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Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [158]

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cohorts of white, middle-class, male adolescents (Social Indicators, 1981). The same patterns are shown for crime, homicide, illegitimate pregnancies, venereal diseases, and psychosomatic complaints (Wynne 1978, Yankelovich 1981). By 1980 one out of ten high school seniors was using psychotropic drugs daily (Johnston, Bachman, & O’Malley 1981). To qualify this picture of gloom, it should be mentioned that in most cultures, as far as it is possible to ascertain, adolescents have been seen as troublesome (Fox 1977). “The great internal turmoil and external disorder of adolescence are universal and only moderately affected by cultural determinants” (Kiell 1969, p. 9). According to Offer, Ostrov, & Howard (1981), only about 20 percent of contemporary U.S. adolescents are to be considered “troubled,” but even this conservative estimate represents, of course, quite a huge number of young people.

Socialization. The necessity to postpone gratification in order to function in society was discussed by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Brown (1959) provided a spirited rebuttal of Freud’s arguments. For standard works on socialization see Clausen (1968) and Zigler & Child (1973). A recent extended study of socialization in adolescence can be found in Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1984).

Social controls. Some good examples of how social controls are enforced by creating chemical dependencies are the case of the Spaniards’ introduction of rum and brandy into Central America (Braudel 1981, pp. 248–49); the use of whiskey in the expropriation of American Indian territories; and the Chinese Opium Wars. Herbert Marcuse (1955, 1964) has discussed extensively how dominant social groups coopt sexuality and pornography to enforce social controls. As Aristotle said long ago, “The study of pleasure and pain belongs to the province of the political philosopher” (Nicomachean Ethics, book 7, chapter 11).

Genes and personal advantage. The argument that genes were programmed for their own benefit, and not to make life better for their carriers, was first formulated in a coherent way by Dawkins (1976), although the saying “The chicken is only an egg’s way for making another egg,” which encapsulates Dawkins’s idea very well, is much older. For another view of this matter, see Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini (1985) and Csikszentmihalyi (1988).

Paths of liberation. The history of this quest is so rich and long that it is impossible to do it justice in a short space. For the mystical traditions see Behanan (1937) and Wood (1954) on Yoga, and Scholem (1969) on Jewish mysticism. In philosophy one might single out Hadas (1960) on Greek humanism; Arnold (1911) and Murray (1940) on the Stoics; and MacVannel (1896) on Hegel. For more contemporary philosophers see Tillich (1952) and Sartre (1956). A recent reinterpretation of Aristotle’s notion of virtue that is very similar in some ways to the concept of autotelic activity, or flow, presented here can be found in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre (1984). In history Croce (1962), Toynbee (1934), and Berdyaev (1952) stand out; in sociology Marx (1844 [1956]), Durkheim (1897, 1912), Sorokin (1956, 1967), and Gouldner (1968); in psychology Angyal (1941, 1965), Maslow (1968, 1970), and Rogers (1951); in anthropology see Benedict (1934), Mead (1964), and Geertz (1973). This is just an idiosyncratic selection among a huge array of possible choices.

Control of consciousness. Control of consciousness as developed in this chapter includes all four manifestations of self-control reviewed by Klausner (1965) and listed in the note to page 10. One of the oldest known techniques for achieving such controls are the various yogi disciplines developed in India roughly fifteen hundred years ago; these will be discussed more amply in chapter 5. Followers of holistic medicine believe that the mental state of the patient is extremely important in determining the course of physical health; see also Cousins (1979) and Siegel (1986). Eugene Gendlin (1981), a colleague at the University of Chicago, has developed a contemporary

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