Effortless Action as the removal of the Free Won’t

May 22nd, 2007 Fred McVittie Posted in Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi, Flow, Free will, Slingerland, Edward |

The condition of ‘Flow’ described by Cziksentmihalyi is the unimpeded acceptance of appropriate intuitive action, the minimal operation of the Free Won’t. This state is a non-standard experience of consciousness in which (self) awareness is both extended and heightened. An implication of this is that the awareness that we think of as normal is a construction of the ongoing operation of Free Won’t. We are normally self-aware because we are normally preventing ourselves from doing things. The Flow state is similar in many ways to that of Wu Wei, or ‘effortless action’ described in Chinese philosophy and analysed by Slingerland. The apparent paradox of ‘Effortless Action’ in which one ‘does nothing, and yet nothing is left undone’, is resolved if we understand that the ‘doing nothing’ which is referred to is the active nay saying which forms a part of routine consciousness. When this constant, identity-forming negation is removed, then what is left is the smooth, unimpeded flow of experience and being.

Slingerland, E. (2003) Effortless Action: Wu-wei As Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. Oxford University Press.