"Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason."
~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I used to discount the generalization that East Europeans can be a tad pessimistic, Americans overly optimistic. But now I am beginning to see why the dispositional divide.
It is hard to have a sunny outlook when basic cares require so much daily effort, so much frustration and anxiety. Then there are the political and economic ills - governments fanning the fumes of nationalism, ethnic tensions, spiralling debt. Sociologists like to separate the individual from the collective, but the two interrelate in subtle and profound ways.
An ageing population, a social memory that includes both Nazism and Communism, and a definite disillusionment with democracy - all these nourish apathy and a general mentality of "Just keep your head down and soldier on...."
People belittle the "power of positive thinking" as a throwaway cliche. With books like "The Secret" and self-help manuals laying out 10 easy steps to a better you, is it any wonder optimism has a bad reputation?
I find it interesting to the point of irony that one of the fathers of positive psychology is, in fact, a Hungarian, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Actually, I don't know why I find it surprising. Humans thrive in the heart of paradox. If there is a society that gravitates toward the negative pole of existence, there will be those observant individuals within it who see in pessimism the seeds of engagement and passion.
Csikszentmihalyi coined the term "flow" - a state of complete creative absorption in one's work. As a writer, this is the rare bird we stalk through all the distractions and blocks that make up the bulk of writing life. But I'm beginning to wonder: is "flow" a purely individual phenomenon? Or is it possible for societies as a whole to achieve something akin to this creative experience?
I don't think I have yet discovered a city or town that has an overall feeling of flow - of active, organic engagement. But I know this feeling can exist collectively because there are places in every city that foster this outlook: certain universities, centers of cultural exchange, some holy places, and always parks and nature reserves.
It is these places that encourage people to be mindful of themselves and their surrounding that expand flow beyond the individual. In this way, I think flow is related to meditation, but in its active, workaday form. Or perhaps flow is just another face of meditation. In the West at least, we tend to put meditation into this little box of sitting still with your eyes closed, breathing. But meditation is so much more than that.
Meditation is the ground of life. It enables us to access those meanings and insights that make all the struggle worthwhile. And flow is what happens when meditation meets action - individual and collective - in the real world. Imagine it! "Democratic flow". Or "meditative democracy." I searched Google for the terms, but no luck.
I am fully aware of how "squishy" these phrases sound. Words like flow and meditation and - horrors! - spirituality strike many people as worse offenders than even positive thinking in their associations with pop psychology and pseudo-mysticism. I do not come from any of these camps. In fact, I actively reject most of their premises. I studied subjects that honest my allegiance to scepticism: international relations, social science, and analytic philosophy.
And yet there is an unexamined closed-mindedness among many experts in these fields that makes me cringe. Why do we value things simply because we can measure them? Why are "utility" and "realism" the watchwords of a functioning society? Why are schools still run like factories? And why do we still boil everything down to money and power?
Until we start questioning the shaky premises upon which society rests, not even a desperate attempt to maintain the status quo will prevent growing stagnation and decline (not to be too prophetic about it).
We speak about freedom, but what does it mean? Freedom from external repression is one thing. But freedom to act and serve is another. Both types of freedom are missing in many parts of the world - and brutal experience of the first can leave people wary or incapable of the second.
This is what I observe in Central and Eastern Europe today - a legacy of external repression that has hampered the growth of an internal drive to engage and change. Of course, this is a generalized tendency, and not specific to many open, active individuals. But it has certainly made me think about new ways of constituting our social and political systems that puts more emphasis on grounding our actions in reflective awareness.
I believe societies can achieve a form of creative flow. In fact, I believe that until we do, disillusionment with democracy is justified.
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