Ideas on "Thought Machines" by Daren Dean (notes from my journal)

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I have been reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I came across this sentence that really made me start thinking: "What this persons sees in a painting is not a picture, but a "thought machine" that includes the painter's emotions, hopes, and ideas--as well as the spirit of the culture and the historical period of the culture and the historical period in which he lived."

This is really the great thing about reading because it can lead you to thinking not only just logically about what the writer just wrote but there can also be a tangental or nonsequitor thought that occurs. For example, this notion of a "thought machine" is interesting whether or not it pertains to author's example of a painter. Consider what happens in the mind of the one observing the work! I recently went to the St. Louis Art Museum and had the opportunity to observe van Gogh's work. I've read so much about him that it is always a thrill to see his original work rather than just a image online or a reproduction in a book. How he had at times produced work in a manic state reminds me, for or worse, as a flow state of sorts but I will refrain from placing labels on the process. However, it made me think about teaching writing since the summer is about over now and it won't be long before I'm in front of a class of Freshmen trying to teach them something about academic writing and what it has to do with their own motivation or success particularly if they stay in academia.

I come back to this idea of the "thought machine" as abstract as it sounds. The writer or the student of writing is his own thought machine. Not to get too philosophical here but each person thinks his own individual thoughts that lead to success or failure. Csikszentmihalyi goes on to say, "To enjoy a mental activity, one must meet the same conditions that make physical activities enjoyable. There must be skill in symbolic domain; there have to be rules, a goal, and a way of obtaining feedback." I found this to be a good explanation in terms of what the teacher should know about the student brain. That is, in part, the student must develop positive experience with this "symbolic domain" and the teacher must be aware that this kind of knowledge transfer should eventually happen if it appears that it hasn't yet sometime in the past of the student. This is why some of us are good at Math, Art, or English. We have shown some interest and proclivity for a subject and then, most importantly, we've been rewarded in some way we find valuable for our efforts. This is how we develop skill and desire. It's a highly individual endeavor and one that the student should be made aware of. The biggest mistake we can make is seeing the time we've set aside for the process of writing as intruding upon free time rather than understanding that the product of our thought: the writing itself is what will be most valuable to our personal and professional development in the long run.

It's like what the writer David Foster Wallace once said in his famous Kenyon College Commencement speech once explained, we have to control what we think about. The enemy as Csikzentmihalyi explains is what he calls "Psychic Entropy" or the basic disorder of the mind or put in another way "chaos in consciousness." My kids for example like to exclaim how bored they are. "I'm bored!" They usually exclaim when their mother or myself has told them to give the X-Box, the KindleFire, the Nintendo DSi, or the TV a break. These devices provide a low level commitment on the part of the individual to impose order and easy entertainment for the mind. I say this to acknowledge my own experience with video games and the internet confirm that this is the case as well. It's addicting behavior but often without a point other than the distraction they provide. Not that there's anything wrong with being entertained for hours at a time but this does produce a problem in the explanations students have with the kinds of academic work require of them, especially as young undergraduates. There's a synaptic gap often between the level of work required at the high school level to the college level, which we all know about. Add to that the freedom of being on their own and making their own decisions and we realize college students are dealing with a great deal at this time in their lives. Controlling one's thinking machine is a lifelong endeavor.

I've managed to completely skip over what Flow is, so what I hope to talk about next is this idea of Flow and how to present it in personal life and in the classroom too.