Csikszentmihalyi's Analysis

Finding life’s aim is comparable to finding happiness. As discussed in Plato at the 92nd Street Y, life’s aim is hypothesized as becoming “the super-best [person] they can be, to realize their own personhood.” Unlike the classical philosophers, Csikszentmihalyi does not agree that pursuing goals such as becoming the “super-best person” will bring happiness, but rather is directly associated on how we control our inner lives. However, Csikszentmihalyi writes how “we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it” (2). The first step to this theory begins with achieving control over our consciousness by accepting how forces beyond our control influence the perceptions of our lives. Once this is realized, we are able to able to experience

Csikszentmihalyi does not classify flow as an end, but an experience that can be met continuously if an individual is willing to stretch their limits to “accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” (3). What differentiates Csikszentmihalyi from Plato’s ideology is how the person reaches their life’s aim. In Plato at the 92nd Street Y, different views on how a child should develop competency or excellence to reach flow are presented and defended for different reasons. Zee is a warrior mother who advocates for her children to experience immediate gratification to ensure they feel superiorly complex. In Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, he discusses how every flow activity allows the self to both disappear and grow. He explains how flow provides “a sense of discovery, a creative feeling of transporting the person into a new reality…[transforming] the self by making it more complex” (Csikszentmihalyi,

This is where Csikszentmihalyi will disagree with Zee’s idea of immediate gratification. The reflection of self cannot be forced and directly detected by a specific action. This can be exemplified in a mother praising her child for stacking the blocks exactly 3 feet high, creating a reward for the child for simply finishing the activity. This immediate gratification does not allow the child to self reflect on their accomplishment and grow their own self. Csikszentmihalyi may even consider this to be detrimental to the child’s growth. He believes a child should find a reward from the activity alone. This is exemplified in Dr. Munitz argument that children should have many competencies rather than one excellence. Comparatively, Dr. Munitz would not directly praise the child for his or her accomplishment in a specific activity, but instead praise them on how good they are. The child will emerge more complex naturally when they comprehend how reaching flow in a certain activity made them