Good Business_ Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [180]
The inner life of animals. To what extent animals other than humans have feelings that approach ours has been extensively debated; see von Uexkull (1921). Recent studies of primates who communicate with people seem to suggest that some of them do have emotions even in the absence of concrete stimuli (e.g., that they can feel sad at the memory of a departed companion), but the evidence on this issue does not yet appear conclusive.
The consciousness of preliterate people. Among many others, the anthropologist Robert Redfield (1955) argued that tribal societies were too simple and homogeneous for their members to be able to take a self-reflective stance toward their beliefs and actions. Before the first urban revolution made cities possible about 5,000 years ago, people tended to accept the reality their culture presented to them without much question, and had no alternatives to conformity. Others, such as the anthropologist Paul Radin (1927), have claimed to find great philosophical sophistication and freedom of conscience among “primitive” people. It is doubtful that this ancient debate will be resolved soon.
Leo Tolstoy’s novella has been often reprinted; see Tolstoy (1886 [1985]).
That the complexification of social roles has resulted in the complexification of consciousness has been argued by De Roberty (1878) and by Draghicesco (1906), who developed elaborate theoretical models of social evolution based on the assumption that intelligence is a function of the frequency and intensity of human interactions; and by many others ever since, including the Russian psychologists Vygotsky (1978) and Luria (1976).
Sartre’s concept of the project is described in Being and Nothingness (1956). The concept of “propriate strivings” was introduced by Allport (1955). For the concept of life theme, defined as “a set of problems which a person wishes to solve above everything else and the means the person finds to achieve solution,” see Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie (1979).
Hannah Arendt (1963) wrote an authoritative analysis of the life of Adolf Eichmann.
The autobiography of Malcolm X (1977) is a classic description of the development of a life theme.
Blueprint of negentropic life themes. The counterintuitive notion that transference of attention from personal problems to the problems of others helps personal growth underlies the work of the developmental psychologists mentioned in the note to page 221; see also Crandall (1984), and note to p. 198.
The best English-language biography of Antonio Gramsci is by Giuseppe Fiore (1973).
Edison, Roosevelt, and Einstein. Goertzel & Goertzel (1962) detail the early lives of 300 eminent men and women, and show how little predictability there is between the conditions in which children grow up and their later achievements.
Cultural evolution is another concept prematurely discarded by social scientists in the last few decades. Among the attempts to show that the concept is still viable see, for instance, Burhoe (1982), Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini (1985), Lumdsen & Wilson (1981, 1983), Massimini (1982), and White (1975).
Books as socializing agents. For studies on the effect of books and stories told in childhood on the subsequent life themes of individuals see Csikszentmihalyi & Beattie (1979) and Beattie & Csikszentmihalyi (1981).
Religion and entropy. See, for instance, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s early essay, written in 1798 but not published until 110 years later: Der Geist der Christentums und sein Schiksal (The spirit of Christianity and its fate), in which he reflects on the materialization that Christ’s teachings underwent after they were embedded into a Church.
Evolution. A great many scholars and scientists, from a diverse variety of backgrounds, have expressed the belief that a scientific understanding of evolution, taking into account the goals of human beings and the laws of the