Flow – Psychology of Optimal Experience

NOTES • 257

The religious significance of Mayan ball games is described in Blom

(1932) and Gilpin (1948). Pok-ta-pok, as this game similar to basketball

was called, took place in a stone courtyard, and the aim was for one team

to throw the ball through the opponents’ stone hoop placed about 28

feet above the playing field—without touching it with their hands. Father

Diego Duran, an early Spanish missionary, gives a vivid description:

. It was a game of much recreation to them and enjoyment among
which were some who played it with such dexterity and skill that they
during one hour succeeded in not stopping the flight of the ball from
one end to the other without missing a single hit with their buttocks,
not being allowed to reach it with hands nor feet, nor with the calf of
their legs, nor with their arms.. (quoted in Blom 1932). Apparently
such games sometimes ended in human sacrifices or the killing of the
members of the losing team (Pina Chan 1969).

77 Flow and society. The idea that the kind of flow activities a society

made available to its people could reflect something essential about the

society itself was first suggested in Csikszentmihalyi (1981a, 1981b). See

also Argyle (1987, p. 65).

78 The issue of cultural relativism is too complex to be given an unbiased

evaluation here. An excellent (but not impartial) review of the concept

is given by the anthropologist Melford Spiro (1987), who in a recent

autobiographical account describes why he changed his mind from an

uncritical acceptance of the equal value of cultural practices to a much

more qualified recognition of the pathological forms that cultures can

occasionally assume. Philosophers and other humanists have often ac­

cused social scientists, sometimes with justification, of “debunking”

absolute values that are important for the survival of culture (e.g.,

Arendt 1958, Bloom 1987). The early Italian-Swiss sociologist Vilfredo

Pareto (1917, 1919) has been one of the scholars most keenly aware of

the dangers of relativity inherent in his discipline.

78- English workers. The classic story of how the free English workers were

79 transformed into highly regimented industrial laborers is told by the

historian E. P. Thompson (1963).

79 The suspicious Dobuans were studied by the anthropologist Reo For­

tune (1932 [1963]). For the tragic plight of the Ik of Uganda see Turn­

bull (1972).

Yonomamo. This fierce tribe was immortalized by the writings of the

anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon (1979). The sad Nigerian tribe was

described by Laura Bohannan, under the pseudonym E. S. Bowen

(1954). Colin Turnbull (1961) gave a loving description of the pygmies

of the Ituri forest. The quote concerning the Shushwap was contained

in a 1986 letter from Richard Kool to the author.