[Editor's
note: In Minessence eZine #3 I talked
about the importance of creating a state
of negative entropy in consciousness to
the creation of happiness in our lives.
After reading the work of De Botton and
Birch and finding a similar convergence
of thought, I believed it was time to
touch base on this topic again.]
As far back as 306 BC, Epicurus had
formulated a recipe for happiness. All
we needed were:
- Friends
- Freedom, and
- to Live a Thoughtful (Reflective)
Life (De Botton 2001, pp. 56-58).
Epicurus believed that money would
not make us happy. If we were not happy
before we had money (material wealth) we
would not be any more happy (less
unhappy) when we had money. Happiness
was related to how we lived, not what we
owned. See the diagrams below (De Botton
2001, pp. 61-62):
In the 1990s
Csikszentmihalyi, after researching what
made 100,000+ people happy, came to the
conclusion that happiness was the
ultimate goal of all humans:
While
happiness itself is sought for its own
sake, every other goal - health,
beauty, money, or power - is valued
only because we expect that it will
make us happy (Csikszentmihalyi
1998, p. 1).
Interestingly he found
people were still struggling under the
same delusion as in Epicurus's day,
'that material wealth is the path to
happiness'.
What Csikszentmihalyi
also discovered was that happiness could
be created through reducing the
disorder in our consciousness, or in
Csikszentmihalyi words, 'reducing our
psychic entropy' (1998
Csikszentmihalyi, p. 36). [Note: entropy
is a measure of disorder and chaos. As
entropy is reduced, order is created and
chaos reduced. The state of high order
is also referred to as a state of negative
entropy.]
Interestingly, in 1944
Schrodinger (cited Birch 1999, p. 3)
believed that the distinguishing feature
between living and non-living things was
that life fed off negative entropy,
'whereas the universe as a whole is
becoming less ordered (positive
entropy), life creates greater
order (negative entropy).
It seems that negative
entropy is not just a characteristic of
life but also, creating that state in
our mind, is essential for our
happiness.
Lowen and Miike (1982),
in developing a systems science model of
the brain, gave us the first clue as to
how this state was theoretically
achieved. In 1995, Colins and
Chippendale developed a technique for
mapping the brain's preferences, based
on a person's values. Using this
Brain-Preference Map people would,
theoretically, be able to create
'entropy flow' in their brain. Low and
behold it worked! The results were just
as Lowen and Miike's theory predicted.
Ever since, people who
have taken an inventory of their values,
and who have then had their
Brain-Preference Map produced, have been
stunned with the positive impact on
their lives.
References
Birch, C. 1999, Biology and the
Riddle of Life, UNSW Press, Sydney.
Colins, C. & Chippendale, P.
1995, New Wisdom II: Values-Based
Development, ACORN Publications,
Brisbane.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1998, Flow:
The Psychology of Happiness, Rider,
London.
De Botton, A. 2001, The
Consolations of Philosophy, Penguin,
Australia.
Lowen, W. & Miike, L. 1982, Dichotomies
of the Mind: A Systems Science Model of
the Mind and Personality, John Wiley
& Sons, New York.