120 ■ FLOWthat, once one develops this strategy for overcoming psychic entropy,
to give up the habit becomes almost impossible.
The better route for avoiding chaos in consciousness, of course,
is through habits that give control over mental processes to the individ
ual, rather than to some external source of stimulation, such as the
programs of network TV. To acquire such habits requires practice,
however, and the kind of goals and rules that are inherent in flow
activities. For instance, one of the simplest ways to use the mind is
daydreaming: playing out some sequence of events as mental images. But
even this apparently easy way to order thought is beyond the range of
many people. Jerome Singer, the Yale psychologist who has studied
daydreaming and mental imagery more than perhaps any other scientist,
has shown that daydreaming is a skill that many children never learn
to use. Yet daydreaming not only helps create emotional order by com
pensating in imagination for unpleasant reality—as when a person can
reduce frustration and aggression against someone who has caused in
jury by visualizing a situation in which the aggressor is punished—but
it also allows children (and adults) to rehearse imaginary situations so
that the best strategy for confronting them may be adopted, alternative
options considered, unanticipated consequences discovered—all results
that help increase the complexity of consciousness. And, of course,
when used with skill, daydreaming can be very enjoyable.
In reviewing the conditions that help establish order in the mind,
we shall first look at the extremely important role of memory, then at
how words can be used to produce flow experiences. Next we shall
consider three symbolic systems that are very enjoyable if one comes to
know their rules: history, science, and philosophy. Many more fields of
study could have been mentioned, but these three can serve as examples
for the others. Each one of these mental “games” is accessible to anyone
who wants to play them.
THE MOTHER OF SCIENCE
The Greeks personified memory as lady Mnemosyne. Mother of the
nine Muses, she was believed to have given birth to all the arts and
sciences. It is valid to consider memory the oldest mental skill, from
which all others derive, for, if we weren’t able to remember, we couldn’t
follow the rules that make other mental operations possible. Neither
logic nor poetry could exist, and the rudiments of science would have
to be rediscovered with each new generation. The primacy of memory
is true first of all in terms of the history of the species. Before written