THE MAKING OF MEANING ■ 225game become too flexible, concentration flags, and it is more difficult to
attain a flow experience. Commitment to a goal and to the rules it entails
is much easier when the choices are few and clear.
This is not to imply that a return to the rigid values and limited
choices of the past would be preferable—even if that were a possibility,
which it is not. The complexity and freedom that have been thrust upon
us, and that our ancestors had fought so hard to achieve, are a challenge
we must find ways to master. If we do, the lives of our descendants will
be infinitely more enriched than anything previously experienced on
this planet. If we do not, we run the risk of frittering away our energies
on contradictory, meaningless goals.
But in the meantime how do we know where to invest psychic
energy? There is no one out there to tell us, “Here is a goal worth
spending your life on.” Because there is no absolute certainty to which
to turn, each person must discover ultimate purpose on his or her own.
Through trial and error, through intense cultivation, we can straighten
out the tangled skein of conflicting goals, and choose the one that will
give purpose to action.
Self-knowledge—an ancient remedy so old that its value is easily
forgotten—is the process through which one may organize conflicting
options. “Know thyself” was carved over the entrance to the Delphic
oracle, and ever since untold pious epigrams have extolled its virtue. The
reason the advice is so often repeated is that it works. We need, however,
to rediscover afresh every generation what these words mean, what the
advice actually implies for each individual. And to do that it is useful
to express it in terms of current knowledge, and envision a contempo-
rary method for its application.
Inner conflict is the result of competing claims on attention. Too
many desires, too many incompatible goals struggle to marshal psychic
energy toward their own ends. It follows that the only way to reduce
conflict is by sorting out the essential claims from those that are not, and
by arbitrating priorities among those that remain. There are basically
two ways to accomplish this: what the ancients called the vita activa, a
life of action, and the vita contemplativa, or the path of reflection.
Immersed in the vita activa, a person achieves flow through total
involvement in concrete external challenges. Many great leaders like
Winston Churchill or Andrew Carnegie set for themselves lifelong goals
that they pursued with great resolve, without any apparent internal
struggle or questioning of priorities. Successful executives, experienced
professionals, and talented craftspeople learn to trust their judgment
and competence so that they again begin to act with the unselfconscious