Flow - The Psychology of Happiness :: Draft

Stage I Reading

Classification

Expository, theoretical. Psychology with grounding in science.

What is this book about

“… the process of achieving happiness through control over one’s inner life”

Major parts, outlined in order and relation

The first part of considers how consciousness works and how it is controlled.

“Order in awareness” and “control over psychic energy” are then used as necessary conditions to become “an increasingly extraordinary individual”.

The conditions of flow is then put forth, and explored in the context of games.

The conditions are then extended to physical and sensory skills.

And then development of symbolic skills are treated (poetry, mathematics).

From the individual focus of physical and mental skills, the focus then shifts outwards to:

• Work, life (jobs)
• Relationships

Given that all the above occurs in “normal” life conditions, the focus now shifts to adversity; specifically how people still get enjoyment from life in such conditions.

The final part deals with meaning making from all experience. In this part it is explained how a state can be reached where “there is nothing left to desire”.

Problems being solved

• When do people feel most happy?
• Can one achieve happiness through control over one’s inner life?
• Can we make optimal experience happen?
• Can we control the contents of our consciousness?
• What is a useful theory to apply when “improving quality of life” is the goal?
• Can happiness be cultivated and prepared for?
• How can the most boring experiences become enjoyable?
• Can you enjoy life despite adversity?

The big question: Do general principles exist that cultivates happiness in people, regardless of circumstances, skills or goals?

Terms used in book

Optimal experience:

A landmark in memory for what life should be like.
Deep sense of enjoyment.
Something we make happen.

Meaning:

Purpose that justifies our strivings.
When experience is ordered.

Ontological anxiety: Fear of being.

Socialisation: Transformational of human organisation into a person who functions successfully within a particular social system.
Have person respond predictability rewards and punishment.

Consciousness: Intentionally Ordered Information.

Attentional Structures: Patterns in which attention is structured that leads to personality traits like “paranoid, high achiever”.

Psychic energy: A more appropriate metaphor for attention.

Psychic disorder: Information that conflicts with existing intention. Jealousy as psychic entropy.

Self-conscious: Being conscious of the self.

Autotelic:

Auto - self Telic - goal (greek, telos).
Doing for the reward of doing it.

Microflow: To impose order in consciousness through the performance of patterned action.

Order in consciousness: Optimal state of inner experience.

Differentiation: Movement toward separating oneself from others.

Integration: Union with other people, with ideas and entities beyond the self.

Pleasure:

Homeostatic experiences that returns consciousness to order.
Maintains order.
Cannot create new order in consciousness.

Enjoyment:

Unusual investments of attention.
A sense of novelty.
Going beyond.

Flow Experience: Deep concentration, high and balanced challenge and skills, sense of control and satisfaction.

Anhedonia: “Lack of pleasure, stimulus overinclusion”.

Anomie: Anxiety for the individual Lack of Rules - when norms of behaviour get muddled.

Attention:

Boredom for individual.
When people are constrained by the social system to act in ways that goes against their goals.

Nonself-consciousness individualism: Strongly directed purpose that is not self-serving.

Instrumentive skills:

Skills we learn to cope with the environment.
Basic survival tools - reading, writing.

Expressive skills: Actions that attempt externalize our subjective experiences - song, dance, pointing.

Sensate Culture: Culture integrated around views of reality designed to satisfy the senses. Epicurean.

Ideational Culture:

Strive for nonmaterial, supernatural ends.
Emphasize abstract principles.

Idealistic Culture:

Sensate and ideational integrated.
Acceptance of concrete sensory experience with a reverence for spiritual ends.

Viva Activa: Life of action.

Viva Contemplativa: Life of contemplation.

Negentropic: Reaction in entropy.

Dissipative structure: Drawing order from disorder.