is not at all a waste of effort. A mind with a few stable contents will be much richer than a mind with nothing. It would be a mistake to assume that creativity and rote learning are incompatible. Some early scientists, for example, were known for memorizing music, poetry, or generalized historical information.

A person who can remember stories, poems, lyrics, baseball statistics, chemical formulas, algorithms, historical milestones, Bible passages, and wise quotes, will have many advantages over someone who does not cultivate such a skill. The consciousness of such an individual is independent from order that may or may not be provided by the environment. They can always entertain themselves and find meaning from what is contained in their minds. While others need external stimuli, such as television, reading, conversation, or stimulants to keep their minds out of chaos, people whose memories have been stored with information patterns will be able to be autonomous and independent. In addition, such a person is also a particularly cherished companion, because they are able to share information in their minds and thus help bring order to the consciousness of those with whom they interact.

How can one find more value from memory? The most natural way to start is to decide what topics you're really interested in—poetry, food, Civil War history, or baseball—and then start paying attention to important events and figures in your chosen field. With a good grasp of the topic will lead to the perception of what is worth remembering and what is not. It is important to realize that you should not feel that you have to absorb an objective sequence of facts, that there is a proper list that you must keep in mind. If you decide what you want to have in your memory, the information will be under your control, and the whole process of memorization will become a pleasant task, rather than a trifle imposed from the outside. A person who learns about the Civil War need not feel compelled to know the time sequence of all the major engagements; For example, if he is interested in the role of artillery, then only battles in which cannons play an important role need his attention. Some people also carry with them notes selected from poems and quotes written on paper, so that they can skim through them when they feel bored or discouraged. How wonderful is the feeling of control when we know that our favorite facts or lyrics are always at hand. Once they are stored in memory, however, this sense of ownership — or better yet, of connection to the recalled content — becomes even more intense.

Of course, there is always a risk that the person who masters a certain domain of information will use it to become an arrogant nuisance. We all know people who can't resist flaunting their memory. But this usually happens when someone memorizes just to impress others. Someone is less likely to become a nuisance when they are genuinely motivated — with an honest interest in the object, and a desire to consciously control rather than control the environment.

THE RULES OF MIND GAMES

Memory is not the only tool that is required to shape what goes on in the mind. It is useless to memorize objective facts unless they fit certain stereotypes, or one finds similarities and regularity between them. The simplest system of order is to name things; The words we invent transform individual events into universal categories. This power of words is enormous. In Genesis 1, God named day, night, sky, earth, sea, and all living things immediately after He created them, thereby completing the process of creation. The Gospel of John begins with: "Before the creation of the World, the Word existed"; and Heraclitus begins his almost extinct work: "This word (Logos) is eternal, and yet before and after hearing it for the first time, man understands it very little..." All these references show the importance of words in controlling the experience. The structural building blocks of most symbolic systems, words make abstract thought possible and increase the mind's ability to store the stimuli to which it has participated. Without a system for ordering information, even the brightest memory will notice consciousness lying in a state of chaos.

After naming, there are numbers and concepts, and then there are the basic rules for combining them in predictable ways. In the VI century BC, Pythagoras and his students embarked on the task of creating universal order, having tried to find common laws of arithmetic to link astronomy, geometry, music and arithmetic. Not surprisingly, their work is difficult to distinguish from religion, since it tried to achieve similar goals: to find ways to express the structure of the universe. Two thousand years later, Kepler, and then Newton, are still on the same search.

Theoretical thinking has never completely lost the figurative and riddled properties of ancient puzzles. For example, Archytas, the philosopher and commander-in-chief of the city of Tarentum (now in southern Italy) in the fourth century BC proved that the universe is infinite, by wondering: "Suppose that I reach beyond the limits of the universe. If I threw out a stick now, what would I notice?" Archytas thinks the stick must be launched into space. But in that case, there is space outside the limits of the universe, which means that the universe has no limits. If Archytas's reasoning seems primitive, then it is useful to recall that the intellectual experiments that Einstein used to clarify how the theory of relativity works, involved recording time from trains moving at different speeds, It's basically no different.

Besides stories and riddles, all civilizations gradually developed more systematic rules for incorporating information, in the form of geometric presentation and formal proof. With the help of such formulas, one can describe the movement of stars, accurately predict season-by-season cycles and accurately map the earth. Abstract knowledge, and eventually what we know as empirical science, evolved from these rules.

It is important to emphasize here a truth that all often do not see: philosophy and science were invented and developed because thinking is an interesting process. If thinkers did not like the sense of order created in consciousness when using deductive and arithmetic methods, it is unlikely that we can now have mathematics and physics subjects.

However, this statement stands in stark contrast to most current theories of cultural development. Historians are imbued with variations of materialistic determinism teachings that argue that thought is shaped by what people are forced to do for a living. For example, the development of arithmetic and geometry was explained almost exclusively on the basis of the need for accurate astronomical knowledge and irrigation techniques indispensable in the maintenance of large hydraulic civilizations, located along such large rivers as the Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, Yangtze and Nile. For these historians, every step of creation was understood to be the product of external forces, either from war, demographic pressure, territorial ambition, market conditions, technological needs, or the struggle for class domination.

External forces are important in determining which new ideas will be chosen among the many already available; But they cannot account for the product created from it. For example, it is absolutely true that the development and application of knowledge about atomic energy was greatly promoted by a one-on-one war between Germany on the one hand and Britain and the United States on the other. But in reality, the science that forms the basis of nuclear fission has little to do with war; it was obtained through knowledge posed in much more moderate circumstances – for example, in a friendly exchange of ideas between European physicists over many years at a brewery and then transferred to Niels Bohr and his fellow scientists via a brewery in Copenhagen.

Great thinkers are motivated by the enjoyment of thinking rather than the material rewards that can be gained through the process. Democritus, one of the most unique minds of antiquity, was especially respected by his countrymen in the city of Abdera. However, they understood nothing about Democritus. Watching him sit immersed in his daily thoughts, they assumed he was acting unnaturally and must be sick. So they invited Hippocrates, the great physician, to see what disease their sage had. After Hippocrates, who was not only a good physician but also very wise, discussed with Democritus the absurdities of life, he reassured the townspeople that if there was anything going on with their philosopher, it was the utmost well-being. He wasn't insane; He was just lost in the flow of thought.

Surviving fragments from Democritus' writings illustrate how he found the practice of thinking rewarding: "It is divine to ponder something beautiful, and of something new"; "Happiness is not in power or money; it lies in correctness and multifacetedness"; "I would rather discover an authentic root than win the Persian kingdom." Not surprisingly, some of his more knowledgeable contemporaries concluded that Democritus had a cheerful temperament and said that he evoked "Cheerfulness and Confidence, that of a fearless mind, which is good of the highest degree". In other words, he enjoyed life because he learned to control his consciousness.

Democritus was neither the first nor the last thinker to get lost in the flow of mind. Philosophers are often seen as absent-minded, which of course does not mean that their minds have been lost, but rather that they have temporarily escaped from everyday reality to live in symbolic forms of the domains of knowledge they love. Suppose, when Kant placed his watch in a pot of boiling water while holding an egg in his hand to time the boiling of eggs, all his mental energy must have been invested in bringing abstract thoughts into a harmonious state, leaving no free attention to confront the unexpected demands of the material world substance.

The focus is on playing with ideas which is super fun. Not only philosophy but the emergence of new scientific ideas is motivated by the enjoyment one gains through the creation of a new way of describing reality. The tools that make the flow of thought possible are common property, including knowledge stored in books available in schools and libraries. A person who is familiar with the conventions of poetry or mathematical rules, can mature independently from external stimuli. He can emit uncountable chains of thought, regardless of what happens in external reality. Once a person has learned a symbol system proficient enough to use it, he or she has established a "portable" world, closed in the mind.

Sometimes control over such an internalized symbolic system can save a life. For example, it has been claimed that the reason Iceland has more poets than any other country in the world is because reciting school texts has become a way for Icelanders to keep their sense of order while living in an environment extremely hostile to human existence. For centuries, Icelanders not only preserved poetry in memory, but also added new verses to chronicle epics, documenting the deeds of their ancestors. Isolated in the freezing night, they often huddled around the fire, humming their poems under precarious huts, while outside the winds of endless winter at the North Pole were constantly howling. If Icelanders spend those school nights in silence, listening to the defiant winds outside, their minds will soon be filled with fear and despair. Instead, by mastering the orderly rhythm of law and rhyme, enveloping the events of their lives with verbal images, they succeeded in controlling their experiences. Faced with chaotic snowstorms, they created songs with form and meaning. To what extent do these exam schools help Icelanders endure the rigors? Can they survive without them? There is no way to answer these questions with certainty. But who would dare test that?

Similar situations play out when individuals are suddenly pushed from civilization and find themselves in extreme circumstances such as those we described above, such as concentration camps or polar expeditions. Whenever the outside world is intolerant, an inner symbolic system can become salvation. Anyone who owns "portable" rules for the mind has a great advantage. In conditions of extreme deprivation, poets, mathematicians, musicians, historians, and biblical understanders emerged as islands of sanity surrounded by turbulent waves. To a certain extent, farmers who understand farm life or forest-savvy lumberjacks have a similar support system, but because their knowledge is less abstractly coded, they need to interact more with the real environment to gain control.

Let's hope that no one is forced to summon symbolic skills to survive concentration camps or Arctic challenges. But there is a set of "portable" rules that the mind can use that will be wonderfully beneficial even in ordinary life. Those without an internalized symbolic system can easily become prisoners of the media. They are easily manipulated by demagogues, won over by people in the entertainment industry, and exploited by anyone who is looking to sell something. If we have become dependent on television, drugs, and on smooth calls to political or religious salvation, it is because we have too little to rely on, too few internal rules that protect our minds from being appropriated by those who claim they have answers. Without the ability to provide its own information, the mind will drift into the realm of indiscretion. Insiding within each person is the power that determines whether the order of the mind will be restored from the outside, in ways over which we have absolutely no control, or whether the order will be the result of an internal pattern that develops organically from our skills and knowledge.

THE SUBJUGATION OF WORDS

How does a person start mastering a symbol system? Of course, it depends on the area of thought that the person enjoys exploring. We've seen that the oldest and perhaps most basic sets of rules govern the use of words. And today, words still offer many opportunities to enter the flow state at various levels of complexity. A somewhat trivial but still illuminating example can be mentioned as a crossword puzzle. There are many benefits in supporting this popular pastime, which, when in its best form, is very similar to ancient puzzle-solving competitions. It is inexpensive and portable, its challenges can be fine-tuned so that both inexperienced and expert alike can enjoy it, and its answers produce a pleasant sense of order that gives one a satisfying sense of accomplishment. It provides the opportunity to experience a calm flow for those stuck in airport lounges, sitting on trains, or for those who simply want to pass the time on Sunday mornings. But if a person is limited to simply solving crosswords, he or she is still dependent on an external stimulus: the challenge provided by an expert of the Sunday supplement or puzzle magazine. To be truly autonomous in this area, a better option is to create your own crosswords. At that time, there is no longer a need for a model to be molded from the outside; He is completely free. And the enjoyment then was even deeper. It is not difficult to learn how to write crosswords; I know an eight-year-old who, after trying to solve some Sunday puzzles in the New York Times, started writing his own meaningful crosswords. Of course, as with any other skill worth developing, this also requires one to invest mental energy in it from the beginning.

A more potent use of words to improve our lives is the art of conversation. The ideologies of utilitarianism over the past two centuries have implicitly convinced us that the primary purpose of talking is to convey useful information. That's why we now value brief communication, imparting factual knowledge, and treating anything else as time-wasting vanity. As a result, it was nearly impossible for people to talk to each other outside the narrow scope of topical preoccupations and expertise. Few of us can understand the enthusiasm of "Ali" Ben Ali, who wrote: "A delicate conversation, it is the Garden of Eden." This is unfortunate, because it can be proven that the main function of chat is not to get results, but to improve the quality of the experience.

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, sociologists of influential phenomena, wrote that our sense of the universe is bound together by conversation. When I say to an acquaintance I meet in the morning, "It's beautiful," I'm not trying to convey meteorological information—which would be superfluous, since he has the same data as me—but rather to achieve other kinds of goals. For example, by talking to him, I acknowledge his existence and express my goodwill. Second, I reaffirm one of the basic rules of interaction in our culture, which holds that talking about the weather is a safe way to establish communication between people. Finally, by emphasizing that the weather is good, I imply that sharing that "nice" value is an endearing attribute. So that seemingly casual remark became a message that helped the other acquaintance's mind keep its usual order. His answer, "Yes, it's beautiful, isn't it?" will help me keep order in my mind. Without such constant reaffirmation of the obvious, Berger and Luckmann declare, people will soon begin to doubt the reality of the world they live in. The courtesy we exchanged with each other, the petty conversation from the radio and television, reassured us that everything was fine, that the usual conditions of existence were prevailing.

The unfortunate thing is that a lot of conversations end right there. However, when words are well chosen, well arranged, they create a satisfying experience for listeners. It is not for pragmatic reasons alone that the abundance of vocabulary and fluency of speech is one of the most important qualities for being a successful entrepreneur. Being good at speaking enriches every interaction and it's a skill anyone can learn.

One way to teach children about the potential of words is to start exposing them to charades early on. Puns and double meanings may be the lowest form of humor for already sophisticated adults, but they provide children with a good training foundation in language mastery. All an adult has to do is focus their attention in conversation with a child, and as soon as the opportunity presents itself, — whenever a word or an innocent expression can be interpreted in a different way — then the person immediately switches states and pretends to understand the word in a different sense.

The first time a child realizes that the expression "dinner with Grandma" can refer to a guest or a dish, he will find it a little confusing, like when he first hears a phrase like "dry throat". In fact, breaking orderly expectations about the meaning of words can cause some bewildering at first, but immediately children will catch up and react well in the same way they understand problems, learning to redirect the conversation into a tortuous state. In doing so, they learn to enjoy the control of words; As adults, they can help revive the art of conversation that has faded.

The primary creative use of language, which has been mentioned many times above, is poetry. Because poetry allows the mind to store experiences in a condensed and transformed form, it is ideal for shaping consciousness. Reading poetry every night is as meaningful to the mind as exercise is meaningful to the body. You don't necessarily have to read "great" works, at least not at an early stage. And it is not necessary to read the whole poem. It is important to choose at least one line, or one paragraph, and then start humming. Sometimes just one word is enough to open a window to a new view of the world, taking the mind on an inner journey.

And again, there's no reason to just stop at being a passive consumer. Everyone can learn, with a little discipline and perseverance, to determine personal experience in poetry. As Kenneth Koch, a New York-based poet and social reformer, has shown, even underserved children and uneducated elderly women in nursing homes can write beautiful moving poems if they with minimal training. There is no doubt that mastering this skill will improve their quality of life. Not only did they enjoy the experience, but in the process, they also significantly increased their self-esteem.

Prose writing offers similar benefits and although it lacks the clear order imposed by beat and rhyme, it is a more accessible skill. (However, writing a great prose is probably as difficult as writing great poems.)

In today's world, we have neglected the habit of writing because so many other means of communication have taken their place. Phones and tape recorders, computers and fax machines are more efficient at transmitting news. If the only important purpose of writing is to convey information, then it will deserve to become obsolete. But the point of writing is to create information, not simply pass it on. In the past, educated people used journals and personal correspondence to put their experiences into words, which allowed them to reflect on what happened during the day. The extraordinarily detailed letters that many Britons during the Victorian dynasty wrote are an example of how people create patterns of order from largely random events that appear in their consciousness. The type of document we write in our journals and messages doesn't exist before it's written. It is the process of self-growth of thinking that is embedded in writing in the first place that allows ideas to emerge.

Not so long ago, it was perfectly acceptable to be an amateur poet or essayist. Today, if people don't make some money (albeit very little) from writing, it's considered a waste of time. A man in his early twenties pursuing a career in poetry would be considered a clear shame, unless he made money doing so. And unless it's a great talent, it's useless to practice writing in the hope of achieving great profits or fame. But writing is never wasted for internal reasons. First of all, writing to the mind is a disciplined means of expression. It allows people to capture events and experiences so that they can easily recall and relive them in the future. It is a way to analyze and understand experiences, a self-communication that brings order to the writer.

Recently, many people have commented on the fact that poets and playwrights are a group of people who exhibit unusually severe symptoms of depression and other emotional disorders. Perhaps one reason they became full-time writers was because their consciousness was surrounded by entropy to an unusual degree; Writing becomes a therapy to shape some order in the midst of emotional chaos. It is likely that the only way writers can experience a state of flow is to create a world of words where they can act with denial, erasing from their minds the existence of a troubling reality. However, like any other flow activity, when writing becomes an addiction it becomes dangerous: it forces the writer to engage in a limited range of experiences and confiscates options for processing other events. But when writing is used to control the experience without letting it control the mind, it is a tool that offers incredibly subtle and rich rewards.

GODDESS CLIO GOODWILL: THE FLOW OF HISTORY

While Memory is the mother of culture, Clio, the "Praise One," is his eldest daughter. In Greek mythology, she is the patron of history, responsible for maintaining orderly records of past events. Although history's lack of clear rules has made other mental activities such as logic, poetry, or mathematics interesting, it has its own clear structure, established by the irreversible sequence of events in the timeline. Observing, recording and preserving memories of both life's big and small events is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness.

In a sense, each individual is a historian of his or her own personal existence. It is because of our emotional power that memories of childhood become the determining factor in determining the type of adult we become as well as how our minds function. Psychoanalysis is largely an attempt to bring order to each person's garbled history of their childhood. This quest to make sense of the past once again becomes important in old age. Erik Erikson pledged that the final stage of the human life cycle must include the task of achieving "unity," or bringing together what one has accomplished and not accomplished in one's life into a meaningful story that can be claimed as one's own. "History," Thomas Carlyle wrote, "is the essence of countless biographies."

Reminiscing about the past is not only instrumental in creating and preserving personal identity, but can also be a highly enjoyable process. People kept diaries, photographs, made projections and home movies and collected souvenirs and memorabilia and stored them in their homes to build a museum about family life, even though a visitor would not have noticed the historical connections of these items. The guest may not know that the painting on the living room wall is significant because it was purchased by the owner on his honeymoon in Mexico, that the rug in the hallway is precious because it was a gift from the beloved grandmother, and that the dirty sofa in the study is still retained because it is where the children of the house sit eat when they are young.

Having an archive of the past can make a great contribution to quality of life. It frees us from the tyranny of the present and gives consciousness the ability to reconsider the previous time. It allows the selection and preservation in memory of particularly joyful and meaningful events, thereby creating a past that will help us cope with the future. Of course, such a past may not be really accurate. But in memory, the past can never be exactly right: it must be constantly edited and the question is only whether we can creatively control the editing.

Most of us don't think we've always been an amateur historian. But once we realize that organizing events in time is a necessary part of being a conscious person and, moreover, that it is an interesting task, then we can do it much better. There are several levels at which history is viewed as a practicable flow activity. On the most personal level, having a diary. The next level is to write a family chronicle, going as far into the past as possible. But there's no reason to stop there. Some expanded their interest in their people and began collecting relevant books and memorabilia. With a special effort, they can begin to record their own impressions of the past, thereby becoming "authentic" amateur historians.

Others may develop an interest in the history of the communities in which they live, either residential or stately, by reading books, visiting museums and joining historical associations. Or they might focus on a specific aspect of the past: for example, a friend living in the wilderness of western Canada was fascinated by the "early industrial constructions" in that land and gradually accumulated enough knowledge about them to enjoy excursions to sawmills, The foundry and train station crumbled in a remote place, where his knowledge could help him estimate and recognize the value of important details that others might overlook, such as piles of rubbish grass.

Very often, we tend to think of history as a list of memorable dates, a chronicle constructed by ancient scholars as their own beast. It's an area we can tolerate but don't love, it's a subject we learn to be seen as educated, but we learn it reluctantly. If this is your case, then history can contribute little to improving the quality of life. Knowledge that is normally controlled from the outside will be accumulated reluctantly and it does not bring joy. But as soon as one identifies certain aspects of the past as fascinating and decides to pursue them, focusing on personally significant sources and details, and documenting findings in a personal style, learning history can become a genuine flow experience.

THE BEAST OF SCIENCE

After reading the section above, you may have seen that almost no one cannot become an amateur historian. But if we move that argument to another field, can we really imagine a person without expertise becoming an amateur scientist? After all, we have repeatedly heard that in this century, science has become a highly institutionalized activity, with the main activity limited to major alliances. It requires lavishly equipped laboratories, huge budgets and large groups of researchers to survive on the territory of biology, chemistry or physics. It is true that, if the goal of science is to win a Nobel Prize, or to attract the recognition of professional colleagues in a highly competitive field in a particular discipline, then these extremely specialized and expensive methods of scientific research may be the only option.

In fact, this capital-intensive scenario, based on an assembly line model, happens to be an inaccurate description of what leads to success in "professional" science. Although technocrats would like us to believe that breakthroughs in science come only in teams in which each researcher is trained in a very specialized field and where the most modern equipment is available to test new ideas, But this is not true. The truth is that it's not that great discoveries are made only by the centers with the highest levels of funding. These conditions can help test novel theories, but they are not largely responsible for whether innovative ideas develop. New discoveries still come to people as they did to Democritus, who sits in the middle of a bustling city square, lost in thought. They come to people who like to play with ideas so much that they end up straying beyond the limits of what is known and find themselves exploring uncharted territory.

Even the pursuit of "ordinary" science (as opposed to "revolutionary" or innovative science) would be nearly impossible if it did not bring enjoyment to the scientist. In his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn suggests some reasons why science is fascinating. First, "by focusing attention on a range of relatively mysterious issues, the thesis [or theoretical method] forces scientists to investigate a part of nature at a level of detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable." This focus is possible because of "rules that limit both the nature of acceptable solutions and the steps taken to obtain those solutions." And, Kuhn claims that a scientist who has ventured into the field of "ordinary" science is not motivated by the hope of transforming knowledge, or finding truth, or improving the conditions of life. Instead, "what challenged him was the conviction that, if he was good enough, he would succeed in solving a conundrum that no one had solved before, or that no one had solved so well." He also said, "The appeal of ordinary research thesis... [That is] although its outcome can be predicted, the path to that outcome is still very much unclear... The successful researcher proves himself to be an expert at solving tough problems, and the challenge of the problem is a big part of what often motivates him." No wonder scientists often feel like P. A. M. Dirac, the physicist who described the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s by saying, "This is a game, a very interesting game that one can play." Kuhn's description of the allure of science is explicitly similar to reports describing why riddling, or rock climbing, or rowing, or chess, or any other flow activity is rewarding.

If "ordinary" scientists are motivated in their work through challenging intellectual problems, "revolutionary" scientists—those who break away from existing theoretical theses to move on to newer ones—are motivated even more by enjoyment. A charming example is related to Subrahhmanyan Chandrasekhar, the astrophysicist whose life reached legendary caliber. Leaving India as a young man in 1933, on a rambour boat from Calcutta to England, he wrote down a model of star evolution that over time became the basis of the theory of black holes. But his ideas were so novel that for a long time they were not accepted by the scientific community. He was eventually accepted to work at the University of Chicago, where he continued his research under an obscure name. There is an anecdote about him that best demonstrates his commitment to the job. During the 1950s, Chandrasekhar took up residence in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, where the university's main astronomical observatories are located, about eighty miles from the main campus. That winter, he was assigned to teach at an advanced symposium on astrophysics. Only two students registered to participate and it was anticipated that Chandrasekhar would cancel the workshop instead of having to overcome the inconvenience of travel. But he didn't and instead drove back to Chicago twice a week, along remote roads, to take classes. A few years later, those two students took turns winning the Nobel Prize in physics. Whenever this story is told, the narrator often concludes with regret that it is a shame that the professor himself never won the prize. That regret is no longer necessary, because in 1983 Professor Chandrasekhar himself was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

Often in such humble circumstances, for people dedicated to playing with ideas, that's when a breakthrough in thinking takes place. One of the most fascinating discoveries of the past few years involves the theory of superconductivity. Two of the key figures, K. Alex Muller and J. Georg Bednorz, who worked out the principles and conducted the first experiments in the IBM laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, were not obscure but also not well-known in scientific circles. For years, these researchers did not allow anyone else to know about their work, not because they feared it would be stolen, but because they feared that colleagues would laugh at their seemingly crazy ideas. They received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1987. Susumu Tonegawa, who that same year received the Nobel Prize in biology, was described by his wife as "a man of his own style" who enjoys sumo wrestling because it requires individual effort instead of team performances to win. It's like his own job. It is clear that the need for sophisticated laboratories and large-scale research groups has been somewhat exaggerated. Breakthroughs in science still depend primarily on the resources of a single intelligence.

But we should not prioritize attention only to what happens in the world of professional scientists. "The Great Science" can advocate for itself, or at least it should be, with all the support it has provided since the nuclear fission experiments became such a great success. What we are interested in here is amateur science, about the joy when ordinary people can observe and record the laws of natural phenomena. It is important to recognize that, for centuries, great scientists have pursued their work as a hobby, because they are more passionate about the methods they invent than because they have to do it or because they have to spend all their government subsidies.

Nicolaus Copernicus completed his epochal work describing the motion of the planets while serving as a missionary at Frauenburg Cathedral, Poland. That astronomical work certainly did not help his career in the Church and for most of his life, the key rewards he had were the aesthetics found in the simplicity of the system he created when compared to the bulkier Ptolemaic50 model. Galileo was trained in medicine and what led him to experiment with increasing risk was the joy he found in discovering such things as the central location of different types of solid matter. Isaac Newton shaped his important discoveries not long after receiving his bachelor's degree at Cambridge in 1665, when the university was closed because of the plague. Newton spent two years in the safety and boredom of a nationwide quarantine and spent all his time playing with his ideas about a theory of universal gravity. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, the founder of modern chemistry, was a civil servant working for Ferme Generale, the IRS equivalent in pre-revolutionary France. He was also involved in agricultural reform and social planning, but the old-fashioned and decent experiments were his favorite thing to do. Luigi Galvani, who carried out basic research on how muscles and nerves conduct electricity, which in turn led to the invention of the electric battery, was a practicing physician until the end of his life. Gregor Mendel was also a clergyman and the experiments that laid the foundations of his genetics were the result of his interest in gardening. When Albert A. Michelson, the first person in the United States to win the Nobel Prize in science, was asked at the end of his life why he spent so much time measuring the speed of light, he replied, "It was a great pleasure." And, so that we don't forget, let us remind you that Einstein wrote his most influential papers while working as a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office. These and many other great scientists that one can easily mention were not restricted in their thinking simply because they were not "experts" in their field of interest, or because they were not recognized with legitimate sources. They simply do what they love to do.

Is the situation any different today? Is it true that a person without a PhD, without working in one of the major research centers, no longer has the opportunity to contribute to scientific progress? Or is this just one of those enormous unconscious attempts to create mystery, something that all successful organizations clearly can't resist? These questions are difficult to answer, in part because what constitutes "science" is obviously determined by the very institutions that wait to benefit from their monopoly.

Undoubtedly, a non-professional cannot contribute, as a hobby, to the kind of research that depends on multibillion-dollar superaccelerators or on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. But, such fields are not representative of the only type of science that exists. The mental organizational structure that makes science enjoyable is that it is accessible, open to all. It includes curiosity, meticulous observation, a disciplinary approach to recording events and seeking to dissect basic norms in what one studies. It also requires humility to be willing to learn from the results of researchers who came before it, along with skepticism and openness of mind just enough to reject beliefs that are not supported by objective facts.

With this broad definition, there are more amateur scientists practicing than we think. Some focus on their health and try to learn everything they can about an illness that threatens themselves or their families. Following in Mendel's footsteps, some learned anything they could about breeding livestock or breeding new flowers. Others passionately recreated the observations of early astronomers using telescopes placed in their own backyards. There were geologists who roamed the wilderness in search of minerals, cacti collectors who scoured deserts for new specimens, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of individuals who raised their mechanical skills to the point where they understood real science.

What prevents many of these people from developing their skills further is the belief that they will never be able to become genuine, professional scientists and, therefore, their interests will not be valued. But there is no better reason to study science than the sense of order it gives to the researcher's mind. If flow state is the measure that determines the value of science, rather than success and recognition, then it can contribute immensely to quality of life.

LOVE OF WISDOM

"Philosophy" used to mean "love of wisdom" and many people have devoted their lives to philosophy for that very reason. At the present time, professional philosophers would be embarrassed to admit such an all-too-naïve conception of their profession. Today, a philosopher can be an expert in deconstructionism or logical positivism, someone who understands pre-Kantic or post-Hegelian philosophy, an epistemologist or an existentialist, but don't disturb him with wisdom. The common fate of many human organizations is that they begin as a solution to some universal problem until, after generations, the distinct problems of the organizations themselves will take precedence over the original goal. For example, modern states build their armed forces as a line of defense against the enemy. However, soon the army developed their own needs and political views, to such an extent that the most successful soldier was not necessarily the best defender of the country, but the one who earned the most money for the army.

Amateur philosophers, unlike their professional colleagues at universities, need not worry about historical struggles to stand out among competing schools, need not worry about the political views of journals or personal envy among academics. They can keep their minds fixed on basic questions. What these basic questions are is the first task that a non-specialist philosopher must decide. Is he interested in what the best thinkers of the past believed about the meaning of "existence"? Or is he more interested in what constitutes "goodness" or "beauty"?

As in all disciplines, the first step after deciding which field one wants to pursue is to find out what others have thought about the subject. By reading, conversing, and listening selectively, one can form an idea of the "highest current level of development" of the field. Again, the importance of personally controlling the direction of learning from the first steps is not enough. If someone feels compelled to read a book or take a course just because it's considered the right thing to do, then learning goes against what it is. But if you decide to follow that path because of your intrinsic sense of rightness, learning will be relatively easy and enjoyable.

When personal preferences in philosophy become apparent, even amateurs may feel compelled to specialize. Someone interested in the basic features of reality can drift in the direction of ontology and read Wolf, Kant, Husserl and Heidegger. Another person riddled by questions of right and wrong will trace the moral category and learn the moral philosophy of Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, and Nietzsche. A person interested in what beauty is can be led to consider the ideas of such aesthetic philosophers as Baumgarten, Croce, Santayana and Collingwood. Although specialization is necessary to develop the complexity of any ideological model, the goal-result relationship must always be kept clear: specialization is for better thinking rather than the end goal. Unfortunately, many serious thinkers devote all their mental efforts to becoming famous scholars, but at the same time forget about their original purpose in academia.

In philosophy, as in other disciplines, there is a point at which one is ready to move from the state of passive consumer to active producer. Writing down an individual's insights with the expectation that they will one day be read by posterity is, in most cases, an "arrogant assumption" that has caused so much trouble in human affairs. But if a person jots down ideas in response to an inner challenge, to articulate the big questions he or she feels faced, and tries to outline answers that make his or her experience meaningful, then the amateur philosopher will learn to find enjoyment from one of the difficult tasks and the most rewarding of life.

AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL

Some individuals prefer specialization and devote all their energy to one activity, aiming to achieve an almost professional level of expression. They tend to appear mean to anyone who is not as skillful and dedicated to their expertise as they are. Others like to plunge into a variety of activities, getting as much enjoyment as possible from each without necessarily becoming an expert in any field.

There are two words that reflect our somewhat skewed attitudes toward our levels of commitment to physical or mental activity. Those are the terms: amateur and amateur. Nowadays such titles are somewhat insulting. An amateur or an amateur is a person who does not meet the standards, a person who is not taken very seriously, a person whose performance is far below the standards of professionalism. But originalally, the "amateur" in the Latin verb amare, meaning "love," refers to a person who loves what he is doing. Similarly, "dilettante" comes from the Latin word delectare, meaning "to find pleasure," i.e. a person who feels pleasure in a certain activity. Thus, the earliest meanings of these words were focused on experience rather than achievement; They describe the subjective rewards individuals gain from taking that action instead of focusing on how well they achieve. Nothing illustrates our changing attitude toward the value of experience as clearly as the fate of these two words. There was a time when it was great to be an amateur poet or an amateur scientist, because it meant that the quality of life could be improved by participating in such activities. But increasing emphasis is placed on the value of behaviors rather than subjective states; What is admired now is success, achievement, quality of achievement rather than quality of experience. Therefore, being called an amateur has become awkward, although being an amateur means achieving what is most worthwhile – the enjoyment that activities can provide.

It is true that the amateur form of research encouraged here can be uprooted more easily than professional academia, if the researcher loses sight of the goal that motivates them. Non-professionals with a personal motive may occasionally turn to pseudoscience to promote their interests and often their efforts are almost indistinguishable from motivated amateurs by nature.

For example, an interest in the history of ethnic origin can easily be turned into a search for evidence of one's own superiority over members of other ethnicities. The Nazi movement in Germany turned to anthropology, history, anatomy, language, biology and philosophy, and thus formulated superior Aryan race theory. Professional scholars are also caught up in this dubious work, but it is inspired by amateurs and the rules of the game belong to politics, not science.

Soviet biological science was pushed back a whole generation when the authorities decided to apply the rules of communist ideology to corn cultivation, rather than to empirical evidence. Lysenko's ideas that grains grown in cold climates would thrive and produce even stronger generations, to non-professionals it sounded good, especially in the dogmatic context of the time. Unfortunately, political methods and methods of growing corn were not always the same, and Lysenko's efforts led to decades of famine.

The negative connotations that the terms amateur and amateur have received over the years are largely due to the blurring of the lines that distinguish between internal and external goals. An amateur who pretends to know as much as a professional can give false knowledge and lead to harm. The point of being an amateur scientist is not to compete with experts on their own turf, but to use a symbolic process of mind training to expand mental skills and create order in consciousness. At that level, amateur understanding can stand on its own and may even be more effective than its professional counterpart. But the moment that amateurs lose sight of this goal and use knowledge primarily to strengthen their ego, or to achieve material profit, then they become caricatures of the educated. Untrained in the discipline of skepticism and reciprocal criticism that underpins the scientific method, unskilled people who venture into fields of knowledge with prejudiced goals can become more ruthless, even more disinterested in the truth than even the worst scholars.

THE CHALLENGE OF LIFELONG LEARNING

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the ways in which mental activity can produce enjoyment. We have seen that at a minimum, the mind provides many and powerful opportunities to act on par with the body. Just as the use of limbs and senses is available to everyone without regard to gender, race, education or social class, the use of memory, language, logic, the rules of cause and effect is also possible for anyone who wants to control their mind.

Many people give up their studies after they graduate from school because thirteen or twenty years of education with external motivation is still a source of unpleasant memories. Their attention has been manipulated long enough from the outside by textbooks and teachers, and they have treated graduation day as the first day of freedom.

But a person who forgets to use his symbolic skills is never truly free. This person's thoughts will be guided by the opinions of neighbors, by editorials in newspapers and by appeals on television. He suffers from the manipulation of the "experts". Ideally, the end of education imposed from the outside should be the beginning of an education promoted from within. At that level, the academic goal is no longer to go to class, get a diploma, and find a good job. Instead, one learns to understand what is happening around one, to develop a meaningful personal sense of all one's experiences. This in turn leads to the deep joy of the thinker, like the experience of the disciples of Socrates that Plato describes in Philebus: "The young man drunk for the first time since that spring was as happy as if he had found a treasure trove of wisdom; He was absolutely enamored with that. He would pick any discourse, put all its ideas together to turn them into one, then take them apart and dissect them to pieces. First you will puzzle yourself, then others, anyone who comes near you, young and old, you don't even spare your parents, or anyone willing to listen..."

The quote is about twenty-four centuries old, but neither could a contemporary observer describe so vividly what happens when one first discovers the flow of mind.