Csikszentmihalyi’s The Evolving Self and Leadership
Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi is a psychology professor noted for his study of happiness, creativity, subjective well-being, and fun, and in particular of the notion of flow. He has written many books and articles on these topics, and has been described as the world's leading researcher on positive psychology.1
In the first chapter of “The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium,� Csikszentmihalyi writes (in 1993) that we are at a critical time where we have an active role in determining the fate of humanity. He posits that understanding the forces at work in evolution will inform whether humans ultimately succeed or fail as a species. He says that we now have a choice to direct our life energy toward growth and harmony or waste our potential and add to the chaos and destruction. The author poses the question, “How can we best retool the mind for accommodating the challenges of the near future?� His answer is that we must review what we know about the evolutionary past and its legacy to our minds. He says by understanding how evolution works, and what role we may play in it, we are provided a direction and purpose for those up for the challenge.
Csikszentmihalyi argues that in understanding how human psychology has developed over time in response to changing conditions in the environment, we might find it possible to adapt more readily to the increasingly rapid changes demanding action in the future. He says as we become aware of the motives that shape our actions, as our place in the chain of evolution becomes clearer, we must find a meaningful and binding plan that will protect us and the rest of life from the consequence of what we have wrought. This is an urgent call for leaders to understand who we are and how we can change course, as nothing less than the fate of humanity depends on the kind of selves that we make ourselves today.
Csikszentmihalyi asserts that the only value that all human beings can readily share is the continuation of life on earth. It’s hard to argue with his position that unless such a “species identity� takes precedence over identities such as faith, nation, family, or person, it will be difficult to agree on the course that must be taken to guarantee our future. It’s hard to measure how much has changed in fifteen years since Csikszentmihalyi wrote “The Evolving Self,� but I believe that there is today a global consciousness and recognition that our actions in the U. S. affect everyone living on the planet, just as we are affected by other’s actions.
Csikszentmihalyi has a place in the “Models of Change / Leadership Implications� class lecture from last week. Under “Evolutionary� models, Csikszentmihalyi offers a different view than Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which says that each species must be responsible for its own survival and that there is no supernatural protector who will save it. Csikszentmihalyi says that we are an active part of the process of evolution. We are bundles of energy programmed to pursue selfish ends, not for our own sake, but to preserve and replicate the information encoded in our genes. However, knowing what we now know, it is no longer acceptable for humankind to be self-indulgent. He says that our species has become too powerful to be led by instincts alone. Csikszentmihalyi argues that humans, with our reflective consciousness, are uniquely able to control the direction of evolution and halt the destructive forces that are at work in our world. This awareness would allow us to write our own programs for action, and make decisions for which no genetic instructions exist.
Csikszentmihalyi rightly states that solutions for these global issues will not be accomplished by solitary individuals working alone, implying that leadership will be necessary to for humanity to move in new directions. He says that inside each person there is a capacity (ie. through our awareness, consciousness, self, or soul) to reflect on the information that the various sense organs register, and to direct and control our experiences. Without it, he argues, we could only obey instructions programmed in the nervous system by our genes.
Csikszentmihalyi says individuals will need to create social institutions for positive evolutionary action, and this is where leadership models will be needed. The enormity of the needs Csikszentmihalyi presents brings to mind Crosby and Bryson’s “Leadership for the Common Good,� with their definition of a shared-power, no-one-in-charge world of shifting currents, impermanent coalitions, seemingly chaotic decision making, and weak regimes.2 Crosby and Bryson define a “regime� as a system embracing many groups, organizations, and institutions, and a “policy regime� as an enduring, multiparty shared-power arrangement. They write that the shared-power arrangement enhances the power of the participants beyond the sum of their separate capabilities. Leaders who focus on building shared-power arrangements enhance the power of the groups involved by reducing the risk for the participants and by sharing responsibility.3 This strategy would be appropriate and critical towards having the necessary global players at the table. While Crosby and Bryson wrote about organizations primarily, global issues will need to be addressed by countries working together in the much same way that organizations do.
Questions for consideration:
Csikszentmihalyi presents a daunting challenge for leaders if the future of humanity depends on the kind of selves we will create. If the future depends on what is in the human consciousness now: on the ideas you and I believe in, the values we endorse, the actions we take, what are some examples of how you might apply Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas in your life?
Csikszentmihalyi asks a key question pertaining to leadership: “So what’s this got to do with me?� The thesis of his book is that becoming an active, conscious part of the evolutionary process is the best way to give meaning to our lives at the present point in time. Do you agree? Do you feel you can take personal leadership in addressing global problems?
Csikszentmihalyi says that human consciousness has developed through previous millennia to represent individual experiences, to advance individual interests. Do you think citizens of the world are ready to embrace this consciousness shift away from the individual and to the greater good?
Primary summary information for this writing comes from:
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium. HarperCollins, 1993.
Footnotes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Csikszentmihalyi
Crosby, Barbara and John Bryson, Leadership for the Common Good: Tackling Public Problems in a Shared-Power World, second edition. Jossey-Bass, p. 28.
Ibid. p. 30
Comments
In response to your third question, "human consciousness has developed through previous millennia to represent individual experiences, to advance individual interests. Do you think citizens of the world are ready to embrace this consciousness shift away from the individual and to the greater good?", my answer is no, at least not to the degree that Csikszentmihalyi appears to require.
The author has presented an all or nothing argument, that either I accept "a resigned fatalism" and therefore agree with his perspective that the world is doomed, or I accept his hypothesis and follow his lead. But what if I don't agree with his hypothesis in the first place? What if I don't think that humanity must change its "self" or all is lost?
Alternatively, what if I agree with the initial hypothesis, but don't agree that his solution is accurate or correct? Sure, he's just presenting an idea, but the way it's argued implies that his proposal is the correct one.
I can agree with statements like "the fate of humanity ... depends [] closely on the kind of selves we will succeed in creating". But that could be said at anytime from the advent of the atom bomb.
Articles, or books, like this scare me, because they don't take the way people really react into account. Instead the author attempts to argue for humanity to act in a way it never has, which make the chances for success significantly less than, say, Marx's idea of a pure communism. I think an alternative approach is to take into account the author's information about humanity historically, and attempt to come up with a realistic solution for change armed with an understanding of how human's will likely react.
Forgive my cynicism towards grandiose ideologies, but that's what I see being created here, and I don't believe it works in the real world.
Posted by: Scott D | February 18, 2008 07:23 PM
It may be a grandiose ideology to believe that human consciousness will quickly evolve from individual survival to common survival, but I believe it's happening. The biological and technological have collided and the internet has expanded (and is continuing to expand) our individual consciousness at a breakneck speed.
Our access to information, people, live images of life in beautiful and tragic places, and much more is growing exponentially and erasing our ability to think of just ourselves anymore. It is in the same vein as Harkin's educational proposition fusing learning and technology. Our collective consciousness has been technologically connected. We are all "Software Enabled Learners" engaged in accelerated sociological evolution.
Posted by: Janelle | February 18, 2008 09:12 PM
One of the great benefits of the mid-career Masters of Public Affairs program is the opportunity to develop relationships with International Humphrey Fellows. During the fall of 2006, some of us in the Leadership for the Common Good class debated this question about human commitment to the common good, not just here but worldwide. We were bothered by the Jeremy Rifkin quote that Barbara included in her book on p. 26 about the emerging "transactional society": "Virtually every activity outside the confines of family relations is a paid-for experience, a world in which traditional reciprocal obligations and expectations -- mediated by feelings of faith, empathy, and solidarity -- are replaced by contractual relations in the form of paid memberships, subscriptions, admission charges, retainers, and fees," (2000, p. 9).
It tuned us in to evidence for or against that thesis statement, and we found plenty of both. In Connective Leadership (1996), Jean Lipman-Blumen counts on the natural stages of human development to ultimately awaken people in midlife or later to "purposes beyond our narrow egoistic needs," (p. 330). The ultimate motive, she believes, is to "separate the egoistic self, so caught in the personal well-being of ego and body, family and career, from the supra-egoistic beings that we now yearn to be. In this way we also try symbolically to conquer death and transcend our own mortality,"
To me, mission tours by movie stars and philanthrophic donations that draw major media are a hybrid, a "transactional common good," if you will.
Posted by: Wendy Wustenberg | February 18, 2008 10:02 PM
In response to some earlier comments:
I didn't get the sense that he had an "all or nothing ideology" like Scott did; moreso that he was cautioning those that embark on an individual shift to realize the system that they're up against. This is similar to the idea that you don't embark on community service "missions" looking for appreciation from those you serve.
Societal values are constantly morphing. Wendy's comment about the transactional common good is spot on. Who are we to question what form contributions come in? How can we subvert current cultural mores to serve less popular interests? In architecture, this is frequently the debate between function and form: how much works, and how much is just something pretty...
To bring this back around to the self and the individual: architecture is also an arena in which the ego can sublimate the public good of the project. Who does an architect work for? The public, or the client? The distinction between a professional and a designer is the oath to uphold the life, safety, and welfare of the public. Are architects designing buildings that are energy hogs going to be convicted of environmental or social crimes? I can only hope that my individual self/soul isn't lost in this ethical debate of human designs/intentions/impacts and material constructions. It often seems the most direct way to FIND my self.
Posted by: Sarah Wolbert | February 19, 2008 11:20 AM
I don't have an answer to your third question. I don't know if the world is ready to make the conscious shift from individual to collective. I certainly agree with Janelle that our individual consciousness is expanded with the internet and the intersection of the biological and technological. But, when does that shift actually become realized? People are at every stage on the scale of the conscious shift to a collective way of thought.
From the natural resources standpoint, I think the U.S. citizens are only appearing to make a conscious shift because they are realizing that if China and India develop at the incredibly inefficient and glutenous way we did, we are all in for a sever change in life as we know it. Is that conscious shift to the greater good an evolution of self or a motivation by fear? And if it's fear or a more lofty vision that acts as a catalyst for necessary change, does it matter what the catalyst is? I would love to think the shift is based on a common good, but in the interest of time, I would be okay with motivation by fear.
What would Hillman say about motivational theory and conscious shift?
Posted by: Nick Deffley | February 19, 2008 06:17 PM