This is part of a two-chapter series on the psychology of things. Part 2, The Art of Seeing, focuses on the communication between the self and art, but this chapter, The Meaning of Things, explores how the self and things develop together in the first place.
The Meaning of Things
Humans have a love hate relationship with things. They can provide us with more freedom or less freedom depending on how we use them or how they use us. Defining the self and the object becomes confusing when objects and the self are so intertwined. In Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton’s book The Meaning of Things, they tackle this thorny subject and how it applies in modern society.
What is the self?
The self is complicated and wisely the book avoids exploring all descriptions of what a self can be. From the authors’ perspectives, the self can be narrowed down to avoid confusion when dealing with household objects studied in this book, but as you will see, making objects and trading them with others is an epic experience that includes all living people.
At the macro level things define for others who we are, our status, and our mental states. Things can also help create meaning and purpose for us if we choose to pay attention them in the right way. At the micro level the “self to a large extent is a reflection of things with which [it] interacts. Thus objects also make and use their makers.” We have to interact with things in order to develop the self further. For example, work, or hobbies.
Self-control and Self-awareness
The authors define the self in two ways to narrow down the scope. “The most basic fact about persons is that they are not only aware of their own existence but can assume control of that existence, directing it toward certain purposes. This, then, will be our starting point for a model of the self. We shall take self-awareness and self-control as givens.” For the authors, “self-awareness is a process occurring in time, [therefore] the self can never be known directly.” As we interact with the world we develop “feelings, memories, and thoughts.” With language and thought, symbols of the self can be created based on facts about our experiences. “Self-awareness occurs when the self becomes the object of reflection. When we say ‘Who am I?’ we attend to certain bits of information or signs that represent the ‘I’, and these signs become an object of interpretation. Self-awareness, resulting from an act of [comparing the facts], is always open to correction, change, and development. Therefore it seems more correct to think of self-awareness as a process of self-control.”
Cultivation
After defining the self, the authors part ways with other attempts at finding an origin for the self by emphasizing cultivation. They define cultivation as “a process of interpretation and self-control motivated by goals rather than by origins.” Cultivation starts by choosing to use psychic energy to control attention, to then direct it towards objects of interest, in an otherwise chaotic sensory and thinking experience.
Psychic energy is real in that we can deplete it with constant control of the attention span. [See: Attention and Effort: https://rumble.com/v1gpl0j-attention-and-effort-daniel-kahneman.html]
Intentions personal and social
To watch how this energy depletion unfolds you need to see situations where your attention span is automatically moving to objects of interest and the effort required to concentrate the attention to something else that has priority. When there is a large desire to move attention to a different direction, it requires more energy to guide it back.
People who have personal intentions toward goals will see that their social system they live in is a collection of individual intentions that may or may not be in alignment. As people share similar intentions in a cooperative manner, a culture develops. When intentions are not shared, especially when they cancel each other out, there is conflict. As new members join different groups, they then have the stress of reordering their attention in the same way as the existing social system to reduce conflict.
Just so that conformists don’t start a party yet, the authors say that, “it is possible for each individual to cultivate goals without producing conflict in the community. This would result in an integrated group of people pursuing a common goal while contributing their own unique perspectives to that goal. Plurality, not homogeneity.”
Addiction
Finding harmony is an important topic for those who decide to wear a mask and ignore their authentic feelings to join a group. All people have to don a mask at one time or another, but it is healthier for the self to find authentic connections with others to prevent energy depletion from being inauthentic. When the energy is depleted the mask falls off and the feelings of alienation are communicated in conflict and pathology. If the only reward, in activities done for the group, is consumer consumption then addiction will follow. At some point the self has to find a way to be satisfied by personally chosen goals that connect with others, to avoid the consequences of modern alienation such as depression and suicide.
The authors warn that, “the danger of focusing attention exclusively on a goal of physical consumption – or materialism – is that one does not attend enough to the cultivation of the self, to the relationship with others, or to the broader purposes that affect life. The acquisition and maintenance of objects can easily fill up a person’s life, until there is no time to do anything else, not even to use the things that are exhausting all of one’s psychic energy. When such a pass is reached, the adaptive value of objects is reversed; instead of liberating psychic activity, the things bind it to useless tasks. The former tool turns its master into its slave.”
Internal and External Motivation
When organized with others, the individual has to then look to external rewards to maintain this attention towards group goals. For most people, this is money, which temporarily reduces this psychic conflict. Though the conflict doesn’t end there. Each individual can have conflicting intentions that drain psychic energy further. By aligning personal goals with group goals, the worker can repeatedly intend and condition their attention to match the other senior members of the group. The authors state that “the optimal state of experience for the individual is one in which intentions are not in conflict with each other. With inner harmony people can freely choose to invest their psychic energy in goals that are congruent with the rest of their intentions. This is felt to be a state of heightened energy, a state of increased control. The experience is considered challenging and enjoyable.”
Inner and outer conflict
When one’s attention is split all the time between different goals, the need for more attention control drains energy from the subject. This psychic entropy, or psychic disorder, leads to experiences of “anxiety, frustration, alienation, or boredom, all referring to temporary impairments of psychic activity.” One of the reasons why people retreat from community goals is due to the number of people and their conflicting intentions. As those with power repeatedly change direction in their organization’s goals, the natural stress that occurs for each change, drains the energy of those who’s attention spans are being directed by others. “When a group is in an entropic state the intentions of its members cancel out each other instead of contributing toward each person’s goals.”
What is a Thing?
The authors also look at what a thing is for the self. They define it as, “any bit of information that has a recognizable identity in consciousness, a pattern that has enough coherence, or internal order, to evoke a consistent image or label. Such a unit of information might be called a sign“, which is based on qualities of the object, or ideas. Things connect with our consciousness via perception. As we remember more qualities of a thing, it can organize memory in such a way that the self can make sense of the world.
Things can be rated on utility and status. Status symbols say to the self that the owner of that thing has command over other people’s attention in that they can receive enough money from the group’s efforts that they can afford those objects. This can go further in how we objectify romantic partners based on their utility, beauty and health. Our entire body, and our possessions send out signs to others.
Meaning making in household objects
To the authors who view cultivation as the key to the self, then the cultivation involves actions of “creating and then interacting with the material world.” By cultivating to master chaos, the self develops purpose and direction in life. For example, family heirlooms can be valuable to families because the care shown by prior generations provides a sign that the family has enough virtue to prevent the object from breaking; breaking being a common way of defining entropy or chaos. The heirloom can be a sign that transmits to younger generations in the family those virtues that helped to keep it safe. Objects of lasting value also provide emotional comfort. With constant change in life, a long lasting object can be a sign of stability.
Things can also bond people to each other. There is psychic energy invested in purchasing, or making a gift. When it is given it is a form of giving the self over to another person. When it is reciprocated, then an emotional bond is formed and harmony is reinforced.
Making meaning as a group
Humans have always used religion as a way to reinforce harmony in society, but now that traditional religions are on the wane, there is still an emotional need to connect with others and create harmony. For the authors they believe religion will exist in one form or another. “The essential purpose that religions have served has been indispensable and will be so in the future, regardless of what forms the religious impulse takes. It is impossible to imagine human life without a map or blueprint as to how the cosmos is organized, what makes it related, and how humans fit in it. Whether this map will be produced by science or politics or a revamped version of an old religion, the attempt to realize integration will be essentially ‘religious,’ even if couched in scientific terminology, because it will have to represent through signs a set of relationships that probably will never be completely exhausted.”
What is individual freedom in social groups?
This harmony that most seek starts with the individual. The individual self enjoys flow coming from the freedom to guide the attention span in the self’s authentic ways. These authentic ways must be long-term in scope and based on valued individual goals and ultimate goals for the social group. Freedom is not just complete freedom. “To be free means to be free for some purpose.“
When people actively choose their intentions based on their authentic feelings, and align them with personal and social goals, then pleasure becomes less connected with material success. A more robust form of happiness in a chaotic world.
A new perception
What I got the most out of this book was a new way of seeing the world. In a restaurant I enjoy, where I was reading this book, I started looking at all the objects on the patio, and boring buildings across the street. They all seemed to breathe life full of the intentional energy of others. A boring building for the people involved in making it may not have been so boring to them. It may have been an important source of income. There could have been flow experiences generated by the builders. If the building is old and those who made it or used it are dead now, then it is a remaining legacy of their psychic energy. I also got a sense of loneliness thinking about how people put effort into these structures and in most cases people don’t see them with this perception. A new way to value people and to appreciate their efforts is to recognize their investment of intentions to pay attention to these goals. Our risky investment is ultimately where we choose to direct our attention.
The Meaning of Things – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi & Eugene Rochberg-Halton: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521287746/
Attention and Effort – Daniel Kahneman: https://psychreviews.org/attention-and-effort-daniel-kahneman/
Flow in 7 steps – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://psychreviews.org/flow-in-7-steps-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi/
Part 2: The Art of Seeing – Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson: https://psychreviews.org/the-art-of-seeing-csikszentmihalyi-robinson/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/