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  • The Evolving Self

  • A Psychology for the Third Millennium
  • Written by: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • Narrated by: Sean Pratt
  • Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

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The Evolving Self

Written by: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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Publisher's Summary

In this wise, humane inquiry, Csikszentmihalyi (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience) argues that genetically programmed behaviors that once helped humans adapt and multiply now threaten our survival. These traits include obsessions with food and sex, addiction to pleasure, excessive rationality, and a tendency to focus on the negative. A University of Chicago psychology professor, the author also believes we must free our minds of cultural illusions, such as ethnocentric superiority or identification with one's possessions. He urges listeners to find ways to reduce the oppression, exploitation, and inequality that are woven into the fabric of society. Further, he wants us to control the direction of human evolution by pursuing challenging activities that lead to greater complexity while opposing chaos and conformity.

Each chapter concludes with self-help questions and mental exercises designed to help listeners apply the insights of this literate manifesto to their daily lives.

©1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC

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Good book; not easy to follow.

Some parts that stuck with me:

Education:
"Perhaps the most urgent task facing us is to create a new educational curriculum that will make each child aware, from the first grade on, that life in the universe is interdependent. It should be an education that trains the mind to perceive the network of causes and effects in which our actions are embedded, and trains the emotions and the imagination to respond appropriately to the consequences of those actions."

Complexity (Complexity = Differentiation + Integration)
"Individual uniqueness, or self-actualization, represents the differentiation component; transcendence involves a higher level of integration. Both are necessary for the kind of self that leads to a complex and harmonious evolution."

Complexity+Flow:
"To experience flow, we first must recognize some opportunity for action, or challenge. This involves mainly a process of differentiation. To recognize a challenge, one has to know how to let go of the tried and true, be open to possibilities, seek out novelty, be curious, be willing to take risks, and be experimental. Generally we find challenges that are in tune with our temperaments or innate skills.
The second dimension of complexity is related to the acquisition of skills. As one learns to master a challenge, the skills involved in the activity become part of one's repertoire of abilities; this involves a process of integration. To master a skill one needs discipline and endurance, and to accommodate the new skill among the other attributes and priorities of the self a certain amount of wisdom, or self-knowledge, is required."

The Self:
"[...] the self comes into being because consciousness, to avoid being overwhelmed by information clamoring for attention, needs a mechanism to sort out and prioritize the diverse demands. The means by which attention becomes prioritized we call goals. A goal is a channel into which psychic energy flows. Therefore, the self can be considered a hierarchy of goals, because the goals define what we pay attention to, and how. If you know what goal takes precedence for a given person, you can generally anticipate where that person will invest psychic energy, and therefore predict his or her behavior."

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