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Value of "Flow" (Csikszentmihalyi)

nolla

Senor Membrane
Joined
May 22, 2008
Messages
3,166
MBTI Type
INFP
I have a longstanding fascination/obsession/abhorrance for contradictions. This is interesting to me on both an intellectual plane and a very personal one, as I am constantly/occasionally torn between trying to become more stable and fighting for my freedom and flexibility. It's nice to know I'm not alone :jew:

It's interesting that so many contradictions can be overcome. The flexibility/stability is something I have been working on for some time now. I realized it on conscious level just something like couple of years ago. I am now convinced that mental stability comes through spontaneity and it doesn't feel like a contradiction at all. Why do we first think that limiting and controlling our actions is the key? Maybe it seems easiest to control what we do, in other words try to act in better ways. But this is not true control. True control is that you feel safe to let go. You trust the animal in you to be humane.

I believe that any person has the potential for creativity. I also believe that our greatest limits are the ones we set on ourselves, and the greatest hinderance to growth is fear. Fear of the unknown, of the new. We resist even the contemplation of change. With creativity, what is being created/processed is the very definition of unknown. It is a risk on the part of the person who created it, and a risk for the others in their social group to accept it. Nothing is free of consequence.

Yep. Well said.

Beautiful! What were you thinking of? Each of those pictures look like they are moving to me.

I was thinking human curves, then I realized it started to look like plants, so I made it a tree. This isn't the first, actually. There I think the human form is almost visible. I haven't scanned it... It's lying around here somewhere.

It is the peace/excitement I find through performing. Whether planned or improvised, through instruments or acting, through singing or dancing... but not all performances are equal and not all result in this sensation. I only find it when I risk something, when I give up a bit of my honesty to who I am performing for. I have to lose a piece of me to gain that depth of connection.

Yeah, acting is a rush! Singing too. But it is not often that I get the flow through them, but when I do, it really is something. And other people acknowledge it too. They see that the flow performance is a lot better than the normal stuff. Some people have been amazed at my singing (because I really can't sing that well normally)...
 

Gamine

in-game
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But this is not true control. True control is that you feel safe to let go. You trust the animal in you to be humane.

That was a delicious statement. Absolutely delicious.

To your comment of an audience recognizing flow in a performer, are there rules to the environment for this to occur?
 

nolla

Senor Membrane
Joined
May 22, 2008
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To your comment of an audience recognizing flow in a performer, are there rules to the environment for this to occur?

Hmmph... I don't think so. Well, I do hang around pretty creative people so it might be that they recognize exceptional performance more easily than others. Actually, yes, it must be like that. You know, the actors are usually pretty bad in movies and so on. I mean, it bugs me that a decent story is ruined by a bad actor. So, they wouldn't be this bad if the majority of people noticed that they are bad. Maybe...
 
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Ginkgo

Guest
That was a delicious statement. Absolutely delicious.

I agree.

To your comment of an audience recognizing flow in a performer, are there rules to the environment for this to occur?

Rules? Are they imposed on the environment or the performer? Imposing rules on the performer can dam up the flow if the performer lets them; but inducing more creativity allows the tide to overcome. It's hard to describe. Sometimes artists use creativity to transform under oppression, like the pressure of a water gun transforms the water into a fluid stream. This is why some of our greatest artists illustrated harsh conditions like Salvador Dali during the economic depression of France, or perhaps the whaling of a blues artist who has lost her love. In these instances, the "chaos" is emotional anguish or exuberance, while the "control" is the channel of the vocal cords, the paint brush, or the guitar pick. The environment may influence the intensity of the chaos being manifested through the individual.

Being able mold into anything may be the ultimate indicator of flow.
 

Lark

Active member
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Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
Dont know about flow but got to say that's some of the coolest Maslow related posting I've seen!!
 

Mole

Permabanned
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Mar 20, 2008
Messages
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G.K. Chesterton

Let us begin, then, with the mad-house; from this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do in the matter is to blot out one big and common mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere that imagination, especially mystical imagination, is dangerous to man's mental balance. Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark that when a poet really was morbid it was commonly because he had some weak spot of rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, really was morbid; not because he was poetical, but because he was specially analytical. Even chess was too poetical for him; he disliked chess because it was full of knights and castles, like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black discs of draughts, because they were more like the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. Critics are much madder than poets. Homer is complete and calm enough; it is his critics who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shakespeare is quite himself; it is only some of his critics who have discovered that he was somebody else. And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

Bravo!
 

nolla

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Whew... harsh. You feel like an abused child? And I am an abuser?
 

Mole

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Whew... harsh. You feel like an abused child? And I am an abuser?

It is only in the West in the last twenty years that we have brought child abusers before our Criminal Courts.

But the habits of thought that accompany child abuse continue to linger.

Why would we expect any less?

For the habits of thought that accompanied slavery lingered for too long.

And the habits of thought that accompanied the subjugation of women, also lingered.

Of course these habits of thought are commonplace in many parts of the world, as is their practice.

However, in the West since the Enlightenment (1688-1788), we have been changing our minds and our practice.

When I find I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?
 
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Ginkgo

Guest
When I find I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?

My mind revolves like the wheel on The Price is Right. Will the price ever be right? I dunno, but it sure is fun spinnin'!

FUUUUUUUUCK%20YEEEEEEEEEEAH.gif

:tongue:
 

nolla

Senor Membrane
Joined
May 22, 2008
Messages
3,166
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INFP
But the habits of thought that accompany child abuse continue to linger.

When I find I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?

I do the same, of course. But first I need to see I am wrong. I don't know what am I supposed to be wrong about here.

The reason I answered your post as I did... half of it was truly just humor, and none of it was meant to make you feel abused. But, maybe you are abused, it's hard to know since we are communicating only in words here. How I have interpreted you is that you just like to make noise. It wasn't always so, but lately I have been annoyed by your insistence to drag every discussion to you and to how MBTI is not correct and might be bad influence to some. So, I admit I have a view of you now that makes me want to answer your posts with sarcasm. But you know, from my point of view, yes it is possible that you are abused and want people to see that you are hurt. It is also possible that you just want people to see you. If you indeed are hurt, I suggest that you start a topic about it and explain yourself in language that can be understood. I know it's not your style and everything, but if you are as creative as I think you are then you are more than able to speak in practical terms and make people see instead of making them guess.

And something that might be related. I keep having these flashbacks about that guy who used to be here. I don't remember his name anymore, but he had this Spinoza avatar. There is something same about you. He was also possessed with an idea and he just kept doing it all over again. It's just so annoying. It's like, have you drove a car with one of those navigators? Imagine having a broken navigator that keeps telling you to go somewhere you don't want to go. Who knows, it might be a good place to be, but if it's not where you want to go, it certainly starts to get on your nerves.

"Turn right in 400 metres..."
"Turn right in 300 metres..."
"Turn right in 200 metres..."
"Turn right in 100 metres..."
"Turn right now..."
"Make a U-turn"
 

Litvyak

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Why? Isn't it reasonable to assume that any intense experience will be first written down by the mystics?

Sex, music, sports, religious moments etc. provide a different, though easily confusable experience with the flow iirc. The ecstasy of a bleeding Virgin Mary does not fulfill the criteria needed for this theory.

You are creative, I believe you.

I don't. Never did, really.

/Facepalm/ Thanks for pointing the spelling out, I've asked the mods to change it. What is your skillset in?

Didn't want to brag about the name, it was just a side note ;) Most of my fellow countrymen are unfamiliar with Csíkszentmihályi, he gained more recognition in the international community, which is kinda sad.

"Skillset" may not be the most appropriate word, it was a mistake to use it. I meant that perhaps I'm too young to obtain a level of mastery in activities like drawing or constructing things, and this is definitely a requirement for flow.
 

Salomé

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BTW, I can't help reading it: "I arrived here more than 4000 years ago" :yes:
It just feels like that sometimes.

GK Chesterton said:
Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do.

Just because it's paradoxical, doesn't make it true.


The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact


 

SillySapienne

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I believe in two types of "flow".

One being the Taoist sort of Flow where someone ceases to try, manipulate or force the state of things through his understanding of the natural way things are and have been and learns to let go, accept, trust, and embrace life and nature as it is, and should be.

The other being a more zone kind of Flow, where one is doing something as if it were divined through them, so engaged in a process that everything but that which they're deeply engaged seems, no, does, disappear. This kinda flow is beautiful and tends to yield works, or moments of sheer genius.
 
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