Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience

HAPPINESS REVISITED ■ 11 precariousness of its hold on survival, it developed myths and beliefs to transform the random, crushin ...

12 • FLOW so many other nations in the contemporary world, we can’t blame our problems on a harsh environment, on widespread pov ...

HAPPINESS REVISITED ■ 13 any earlier members of the human race. If our grandparents, living in that ridiculously primitive past, ...

14 ■ FLOW Traditionally, the problem of existence has been most directly confronted through religion, and an increasing number o ...

HAPPINESS REVISITED • 15 reported, and by 1986 the number had climbed to 1,488,140. The murder rate held steady at about 1,000 p ...

16 ■ FLOW miracles of progress, we seem more helpless in facing life than our less privileged ancestors were? The answer seems c ...

HAPPINESS REVISITED ■ 17 Of course this emphasis on the postponement of gratification is to a certain extent inevitable. As Freu ...

18 ■ FLOW following its own plans. As long as the attraction is a reflex based on purely physical reactions, the person’s own co ...

HAPPINESS REVISITED ■ 19 him to do. Caught in the treadmill of social controls, that person keeps reaching for a prize that alwa ...

20 ■ FLOW we are not free to determine the content of experience. Since what we experience is reality, as far as we are concerne ...

HAPPINESS REVISITED ■ 21 urges, on the other, and hence to become independent from the social controls that exploit both. But if ...

22 ■ FLOW among many others observed, if Christ had returned to preach his message of liberation in the Middle Ages, he would ha ...

2 THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS At certain times in history cultures have taken it for granted that a person wasn’t fully human u ...

24 ■ FLOW molecules of our chromosomes. At the same time, we should also recog­ nize that the way in which consciousness works i ...

THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS ■ 25 unlimited powers of the mind, and with more justification. But even many of these claims do no ...

26 ■ FLOW tion of consciousness is phenomenological in that it deals directly with events—phenomena—as we experience and interpr ...

THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS ■ 27 hoped, and suffered from birth to death. Although we believe that there are “things” outside c ...

28 • FLOW The intentions we either inherit or acquire are organized m hierar­ chies of goals, which specify the order of precede ...

THE ANATOMY OF CONSCIOUSNESS • 29 information—such as differentiated sounds, or visual stimuli, or recog­ nizable nuances of emo ...

30 ■ FLOW pressing occupying their minds, most people fall far below the peak capacity for processing information. In the roughl ...