Evolving Self - Mihaly Csikszentmiihalyi

	Notebook Export
	The Evolving Self - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
	Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
	Stress, Strain, and Hormones
happiness	psychological research on happiness.	2
	principles that make living worthwhile.	2
creativity	insights into the process of creativity.	4
	doing is enjoyed for its own sake.	5
intrinsically rewarding	activities is intrinsically rewarding. In short, some things are just fun to do.	5
challenges	when challenges are high and personal skills are used	7
& skills high
consciousness	the utmost, we experience this rare state of consciousness.	7
	by understanding better our evolutionary past we might generate the grounds for a viable meaning system, a faith that can give order and purpose to our lives in the future.	11
	To know ourselves is the greatest achievement of our species.	11
	to understand how our minds work we must take into account its deep roots in the slow unfolding of the past of our species.	12
	consciousness	12
	freeing us to a certain extent from the control of genetic and cultural determinism.	12
	distortions due to the genetic instructions,	12
	distortions of the culture in which we were born,	13
	emergence of the self as a separate entity making its own claims on the mind.	13
	But our lives are not only directed internally by the instructions of the genes, the culture, and the self. Evolution is the result of competition between organisms for the energy required for survival.	13
	The ideas we create, the technological artifacts we produce compete with each other, and with us, for scarce material resources and for attention—	13
	principles of evolution apply to the development of culture and consciousness,	13
	flow experiences lead to the increase of complexity in consciousness.	14
Transcendent Self	Transcendent Self	14
	individuals whose lives conform to the evolution of complexity	14
	enjoy everything they do, who keep learning and improving their skills, and who are so committed to goals beyond themselves that the fear of death has little hold on their minds.	14
	live by an evolutionary faith.	14
	“good” society that makes flow and complexity possible is proposed.	15
	at this point in history the emergence of complexity is the best “story” we can tell about the past and the future,	15
	When the self consciously accepts its role in the process of evolution, life acquires a transcendent meaning. Whatever happens to our individual existences, we will become at one with the power that is the universe.	15
	Current understanding of causality suggests that events are determined by random chance’s interaction with immutable natural laws.	32
	bad is entropy—disorder, confusion, waste of energy, the inability to do work and achieve goals; good is negative entropy, or negentropy harmony, predictability, purposeful activity that leads to satisfying one’s desires.	41
	continuation of life on earth.	42
	evolution exists because nothing ever stays the same.	43
	either let entropy get the upper hand, or try to beat the system.	43
	With time every form, every structure, tends to decay as its components return to randomness.	43
	even stars die when their energy becomes exhausted.	44
	entropy, the supreme law of the universe.	44
	creation and growth are just as much part of the story as decay and death.	44
	increasingly improbable methods of exploiting energy emerge.	44
	becoming more efficient at transforming energy for its own purposes.	45
	efficient.	45
	Competition	45
	taking energy from the environment and transforming it for their own purposes.	45
	cooperation.	46
	until humans entered the scene, competition and cooperation have been entirely blind and unintentional.	46
	information.	46
	genes,	46
	awareness, consciousness, self, or soul.	47
	self-reflective consciousness allows us to write our own programs for action, and make decisions for which no genetic instructions existed before.	47
	self-reflective consciousness	48
	self	49
	The self, like other living beings, will use energy from its environment to stop entropy from destroying it.	49
	finding a way to develop selves that will support evolution.	51
	self-sufficient?	52
	choice	52
	chance or necessity?	53
	free:	53
	major sources of entropy in your life?	53
	greatest serenity and happiness?	53
	central organizing principle of your self?	53
	But to live an entire life without	55
	understanding how we think, why we feel the way we feel, what directs our actions is to miss what is most important in life, which is the quality of experience itself.	55
	what happens in consciousness:	55
	understanding how the mind works.	55
	“I want,”	59
	endless treadmill.	59
	escalating expectations	59
	law of the jungle;	60
	oases of peace.	60
	The mind needs ordered information to keep itself ordered.	61
	congruence between objective and subjective reality.	63
	the fact that the mind experiences unpleasant disorder when not engaged in goal-directed action is an important safety feature.	63
	impose order on the mind from the outside.	64
	develop an internal discipline that makes it possible to concentrate at will.	64
	spends energy to give consciousness shape.	64
	personally chosen habits.	64
	Any purposeful activity that requires skills will prevent disorder from taking hold of the mind, and forcing it into frenetic escape.	64
	negative possibilities always outnumber the positive ones.	65
	moderating expectations.	66
	scarce psychic energy	67
	conflict—or psychic entropy—is experienced as negative affect.	67
	Depression, anger, fear, and jealousy are simply different manifestations of psychic entropy.	67
	Apollo, then Dionysus.	78
	Pitirim Sorokin	78
	history of culture,	78
	alternating between ideational, or value-ruled, phases, and sensate, or pleasure-ruled, phases.	78
	What is true for chemical substances is also true for behaviors that are pleasurable because they help survival, but can become dangerous if they are overindulged.	81
	evolution is always about saving effort, because entropy is so powerful and energy is so difficult to obtain),	82
	The brain won’t tell us when enough is enough.	82
	Only through conscious reflection can we determine how much of what seems good is actually good for us, and then adopt a discipline that makes it possible to stop at the threshold.	82
	many ways in which control of consciousness can help mitigate the effects of external causes.	86
	one can learn to modulate one’s interpretations of events.	87
	circular causation.	88
	During most of evolutionary history, gender specialization was simple: men had to produce, women reproduce.	90
	physiology controls the mind	93
	accidental adaptations to environmental conditions long since gone.	93
	transcending the limitations	93
	free ourselves from the tyranny of the past.	94
	requires patience, good will, and, above all else, a more thorough understanding of the way the mind works.	94
	Chaos and Consciousness	94
	Elusive Happiness	95
	The Limits of Reason	95
	Only by patiently lifting what the Hindu called the veils of Maya—or illusion—do we get a closer glimpse of what life is really about.	97
	Evolutionary epistemology” is a branch of scholarship that applies the evolutionary perspective to an understanding of how knowledge develops.	99
	Knowledge always involves getting information.	99
	touch:	99
	nose, the eyes,	99
	memory.	99
	intrasomatic,	100
	took place within the body of the organism.	100
	speech	100
	writing),	100
	extrasomatic.	100
	extrasomatic storage of information, a skill that we acquired in only the last few seconds of evolutionary history.	100
	religions have been the most important extrasomatic organs of knowledge created by humans up to now—with the possible exception of science,	102
	sociologists have pointed out the ways in which reality is socially constructed.	103
	“cognitive map”	104
	relativity of knowledge	105
	The output is always a function of the input.	107
	genetic programming, the cultural heritage, and the demands of the self These distortions are	110
	“inside” each one of us—no	110
	the brain is built so as to be susceptible to a variety of pleasurable sensations that can be harmful in excessive doses.	111
	Each person creates the world he or she lives in by investing attention in certain things, and by doing so according to certain patterns.	114
	all too often people do not consider options; they do not pause to reflect on alternatives. They simply take the script provided by the genes, and enact it according to the specific directions given by the culture they happen to be born in.	116
	psychic energy is not free to go wherever we wish it to go; left to itself, it turns in the direction it was programmed.	117
	we are manipulated by chemicals in the body.	119
	as we go through daily routines, it is liberating to stop and reflect why we do the things we do.	119
	being manipulated by the instructions of a hungry three-million-year-old gene.	119
	What counts is that, even if only for a few seconds, I have interrupted the automatic determinism of the genes—that for the moment, I have lifted the first veil of Maya.	119
	Reflecting on the source of impulse, of habits, is the first step in getting control of one’s psychic energy.	120
	Knowing the origin of motives, and becoming aware of our biases is the prerequisite for freedom.	120
	The second veil is the one with which culture and society—the human systems we are bom into—shroud reality,	120
	covering up alternatives in order to use our psychic energy for their own ends.	120
	ethnocentrism	122
	much of social behavior is ruled by stereotypes.	123
	to be human we need the instructions transmitted through culture almost as much as we need genetic instructions.	123
	life energy?	131
	freed from the illusions that are the side effects of being a cultural being.	131
	side effect of being conscious—the illusion of selfhood.	132
	self-reflective consciousness is a recent development in human evolution,	132
	era of consciousness	133
	once an ego is present, its foremost goal becomes that of protecting itself at all costs.	134
	insatiable egos were devouring the psychic energy of people in almost every ancient human group we know about.	135
	egos.	136
	advent of reflective consciousness,	137
	the more the ego becomes identified with symbols outside the self the more vulnerable it becomes.	137
	watch for anything that might threaten the symbols on which it relies.	137
	The ideas that become central representations of the self are those in which a person invests the most psychic energy.	137
	Currently the symbols of the self tend to be more of the material kind.	138
	the more the self becomes identified with external objects, the more vulnerable it becomes.	138
	for those who depend too much on them to define who they are, any threat to acquisitions will threaten the core of being. It is for this reason that religious and philosophical systems have always been so ambivalent about material strivings, and prescribed instead the development of a self that has a value independent of external accomplishments.	138
	Because the ego is such a source of trouble, there have been many efforts made to abolish it.	140
	If a person refuses to invest psychic energy in goals, gives up desires, and does not identify with any idea, belief, object, or human relationship, then in a certain sense he or she becomes invulnerable.	140
	By giving up expectation and desire—in effect, by giving up the self—one can no longer be frustrated.	140
	detached stance.	140
	find better ways to build selves.	141
	clearing the mind of the illusions that drain psychic energy and leave us impotent to control our lives.	141
	lived their lives according to rules they themselves created.	142
	not selfish in any of the three senses of serving the goals of the genes, the culture, or the ego.	142
	enjoy meeting the challenges of life, because they enjoy life itself They feel that they are part of the universal order, and identify themselves with harmonious growth.	142
	evolutionary self	143
	145
	not only genes evolve; so do memes, that is, patterns of behavior, values, languages, and technologies.	146
	imitation and learning.	147
	Distinctions of wealth, status, and knowledge make it possible for some individuals to live off the psychic energy expended by others.	150
	Power can be based on money, property, fear, or respect; it can be wielded by a person or by a group. Power can be dangerous, for as Lord Acton saw it, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”	150
	a powerful individual, group, or country will eventually assume that it has the right to live better than those less powerful.	150
	When there are great differences in power, exploitation takes place even when people have the best of intentions.	150
	too much psychic energy invested in their fields,	154
	life energy is being consumed by a new class of capitalist	156
	Oppression is a condition in which the psychic energy of one person is controlled by another against his or her will.	156
	cannot control their attention freely.	157
	deprived of the basic condition of humanity—control over psychic energy.	157
	Oppressors often start their careers as protectors, and only later turn into exploiters.	158
	To keep control over our own psychic energy, it becomes essential that we understand how power is being used.	159
	Some power differences are built into our biological makeup, and therefore lend themselves more easily to oppression.	160
	Luck	165
	personality.	166
	if you are an extrovert, have strong self-esteem, and look at the world with optimism, you will have a better chance of becoming successful and leading a satisfying life.	166
	“personality strength,”	166
	related also to extroversion and self-esteem)	166
	wealth and status will compensate for a weak personality.	167
	curious,	167
	enjoy influencing others,	167
	less selfish	167
	responsibility for the community.	167
	luck, intelligence, or personality strength that propels a person to a position of eminence in the social system, the opportunities for saving psychic energy at others’ expense are almost irresistible.	167
	conflict based on individual differences	168
	Differences are the starting point of selection, and therefore of evolutionary change.	168
	competition	168
	propels evolution.	168
	ways of thinking—	169
	selective marriage practices.	170
	Like still tends to marry like as far as income, education, political preferences, religion, and race are concerned.	170
	most important effects of this trend are not on the genes the offspring will inherit, but on his or her memes.	170
	cultural speciation,	171
	some inequality in the access to resources, in the control of psychic energy, and in the ability to influence the future shape of culture is indeed unavoidable.	172
	unless we take steps to prevent it, control over resources will tend to result in control of other individuals.	173
	Examining in detail who or what is in a position to decide how you	174
	invest your time, and therefore control the content of your consciousness, is a good start.	174
	which course provides the most freedom for the least investment of psychic energy.	175
	oppression	177
	parasitization.	177
	The parasite usually	177
	extracts energy from a person who—at least in some respect—is more powerful.	177
	entropy is the most universal law of nature;	178
	complex systems tend to break down,	178
	that heat will flow from the warmer to the colder body, that order will decompose into disorder.	178
	Parasites are the living manifestation of entropy.	178
	At the level of cultural evolution, parasites are attracted mostly by wealth and fame.	178
	It is probably impossible to rid ourselves of parasites entirely. They are too much a part of life, the dark underside of evolution.	182
	psychic energy exploited,	184
	attack on our freedom,	184
	Mimetic exploiters	185
	reduce the chaos of existence.	185
	we generally prefer our illusions to reality,	191
	216
	Once people discovered ways to represent information in symbolic form outside the body, it was possible for mimetic evolution to begin.	216
	evolution to higher levels of complexity.	229
	liberate psychic energy from instinctual goals, energy that can be invested in pursuing more complex, more uncertain goals.	229
	objects and conspicuous consumption provide such obvious symbols for the expansion of the self.	230
	“organism” might be defined as any system of interrelated parts that needs inputs of energy to keep existing.
	Every organism tends to keep its shape and to reproduce itself.	243
	The universe is composed of bundles of information that stand out from the background noise, and are kept together by mysterious forces.	244
	In order to survive and to reproduce, organisms require inputs of external energy.	245
	every system tends to decay into simpler forms.	245
	To keep itself in an ordered state, a system needs energy.	245
	Yet energy cannot be created; it can, however, be dispersed.	245
	with time, every pattern tends to unravel and turn into chaos:	245
	Entropy—or the dissolution of order into redundant randomness—is one of the most reliable features of the universe as we know it.	245
	Organisms can exist only if they find ways to forestall entropy,	245
	self-preservation involves utilizing some outside source of energy	245
	Each organism will try to take as much energy out of the environment as possible, limited only by threats to its integrity.	246
	attention,	247
	require some form of energy to keep existing, and they all disappear when this energy runs out.	248
	Organisms that are successful in finding ways to extract more energy from the environment for their own use will tend to live longer and leave relatively more copies of themselves.	248
	When organisms become too successful in extracting energy from their habitat, they may destroy it, and themselves in the process.	249
	transforming nature into dead monuments to validate their inflated self-images.	251
	harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy);	251
	entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder).	251
	ideal direction for human development involves differentiation (i.e., the ability to free oneself from genetic and social determinism by developing control over one’s impulses and desires) and integration (i.e., compassion, altruism, and finally a blending of one’s hard-won individuality with the harmony underlying the cosmos).	260
	progression toward complexity—if	261
	how people can cultivate a more complex self.	261
	freeing oneself from genetic commands, then from cultural constraints, and finally from the desires of the self.	261
	Anything that is hopeful, new, and creative must be more ephemeral than what is tried and true.	262
	without investing life energy in more challenging goals, we could not evolve.	262
	commitment to complexity,	268
	EUMEMICS:	268
	Technology, lifestyles, ideas, and beliefs all take up energy, and therefore have an impact on human survival.	268
	Struggles between different religions, political systems, ethnic groups, values, and philosophies are all examples of how memes compete with one another for space in our minds.	269
	objects we use and the ideas we think do not come without a cost.	269
	Objects require energy to make—both physical and psychic—and once we begin to use them, they start shaping our minds and actions.	269
	Realizing how easily things and thoughts can take over one’s life energy is the initial step toward controlling the evolution of memes.	269
	evaluate the complexity of the memes in question—and the complexity that they are likely to add to one’s life.	269
	complex experience	270
	learn something new (differentiation) that will add meaning to my experience	270
	(integration),	270
	bring more harmony into one’s life.	271
	give a consistent direction to the evolution of memes	271
	reasons that are dictated by unexamined genetic instructions or social conventions.	271
	vector of external forces,	271
	increase entropy than harmony.	271
	small habits of mind and behavior:	272
	impact of each choice on global harmony	273
	once acquired, it becomes a liberating skill.	273
	commitment to complexity provides a discipline	273
	“Learn how to do it, and forget that you know it.”	274
	prey to the random forces of biology and society.	275
	consciousness becomes more complex.	276
	able to remember, to abstract, to reason, to control attention	276
	build the cultural systems—such as language, religion, science,	276
	arts that mark the evolutionary divide between us and other species.	276
	patterned, voluntary investments of attention that result in learned skills.	276
	Evolution is the history of the complexification of living matter.	276
	develop integration between ourselves and the rest of the planet at the same rate as we are differentiating.	276
	The opposite of complexity at the level of psychological development is a form of psychic entropy.	277
	disorder within human consciousness that leads to impaired functioning.	277
	inability to use energy effectively, either because of ignorance or because of conflicting emotions—such as fear, rage, depression, or simply lack of motivation.	277
	Education	277
	information;	278
	knowledge	278
	preference for complexity.
	creative urge	282
	Such feehngs—which include concentration, absorption, deep involvement, joy, a sense of accomplishment—are what people describe as the best moments in their lives.	284
	using psychic energy in a harmonious pattern.	284
	flow experiences,	284
	discovery,	285
	autotelic:	287
	worth doing for its own sake.	287
	The normal condition of the mind is chaos.	306
	entropy, rather than harmony.	317
	to the extent that they do not require skills of any kind they take up energy without increasing complexity.	319
	flow.	322
	apathy.	323
	anxiety.	323
	boredom.	323
	ratio of challenges and skills does indeed reflect the expected states of consciousness.	323
	require greater expenditures of psychic and physical energy.	327
	enjoy complexity,	328
	person whose psychic energy is joyfully invested in complex goals a transcender, or a T-person.	332
	life dedicated to complexity	332
	he learned to find flow in complexity; he learned to transform entropy into memes that create order in the consciousness of those who attend to them, and so because of him the world is a little more harmonious than it would have been otherwise.	339
	reification, by which we attribute reality to mental constructions.	345
	The self is such a reification,	345
	we are what we attend to.	349
	A goal is a channel into which psychic energy flows.	349
	power,	363
	“quantum self,” which defines itself through union with the totality of existence—with the energy that pulses through the cosmos.	374
	the priorities around which people order their psychic energy change with time.	375
	drive to be independent and autonomous.	376
	final level the person who has differentiated herself returns to invest attention in broader goals, and derives satisfaction from helping a cause greater than the self—	376
	not because of coercion or conformity, but because of reasoned conviction.	376
	dialectical motion between differentiation and integration, between turning attention inward and then outward, between valuing the self and then the larger community.	376
	withdraws from active life to meditate	377
	this pattern of how individuals learn to value different goals as they mature may actually mirror the evolution of the self in the history of the human	377
	every flow experience contributes to the growth of the self.	380
	The self is made up mainly of information about goals and feedback.	380
	complexity of an organism depends on the degree of its differentiation and integration.	380
	process of differentiation.	380
	To recognize a challenge, one has to know how to let go of the tried and true, be open to possibilities, seek out novelty, be curious, be willing to take risks, and be experimental.	380
	As each person becomes involved with a slightly different set of opportunities for action, he or she discovers more about the limits and the potentials of the self, and becomes more nearly unique.	381
	The second dimension of complexity is related to the acquisition of skills.	381
	process of integration.	381
	It is the T-person who combines harmoniously these opposite tendencies: he or she is original yet systematic, independent yet responsible, bold yet disciplined, intuitive yet rational. He balances a healthy pride in his uniqueness with a deep interest and concern for others. It is easy to be at one or the other pole of these pairs, and much more difficult to be at both ends at	382
	once.	382
	participate in the flow of evolution.	382
	What is common to all forms of spirituality is the attempt to reduce entropy in consciousness.	383
	meaning	383
	harmony	384
	Wisdom	387
	cognitive skill.	387
	virtue.	387
	personal good,	388
	practice of wisdom leads to inner serenity and enjoyment.	388
	Three characteristics distinguish wisdom from other cognitive processes we might call “intelligence,” “scientific knowledge,” or “genius.”	388
	The first is that wisdom deals not with the variable, superficial appearance of experience but tries to grasp the enduring, universal truths that lie below it.	388
	The second aspect is virtue.	389
	wise person not only thinks deeply but acts on knowledge.	390
	The third aspect of wisdom is that, simply stated, it feels good.	391
	What does one have to do to experience flow and build a more complex self, while at the same time contributing to evolution?	398
	learn to enjoy life. It	398
	seeking out complexity	398
	Continuing curiosity and interest, and the desire to find ever new challenges, coupled with the commitment to develop appropriate skills, lead to lifelong learning.	398
	Another trait of a transcendent self is the mastery of wisdom and spirituality.	398
	developing the internal discipline and the sense of responsibility that are necessary to withstand the internal pressures of our genes, and the external siren song of the memes.	399
	invest psychic energy in the future.	399
	investment in a harmonious future.	400
	FURTHER THOUGHTS ON “THE TRANSCENDENT SELF”
	how to build complexity into the fabric of society.	402
	pattern of information that we have shaped through our existence:	403
	leaving traces of complexity in the culture,	403
	It is through memes transmitted by social systems that we contribute to evolution.	403
	Social and cultural systems are also organisms	403
	like other organisms they can be more or less complex depending on how differentiated and integrated they are.	403
	Without changing the environment, we cannot influence the course of the future.	404
	there is no protection against information overload except the person’s own control over psychic energy.	410