Flow: The Classic Work On How To Achieve Happiness: The Psychology of Happiness

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

cactus collectors

But there is no better reason for doing science than the sense of order it brings to the mind of the seeker.

Amateur philosophers, unlike their professional counterparts at universities, need not worry about historical struggles for prominence among competing schools, the politics of journals, and the personal jealousies of scholars.

When Serafina was asked what she enjoys doing most in life, she had no trouble answering: milking the cows, taking them to the pasture, pruning the orchard, carding wool . . . in effect, what she enjoys most is what she has been doing for a living all along.

A good example is the case of Joe Kramer, a man we interviewed in one of our early studies of the flow experience. Joe was in his early sixties, a welder in a South Chicago plant where railroad cars are assembled.

“Like when my mother’s toaster went on the fritz, I asked myself: ‘If I were that toaster and I didn’t work, what would be wrong with me?’”

For Karl Marx, men and women constructed their being through productive activities; there is no “human nature,” he held, except that which we create through work.