Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning (20 page)

THE PLAY OF WORDS

How does one start mastering a symbolic system? It depends, of course, on what domain of thought one is interested in exploring. We have seen that the most ancient and perhaps basic set of rules governs the usage of words. And today words still offer many opportunities to enter flow, at various levels of complexity. A somewhat trivial but nevertheless illuminating example concerns working crossword puzzles. There is much to be said in favor of this popular pastime, which in its best form resembles the ancient riddle contests. It is inexpensive and portable, its challenges can be finely graduated so that both novices and experts can enjoy it, and its solution produces a sense of pleasing order that gives one a satisfying feeling of accomplishment. It provides opportunities to experience a mild state of flow to many people who are stranded in airport lounges, who travel on commuter trains, or who are simply whiling away Sunday mornings. But if one is confined to simply
solving
crosswords, one remains dependent on an external stimulus: the challenge provided by an expert in the Sunday supplement or puzzle magazine. To be really autonomous in this domain, a better alternative is to make up one’s own crosswords. Then there is no longer need for a pattern to be imposed from the outside; one is completely free. And the enjoyment is more profound. It is not very difficult to learn to write crossword puzzles; I know a child of eight who, after trying his hand at a few Sunday puzzles in the
New York Times
, began writing his own quite creditable crosswords. Of course, as with any skill worth developing, this one, too, requires that one invest psychic energy in it at the beginning.

A more substantive potential use of words to enhance our lives is the lost art of conversation. Utilitarian ideologies in the past two centuries or so have convinced us that the main purpose of talking is to convey useful information. Thus we now value terse communication that conveys practical knowledge, and consider anything else a frivolous waste of time. As a result, people have become almost unable to talk to each other outside of narrow topics of immediate interest and specialization. Few of us can understand any longer the enthusiasm of Caliph Ali Ben Ali, who wrote: “A subtle conversation, that is the Garden of Eden.” This is a pity, because it could be argued that the main function of conversation is not to get things accomplished, but to improve the quality of experience.

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, the influential phenomenological sociologists, have written that our sense of the universe in which we live is held together by conversation. When I say to an acquaintance whom I meet in the morning, “Nice day,” I do not convey primarily meteorological information—which would be redundant anyway, since he has the same data as I do—but achieve a great variety of other unvoiced goals. For instance, by addressing him I recognize his existence, and express my willingness to be friendly. Second, I reaffirm one of the basic rules for interaction in our culture, which holds that talking about the weather is a safe way to establish contact between people. Finally, by emphasizing that the weather is “nice” I imply the shared value that “niceness” is a desirable attribute. So the offhand remark becomes a message that helps keep the content of my acquaintance’s mind in its accustomed order. His answer “Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it?” will help to keep order in mine. Without such constant restatements of the obvious, Berger and Luckmann claim, people would soon begin to have doubts about the reality of the world in which they live. The obvious phrases we exchange with each other, the trivial talk dribbling from radios and TV sets, reassure us that everything is all right, that the usual conditions of existence prevail.

The pity is that so many conversations end right there. Yet when words are well chosen, well arranged, they generate gratifying experiences for the listener. It is not for utilitarian reasons alone that breadth of vocabulary and verbal fluency are among the most important qualifications for success as a business executive. Talking well enriches every interaction, and it is a skill that can be learned by everyone.

One way to teach children the potential of words is by starting to expose them to wordplay quite early. Puns and double meanings may be the lowest form of humor for sophisticated adults, but they provide children with a good training ground in the control of language. All one has to do is pay attention during a conversation with a child, and as soon as the opportunity presents itself—that is, whenever an innocent word or expression can be interpreted in an alternative way—one switches frames, and pretends to understand the word in that different sense.

The first time children realize that the expression “having Grandma for dinner” could mean either as a guest or as a dish, it will be somewhat puzzling, as will a phrase like “a frog in the throat.” In fact, breaking the ordered expectations about the meaning of words can be mildly traumatic at first, but in no time at all children catch on and give as good as they are getting, learning to twist conversation into pretzels. By doing so they learn how to enjoy controlling words; as adults, they might help revive the lost art of conversation.

The major creative use of language, already mentioned several times in earlier contexts, is poetry. Because verse enables the mind to preserve experiences in condensed and transformed form, it is ideal for giving shape to consciousness. Reading from a book of poems each night is to the mind as working out on a Nautilus is to the body—a way for staying in shape. It doesn’t have to be “great” poetry, at least not at first. And it is not necessary to read an entire poem. What’s important is to find at least a line, or a verse, that starts to sing. Sometimes even one word is enough to open a window on a new view of the world, to start the mind on an inner journey.

And again, there is no reason to stop at being a passive consumer. Everyone can learn, with a little discipline and perseverance, to order personal experience in verse. As Kenneth Koch, the New York poet and social reformer, has shown, even ghetto children and semiliterate elderly women in retirement homes are able to write beautifully moving poetry if they are given a minimum of training. There is no question that mastering this skill improves the quality of their lives. Not only do they enjoy the experience, but in the process they considerably increase their self-esteem as well.

Writing prose provides similar benefits, and although it lacks the obvious order imposed by meter and rhyme, it is a more easily accessible skill. (To write
great
prose, however, is probably just as difficult as writing great poetry.)

In today’s world we have come to neglect the habit of writing because so many other media of communication have taken its place. Telephones and tape recorders, computers and fax machines are more efficient in conveying news. If the only point to writing were to
transmit
information, then it would deserve to become obsolete. But the point of writing is to
create
information, not simply to pass it along. In the past, educated persons used journals and personal correspondence to put their experiences into words, which allowed them to reflect on what had happened during the day. The prodigiously detailed letters so many Victorians wrote are an example of how people created patterns of order out of the mainly random events impinging on their consciousness. The kind of material we write in diaries and letters does not exist before it is written down. It is the slow, organically growing process of thought involved in writing that lets the ideas emerge in the first place.

Not so long ago, it was acceptable to be an amateur poet or essayist. Nowadays if one does not make some money (however pitifully little) out of writing, it’s considered to be a waste of time. It is taken as downright shameful for a man past twenty to indulge in versification unless he receives a check to show for it. And unless one has great talent, it is indeed useless to write hoping to achieve great profit or fame. But it is never a waste to write for intrinsic reasons. First of all, writing gives the mind a disciplined means of expression. It allows one to record events and experiences so that they can be easily recalled, and relived in the future. It is a way to analyze and understand experiences, a self-communication that brings order to them.

Many have commented lately about the fact that poets and playwrights as a group show unusually severe symptoms of depression and other affective disorders. Perhaps one reason they become full-time writers is that their consciousness is beset by entropy to an unusual degree; writing becomes a therapy for shaping some order among the confusion of feelings. It is possible that the only way writers can experience flow is by creating worlds of words in which they can act with abandon, erasing from the mind the existence of a troubling reality. Like any other flow activity, however, writing that becomes addictive becomes dangerous: it forces the writer to commit himself to a limited range of experiences, and forecloses other options for dealing with events. But when writing is used to control experience, without letting it control the mind, it is a tool of infinite subtlety and rich rewards.

BEFRIENDING CLIO

As Memory was the mother of culture, Clio, “The Proclaimer,” was her eldest daughter. In Greek mythology she was the patroness of history, responsible for keeping orderly accounts of past events. Although history lacks the clear rules that make other mental activities like logic, poetry, or mathematics so enjoyable, it has its own unambiguous structure established by the irreversible sequence of events in time. Observing, recording, and preserving the memory of both the large and small events of life is one of the oldest and most satisfying ways to bring order to consciousness.

In a sense, every individual is a historian of his or her own personal existence. Because of their emotional power, memories of childhood become crucial elements in determining the kind of adults we grow up to be, and how our minds will function. Psychoanalysis is to a large extent an attempt to bring order to people’s garbled histories of their childhood. This task of making sense of the past again becomes important in old age. Erik Erikson has held that the last stage of the human life cycle involves the task of achieving “integrity,” or bringing together what one has accomplished and what one has failed to accomplish in the course of one’s life into a meaningful story that can be claimed as one’s own. “History,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, “is the essence of innumerable biographies.”

Remembering the past is not only instrumental in the creation and preservation of a personal identity, but it can also be a very enjoyable process. People keep diaries, save snapshots, make slides and home movies, and collect souvenirs and mementos to store in their houses to build what is in effect a museum of the life of the family, even though a chance visitor might be unaware of most of the historical references. He might not know that the painting on the living-room wall is important because it was bought by the owners during their honeymoon in Mexico, that the rug in the hall is valuable because it was the gift of a favorite grandmother, and that the scruffy sofa in the den is kept because it was where the children were fed when they were babies.

Having a record of the past can make a great contribution to the quality of life. It frees us from the tyranny of the present, and makes it possible for consciousness to revisit former times. It makes it possible to select and preserve in memory events that are especially pleasant and meaningful, and so to “create” a past that will help us deal with the future. Of course such a past might not be literally true. But then the past can never be literally true in memory: it must be continuously edited, and the question is only whether we take creative control of the editing or not.

Most of us don’t think of ourselves as having been amateur historians all along. But once we become aware that ordering events in time is a necessary part of being a conscious being, and moreover, that it is an enjoyable task, then we can do a much better job of it. There are several levels at which history as a flow activity can be practiced. The most personal involves simply keeping a journal. The next is to write a family chronicle, going as far into the past as possible. But there is no reason to stop there. Some people expand their interest to the ethnic group to which they belong, and start collecting relevant books and memorabilia. With an extra effort, they can begin to record their own impressions of the past, thus becoming “real” amateur historians.

Others develop an interest in the history of the community in which they live, whether it is the neighborhood or the state, by reading books, visiting museums, and joining historical associations. Or they may focus on a particular aspect of that past: for instance, a friend who lives in the wilder reaches of western Canada has been fascinated by “early industrial architecture” in that part of the world, and has gradually learned enough about it to enjoy trips to out-of-the-way sawmills, foundries, and decaying railway depots, where his knowledge enables him to evaluate and appreciate the fine points of what anyone else would dismiss as piles of weedy junk.

All too often we are inclined to view history as a dreary list of dates to memorize, a chronicle established by ancient scholars for their own amusement. It is a field we might tolerate, but not love; it is a subject we learn about so as to be considered educated, but it will be learned unwillingly. If this is the case, history can do little to improve the quality of life. Knowledge that is seen to be controlled from the outside is acquired with reluctance, and it brings no joy. But as soon as a person decides which aspects of the past are compelling, and decides to pursue them, focusing on the sources and the details that are personally meaningful, and recording findings in a personal style, then learning history can become a full-fledged flow experience.

THE DELIGHTS OF SCIENCE

After reading the preceding section, you may find it just barely plausible that anyone could become an amateur historian. But if we take the argument to another field, can we really conceive of a layperson’s becoming an amateur scientist? After all, we have been told many times that in this century science has become a highly institutionalized activity, with the main action confined to the big leagues. It takes extravagantly equipped laboratories, huge budgets, and large teams of investigators to survive on the frontiers of biology, chemistry, or physics. It is true that, if the goal of science is to win Nobel prizes, or to attract the recognition of professional colleagues in the highly competitive arena of a given discipline, then the extremely specialized and expensive ways of doing science may be the only alternatives.

In fact, this highly capital-intensive scenario, based on the model of the assembly line, happens to be an inaccurate description of what leads to success in “professional” science. It is not true, despite what the advocates of technocracy would like us to believe, that breakthroughs in science arise exclusively from teams in which each researcher is trained in a very narrow field, and where the most sophisticated state-of-the-art equipment is available to test out new ideas. Neither is it true that great discoveries are made only by centers with the highest levels of funding. These conditions may help in testing novel theories, but they are largely irrelevant to whether creative ideas will flourish. New discoveries still come to people as they did to Democritus, sitting lost in thought in the market square of his city. They come to people who so enjoy playing with ideas that eventually they stray beyond the limits of what is known, and find themselves exploring an uncharted territory.

Even the pursuit of “normal” (as opposed to “revolutionary” or creative) science would be next to impossible if it did not provide enjoyment to the scientist. In his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
, Thomas Kuhn suggests several reasons why science is “fascinating.” First, “By focusing attention upon a small range of relatively esoteric problems, the paradigm [or theoretical approach] forces scientists to investigate some part of nature in a detail and depth that would otherwise be unimaginable.” This concentration is made possible by “rules that limit both the nature of acceptable solutions and the steps by which they are obtained.” And, Kuhn claims, a scientist engaged in “normal” science is not motivated by the hope of transforming knowledge, or finding truth, or improving the conditions of life. Instead, “what then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well.” He also states, “The fascination of the normal research paradigm…[is that] though its outcome can be anticipated…the way to achieve that outcome remains very much in doubt…. The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle-solver, and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on.” It is no wonder that scientists often feel like P. A. M. Dirac, the physicist who described the development of quantum mechanics in the 1920s by saying, “It was a game, a very interesting game one could play.” Kuhn’s description of the appeal of science clearly resembles reports describing why riddling, or rock climbing, or sailing, or chess, or any other flow activity is rewarding.

If “normal” scientists are motivated in their work by the challenging intellectual puzzles they confront in their work, “revolutionary” scientists—the ones who break away from existing theoretical paradigms to forge new ones—are even more driven by enjoyment. A lovely example concerns Subrahhmanyan Chandrasekhar, the astrophysicist whose life has already acquired mythical dimensions. When he left India as a young man in 1933, on a slow boat from Calcutta to England, he wrote out a model of stellar evolution that with time became the basis of the theory of black holes. But his ideas were so strange that for a long time they were not accepted by the scientific community. He eventually was hired by the University of Chicago, where he continued his studies in relative obscurity. There is one anecdote told about him that best typifies his commitment to his work. In the 1950s Chandrasekhar was staying in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, where the main astronomical observatory of the university is located, about eighty miles away from the main campus. That winter he was scheduled to teach one advanced seminar in astrophysics. Only two students signed up for it, and Chandrasekhar was expected to cancel the seminar, rather than go through the inconvenience of commuting. But he did not, and instead drove back to Chicago twice a week, along back-country roads, to teach the class. A few years later first one, then the other of those two former students won the Nobel prize for physics. Whenever this story used to be told, the narrator concluded with sympathetic regrets that it was a shame the professor himself never won the prize. That regret is no longer necessary, because in 1983 Chandrasekhar himself was awarded the Nobel for physics.

It is often under such unassuming circumstances, with people dedicated to playing with ideas, that breakthroughs in the way we think occur. One of the most glamorous discoveries of the last few years involves the theory of superconductivity. Two of the protagonists, K. Alex Muller and J. Georg Bednorz, worked out the principles and the first experiments in the IBM laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland, not exactly a scientific backwater, but not one of its hot spots, either. For several years the researchers did not let anyone else in on their work, not because they were afraid it would be stolen, but because they were afraid that their colleagues would laugh at their seemingly crazy ideas. They received their Nobel prizes for physics in 1987. Susumu Tonegawa, who that same year received the Nobel prize for biology, was described by his wife as a “going-his-own-way kind of a person” who likes sumo wrestling because it takes individual effort and not team performance to win in that sport, just as in his own work. Clearly the necessity of sophisticated laboratories and enormous research teams has been somewhat exaggerated. Breakthroughs in science still depend primarily on the resources of a single mind.

But we should not be concerned primarily with what happens in the professional world of scientists. “Big Science” can take care of itself, or at least it should, given all the support it has been given since the experiments with splitting the atomic nucleus turned out to be such a hit. What concerns us here is amateur science, the delight that ordinary people can take in observing and recording laws of natural phenomena. It is important to realize that for centuries great scientists did their work as a hobby, because they were fascinated with the methods they had invented, rather than because they had jobs to do and fat government grants to spend.

Nicolaus Copernicus perfected his epochal description of planetary motions while he was a canon at the cathedral of Frauenburg, in Poland. Astronomical work certainly didn’t help his career in the Church, and for much of his life the main rewards he had were aesthetic, derived from the simple beauty of his system compared to the more cumbersome Ptolemaic model. Galileo had been trained in medicine, and what drove him into increasingly dangerous experimentation was the delight he took in figuring out such things as the location of the center of gravity of various solid objects. Isaac Newton formulated his major discoveries soon after he received his B.A. at Cambridge, in 1665, when the university was closed because of the plague. Newton had to spend two years in the safety and boredom of a country retreat, and he filled the time playing with his ideas about a universal theory of gravitation. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, held to be the founder of modern chemistry, was a public servant working for the Ferme Generale, the equivalent of the IRS in prerevolutionary France. He was also involved in agricultural reform and social planning, but his elegant and classic experiments are what he enjoyed doing most. Luigi Galvani, who did the basic research on how muscles and nerves conduct electricity, which in turn led to the invention of the electric battery, was a practicing physician until the end of his life. Gregor Mendel was another clergyman, and his experiments that set the foundations of genetics were the results of a gardening hobby. When Albert A. Michelson, the first person in the United States to win a Nobel prize in science, was asked at the end of his life why he had devoted so much of his time to measuring the velocity of light, he is said to have replied, “It was so much fun.” And, lest we forget, Einstein wrote his most influential papers while working as a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office. These and the many other great scientists one could easily mention were not handicapped in their thinking because they were not “professionals” in their field, recognized figures with sources of legitimate support. They simply did what they enjoyed doing.

Is the situation really that different these days? Is it really true that a person without a Ph.D., who is not working at one of the major research centers, no longer has any chance of contributing to the advancement of science? Or is this just one of those largely unconscious efforts at mystification to which all successful institutions inevitably succumb? It is difficult to answer these questions, partly because what constitutes “science” is of course defined by those very institutions that are in line to benefit from their monopoly.

There is no doubt that a layman cannot contribute, as a hobby, to the kind of research that depends on multibillion-dollar supercolliders, or on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. But then, such fields do not represent the only science there is. The mental framework that makes science enjoyable is accessible to everyone. It involves curiosity, careful observation, a disciplined way of recording events, and finding ways to tease out the underlying regularities in what one learns. It also requires the humility to be willing to learn from the results of past investigators, coupled with enough skepticism and openness of mind to reject beliefs that are not supported by facts.

Defined in this broad sense, there are more practicing amateur scientists than one would think. Some focus their interest on health, and try to find out everything they can about a disease that threatens them or their families. Following in Mendel’s footsteps, some learn whatever they can about breeding domestic animals, or creating new hybrid flowers. Others diligently replicate the observations of early astronomers with their backyard telescopes. There are closet geologists who roam the wilderness in search of minerals, cactus collectors who scour the desert mesas for new specimens, and probably hundreds of thousands of individuals who have pushed their mechanical skills to the point that they are verging on true scientific understanding.

What keeps many of these people from developing their skills further is the belief that they will never be able to become genuine, “professional” scientists, and therefore that their hobby should not be taken seriously. But there is no better reason for doing science than the sense of order it brings to the mind of the seeker. If flow, rather than success and recognition, is the measure by which to judge its value, science can contribute immensely to the quality of life.