ENJOYING SOLITUDE AND OTHER PEOPLE ■ 191certain that the challenge is appropriate to one’s skill. Sooner or later
the interaction will begin to hum, and the flow experience follows.
Of course, given the fact that psychic energy is in limited supply,
one cannot expect that everyone will be able to become involved in
public goals. Some people have to devote all their attention just to
survive in a hostile environment. Others get so involved with a certain
set of challenges—with art, for instance, or mathematics—that they
can’t bear to shift any attention away from it. But life would be harsh
indeed if some people did not enjoy investing psychic energy in common
concerns, thereby creating synergy in the social system.
The concept of flow is useful not only in helping individuals
improve the quality of their lives, but also in pointing out how public
action should be directed. Perhaps the most powerful effect flow theory
could have in the public sector is in providing a blueprint for how
institutions may be reformed so as to make them more conducive to
optimal experience. In the past few centuries economic rationality has
been so successful that we have come to take for granted that the
“bottom line” of any human effort is to be measured in dollars and
cents. But an exclusively economic approach to life is profoundly irratio
nal; the true bottom line consists in the quality and complexity of
experience.
A community should be judged good not because it is technologi
cally advanced, or swimming in material riches; it is good if it offers
people a chance to enjoy as many aspects of their lives as possible, while
allowing them to develop their potential in the pursuit of ever greater
challenges. Similarly the value of a school does not depend on its pres
tige, or its ability to train students to face up to the necessities of life,
but rather on the degree of the enjoyment of lifelong learning it can
transmit. A good factory is not necessarily the one that makes the most
money, but the one that is most responsible for improving the quality
of life for its workers and its customers. And the true function of politics
is not to make people more affluent, safe, or powerful, but to let as many
as possible enjoy an increasingly complex existence.
But no social change can come about until the consciousness of
individuals is changed first. When a young man asked Carlyle how he
should go about reforming the world, Carlyle answered, “Reform your
self. That way there will be one less rascal in the world.” The advice is
still valid. Those who try to make life better for everyone without having
learned to control their own lives first usually end up making things
worse all around.