Human Development

Flow experience through thought

Description:
Here the activity enjoyed through flow experience is symbolic, depending on natural language, mathematics or some other notational system, the action being a mental manipulation of concepts. For flow experience to arise there must be skill, rules, a goal and a way of obtaining feedback. The mental condition must be ordered so that one can concentrate and interact with opportunities at the level of one's skills.
Normally one is programmed in a series of activities where psychic energy is channelled by habit and thoughts are on "automatic pilot". If there is nothing to do, thoughts tend to take on random patterns until attention is attracted to whatever is most problematic. This is neither useful nor enjoyable and the usual response is escape, probably into television where the attention is structured. An alternative is to acquire habits of control over the mental processes instead of having them controlled from outside. this requires practice, with goals and rules intrinsic to flow experience.
All mental flow depends on memory and feats of memory bring the satisfaction of flow experience. Exercise of memory through recitation of tribal knowledge and the setting and solving of complex riddles were both common in ancient cultures. Rote learning, far from being incompatible with creativity, gives the mind stable content and makes it richer. Learning complex patterns of information brings control of consciousness. Again, the facts of memory must fit into patterns, with likenesses and regularities, in order for what takes place in the mind to take shape. Names and concepts are necessary - in the Bible, God speaks the universe into existence by naming it's constituents, man names the animals. In the vedanta, things exist in name and form only. Systematic rules combine this information and thinking becomes a game in the mind, the exhilarating playing with ideas, whether philosophy or science or the playing with words of the writer.
Extrinsically applied education ideally opens the mind for intrinsically motivated education. The mind is controlled by the individual himself, free from externally applied opinions of the media and those he meets.
Broader:
Flow experience