Barriers to Clarity

6 October 2021

We’ve looked at two of Csikszentmihalyi’s main ideas: flow, and the control of one’s own mind or consciousness.  This week we’ll look at the genetic, cultural, and ego-based barriers that can hamper seeing life clearly.

At this point in our history it should be possible for an individual to build a self that is not simply the outcome of biological drives and cultural habits, but a conscious, personal creation...When the self begins to transcend the narrow interests built into its structure by evolution, it is then ready to start taking control of the direction of evolution… Csikszentmihalyi (1993, pp. 4-5).

The “…narrow interests built into its structure…” are those three barriers mentioned above: our genes, our cultural modes, and our apparent self-interest.  Csikszentmihalyi (1993, p. 67) argued that our genetic programming was adverse in many ways, memorably stating that “…American teenagers think of sex on average every twenty-six seconds…”  It doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to see the conflict between controlling one’s attention and sexual distraction.  This is probably the simplest way to remember the genetically narrow interest redirecting our attention.  In other words, it’s hard to think about calculus when you’re being distracted by—sorry, what was that?

Csikszentmihalyi also argued that our sense of cultural superiority is both false and magnified inversely based on the size of our cultural group.  That is, if you belong to a small sect of people, who feel it is to their advantage to remain socially and culturally isolated from most of the world, your sense of superiority increases while your actual realm of knowledge and breadth of vision decreases i.e., sameness shrinks souls.

Blown up to a much larger scale, Csikszentmihalyi held that most human groups, throughout history, have believed they were G-d’s uniquely chosen people and that they—and only they— existed at the centre of the world.  While I am a proud defender of the West, we are clearly grappling with what it means to have interests (the planet) that require world-wide cooperation.  What is happening internationally, (Balkanization, or the breakdown of macroscopic ambition into microscopic interests) can also happen within our own lives.  Csikszentmihalyi’s point was that a good life requires being aware of these cultural illusions which each of us brings to the table, thereby affecting her view of what she is seeing. 

Finally, Csikszentmihalyi’s third barrier (or veil, as he preferred to call them) is the self or ego.  I am not in full agreement with this third argument but his point is important.  He characterizes many successful people as me-centric.  The more recognition and worldly success a person gains, the more strongly he seeks to hold onto those in order to bolster his reputation.  (Think of the Pandora Papers.)  Long-time readers will recognize that the Stoics deflated the balloon of reputation nearly 2,000 years ago. 

Of things some are in our power, and others are not.  In our power are opinion, movement toward a thing, desire, aversion (turning from a thing); and in a word, whatever are our own acts; not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices (magisterial power) and in a word, whatever are not our own acts (Long, 1991, Enchiridion, I, p. 11).

We cannot prevent another from thinking or speaking ill of us.  We can prevent ourselves from paying undue attention to that ill speaking.  Csikszentmihalyi is urging us in the Stoic direction, at least in this regard, suggesting that intelligent humility is perhaps more appropriate in the face of our average 82-year lifespans on a planet that’s been around 4,500,000,000 years. 

In summary, our egos, our cultures, and our genes come with anchors that can hold us back from evolving as well-differentiated and integrated creatures living on a single planet.  These anchors don’t just hold us back from big-picture improvement, they hold us back from risk-taking in our own best interests. 

Having understood those three illusions, think of the influence of your ego, culture, and genes in relation to this statement: Each person creates the world he or she lives in by investing attention in certain things, and by doing so according to certain patterns (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, p. 65).

As an example, if John wants to put his cocaine use behind him successfully, Csikszentmihalyi argues that John has to come to terms with his ego, his cultural biases, and his genetic influences.  If John hasn’t had many challenges in life he may feel his inherited wealth, status, and family background entitle him to a life of untroubled leisure.  And while John may be able to buy the cocaine, the party animals, and the sex that go with that lifestyle, he can’t do those things while increasing his health and longevity, never mind self-actualization. 

In fact, each step further into that lifestyle that John moves, the fewer resources he possesses.  His will to resist his drug of choice is evaporating with the reinforcement of his neural reward circuit every time he uses (genetic).  Each time he has casual sex with a person he barely knows, his sense of self and other is dissolving into care-less-ness (ego).  And each time John throws a temper tantrum because he can’t buy his way out of feeling so horribly low on the mornings after, he is reinforcing his belief in his entitled, inherited invulnerability (cultural).

What John needs is to stand naked before a full length mirror to see who he really is and to say to himself, I’m one (culturally) spoiled man who believes his inheritance makes him better than others (ego) and invulnerable to the ravages of time and drugs (genetic).  In fact, I’ve been a weak man hiding from myself and wasting my resources by refusing to see that this is all utterly finite. When John says that last sentence, he has begun to shed the veils of ego, culture, and genes.  Next comes the reconstruction.

Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understandings of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1993). The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium. Harper Perrenial Modern Classics.

Long, G. (Tr.) (1991). Epictetus’ Enchiridion.  Prometheus Books.