In Solitude and in Company
Studies on happiness repeatedly report two factors in common: how we experience our work and our relationships with other people. These match to Freud's prescription of "love and work" as the main ingredients in a happy life. So the last chapter explored our engagement in work, and the present will consider engagement with other people.
It has been asserted that man is a social animal and is "biologically programmed" for seek out connections to other human beings as a means to make their life interesting and fulfilling.
But as Jean-Paul Sartre aptly observed, "hell is other people" and our interactions with others can also make our lives miserable. We value privacy and often seek out the opportunity simply to be left alone by others.
MC suggests that the perspectives on being alone show a similar schism to the perspectives on work. For some people in some instances, solitude is the source of bliss. For other people and in other situations, they simply feel the pain of loneliness. It largely depends on what we are doing - alone or in the company of others, we may find pleasure or pain.
The Conflict Between Being Alone and Being with Others
Being alone is one of the mot common fears across all human cultures. There are many preliterate cultures in which people make great effort never to be alone, and for many cultures shunning a person is among the more severe forms of punishment. Even in western culture, exile or banishment was reserved for those whose offenses were too severe for mere physical punishment but not severe enough to merit capital punishment - though particularly in primitive societies, they are no different: a person banished would almost certainly die.
Surveys in the social sciences find that people claim to be most happy when with friends and family, and to be happier among a group of strangers than when they are alone. In some sense being accepted into a group bolsters self-esteem, but many respondents to open questions remark simply that "being with others" makes them happy.
Returning to primitive cultures: coming together as a group was efficient and in many instances necessary for survival. Cooperation makes work easier, group arrangements are also necessary for mating and child-rearing, and there is evidence even back to Neanderthal man that groups cared for the sick, injured, and elderly.
At the same time, intellectuals and spiritual people often withdraw from the company of others. The shaman and witch doctor almost always live apart from a tribe in primitive cultures, hermits in the middle east would withdraw to contemplate spiritual matters, and sages and oracles in Europe were people apart from normal society. Even to this day, the stereotype of the scholar and the scientist are as solitary men.
In the present world, society is less of a single group and more of a mesh of groups to which people belong: their family, fellow worshippers of their church, their coworkers, members of various civic and fraternal organizations, etc. A person belongs not to a single group that do everything as one, but to different groups that are assembled for different purposes.
It is observed that our sense of connection to these ad-hoc groups is significantly lowered simply because the nature of the group defines the extent of the relationship: our "friends" at work are not people we see outside of the workplace, and do not much concern ourselves with outside of that place and time and the way in which we interact with them in practical matters.
The dysfunction of groups is that, while they form a sense of unity among members, they form a sense of hostility to outsiders. Teams, gangs, and even neighborhoods have a strong sense of people who belong and people who do not, and those who do not belong are people of no importance - not so much enemies as targets of opportunity.
The Pain of Loneliness
Most people feel "an intolerable sense of emptiness:" when they are alone. Almost any activity is more enjoyable with others and less enjoyable when alone. An individual can be oblivious to their solitude when there is something to occupy their minds, but cannot escape it if there is not.
MC suggests that it is "very difficult" to explain why this is so. It has been observed in people across many cultures, but the precise mechanisms that cause loneliness to be painful have not been identified.
He does suggest that people who have nothing to occupy their minds slip into a state of "psychic entropy." They tend to fixate on negative thoughts, and to dwell upon and exacerbate them. Anxiety and worry build, and it is difficult to escape the downward spiral.
This is the allure of consumptive entertainment like watching television: it is not enriching or even mentally challenging, but it's just enough to distract the mind from personal worries. Drugs, alcohol, and "obsessive practices" also serve to occupy the mind.
He disappears for a while into considerations of psychedelic drugs, which he claims "provide a wide variety of mental experiences ... without adding to our ability to order them effectively." While it has been claimed that drugs have enhanced the artistic creativity, it's noted that no work of art has ever been executed in its completion under the influence - and it is the workings of a sober mind attempting to make sense of a psychedelic experience after the fact that enable some artists to be inspired by hallucinogens.
In spite of all this, he claims that "the ultimate test for the ability to control the quality of experience is what a person does in solitude, with no external demands to give them structure." It is in this condition that a person has nothing to direct their activity, and must find something within themselves to focus the mind.
He lauds the practice of finding "activities that require concentration" to fill free time, rather than turning to consumptive entertainment for distraction. The latter merely passes the time and develops no skills or mental abilities. It is truly a waste of time that stupefies the individual.
The autotelic person rarely reports boredom, and can find something to do or think about to make productive use of unstructured and solitary time. They develop skills that can be put to practical use, hones their mental aptitude, develop interests that can help them to connect with others, etc.
(EN: While all of this pontification is rather interesting, I do notice a distinct lack of research to support it. It all seems entirely plausible, but it is clearly cheerleading without a basis in fact or theory.)
Taming Solitude
While most people dread solitude, there are rare individuals who routinely seek it. To enjoy being alone a person must be able to achieve flow without the supports of society. A quote from Francis Bacon: "Whosever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
People who prefer their own company are often poorly understood. They are not necessarily antisocial or misfits, but do not need other people to give structure and meaning to their lives. It is common for writers, artists, and scholars to withdraw from the world of men to avoid being distracted from work in which they become deeply engrossed for long periods of time.
That is not to say that all isolates are intellectuals. The author mentions some people who live on isolated farms, whose work is entirely physical. A number of hobbies and leisure activities, such as painting or craftwork, are individual activities that do not involve interacting with others for long periods of time. People who are into aviation or sailing will take long solitary voyages.
It's also mentioned that people who are forced into solitude do develop peculiar habits - but many of these peculiar habits are in fact flow activities. He gives the example of a man he noticed working hard to clean the deck of a boat. It turns out the man had been deathly bored, and had smashed a dozen eggs on his deck and let them dry, just so that he would have a large job in cleaning them off. That is, he gave himself something to do that would require time and focus.
Such actions might seem a bit insane - but they aren't the worst way to find a way to deal with boredom. Making a mess just for the pleasure of cleaning it up is certainly less damaging to the mind than drinking, drugs, or engaging in consumptive entertainment.
These are extreme examples of people who experience solitude for long periods of time - but everyone experiences solitude and boredom, and rather frequently, for shorter periods of time. Unless a person learns to enjoy solitude, they will find it wears on them and will become a significant source of dissatisfaction in their lives.
Flow and the Family
Interaction with the family provides some of the most intense and meaningful experiences for many people. Our mode of existence, even before recorded history, has been in the context of kinship groups.
In general, people gravitate toward others who are similar to themselves, and the family is the most similar group of people. Aside of the obvious genetic similarity, much of our experiences are shared with members of our immediate family, and the period between the time an individual leaves his birth family to form a family of his own is a turbulent and unpleasant period in life.
There is the biological necessity of family connections: children are unable to be self-sufficient and need to be taken care of their parents, and parents in their old age cease to be self-sufficient and need to be supported by children. These are the biological bases for feelings of attachment between parents and children.
But the connection is more than genetics and biological necessity, as the dynamics of family relationships are highly diverse across human cultures. Whether a culture is monogamous or polyamorous, matriarchal or patriarchal, primogeniture or shared inheritance, and other variables have a strong influence of the experiences of the family.
(EN: This carries on for a while, and is largely a haphazard sociology lecture, so I'll skip forward until he returns to the topic of flow.)
The family is the source of routine daily interactions that are to some degree ritualized. The greater the formality of ritual, the more effort must be placed into learning the procedures and developing skills. For example, finding a mate in most western cultures is a bit haphazard, but not particularly difficult. But in other cultures, particularly primitive ones, finding a mate is a sequence of activities: to prove one has come of age, to establish one's status, to declare intent, to select and court a mate, and to attend to various ceremonies and rituals leading up to marriage. Each of these activities requires effort to perform.
Another aside: the divorce rate in western cultures for the past half-century or so may be a reflection of the abandonment of these rituals. Because pairing and marriage require little effort, they are not valued as achievements. Because there are no traditional roles for husbands and wives to follow, people don't know what they or their partner are supposed to do. The relationship is accidental and happenstance, and remains awkward and uncertain.
After marriage has been established, societies have different roles and rituals throughout adult life. In certain societies, simply being in the role of a brother-in-law, an aunt, a cousin, a grandparent, or a variety of roles means that there are certain things one is expected to do for one's relatives, and these are also tasks that have knowledge and skills attached.
Most obviously, parenting is a flow activity. There are many things to be done to raise a child from infancy to adulthood, and it is a task that can be done with varying degrees of success. Whether a parent is good at their job as a parent has a great deal to do with the life their child will have. Making sure the task is done well again requires a great deal of effort and attention.
And back to the current state of western culture: the role of a parent has also become vague and there is no cultural guidance to teach a person what they must do to be a good parent. As such, they raise their children to be poor human beings, who also haven't a clue as to how to raise a child.
One of the most damaging delusions of our present culture is that family life takes care of itself naturally, and that the best way to deal with it is to let it take its own course. But family life is not automated and if things are allowed to take their own course, they can go horribly wrong or at the very least fail to be functional to their full potential.
Enjoying Friends
Compared to family relationships, friendships are more causal and easier to enjoy. We fall into friendship with people who have common interests and goals, who we encounter in the routine of daily life. There is little responsibility of commitment to most friendships.
Because friendships form with people we encounter while pursuing goals or engaging in activities, there is a natural source of enjoyment. They interact in a meaningful way, admire one another's skills and achieves, learn from one another, and associate the other person to their own success.
However, this does not apply to people who encounter one another because they happen to be in the same place at the same time: people who frequent the same tavern or go to the same barber may become accustomed to seeing one another, but their interactions are superficial. People who loathe solitude may value being around others, but it is not the same level of connectedness.
People without strong family ties often value friendships more than they do family connections - particularly when family connections are weak. Groups such as cults and gangs are especially skilled at identifying people who are without strong connections, and the group becomes their true family when it provides the sense of belonging and purpose that they are not receiving from family and friends.
There's an aside that mentions an effective program that discourages youth from becoming involved in gangs by strengthening ties to family and providing a positive peer group. With this sense of identity and belonging, the gangs have little power to lure them.
(EN: This section also is a haphazard sociological study that offers some generalizations - it never does seem to get back to the topic of flow.)
The Wider Community
Our connection to family and friends is held in a specific way, but our connection to larger communities is largely imaginary. We believe that a group of people has a single identity - the members of a neighborhood, a city, or a nation - and form a sense of a connection to that group, defining a role for themselves that supports that connection.
Their concerns are likewise highly individualized. Many people seek to serve groups out of a desire to achieve something for themselves. They wish to have power, fame, wealth, or status and feel that the group on behalf they have chosen to act owes them those things in exchange for their support. Their actions seem altruistic, but their motives are entirely self-interested. This is not necessarily harmful, if their actions provide some benefit to society then it is of little consequence that their motives were self-serving.
There is, of course, a dramatic difference between a self-interested individual whose psychological needs are fulfilled by doing some good for a larger group and a person whose needs are fulfilled by deceiving or doing harm to the larger group. And that is not to say that people are completely one way or the other, or that they do not change in their motivations along the way.
Civic service and politics are flow activities because they are oriented to achieve a goal and enable a person to develop skills and appreciate their progress and achievement. Except for the absence of financial profit, it is very similar in many ways to building or improving a commercial organization (which itself is a kind of community).