{"id":850,"date":"2020-01-18T08:45:23","date_gmt":"2020-01-18T14:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/?p=850"},"modified":"2023-07-01T06:29:44","modified_gmt":"2023-07-01T11:29:44","slug":"the-flow-of-thought-part-6-becoming-amateur-historians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationalrenaissance.com\/2020\/01\/18\/the-flow-of-thought-part-6-becoming-amateur-historians\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flow of Thought, Part 6: Becoming Amateur Historians"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve never been one for journaling. It\u2019s not for lack of trying or admiration for the idea behind the practice. But keeping a journal and writing down my thoughts about myself or what I experienced that day just never caught on for me. I was almost tempted to say that it would have felt too egotistical to me to record my everyday feelings and happenings, but that\u2019s not entirely the truth. I\u2019ve had plenty of egoism to support that; it\u2019s more that the trivialities of most days didn\u2019t strike me as worthy of that sort of memorialization. And so, not having something important enough to write every day meant it was impossible for me to keep journaling up as a habit. That is, until I found Ryder Carrol\u2019s The Bullet Journal Method<\/a>: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future <\/em>(https:\/\/bulletjournal.com\/pages\/book<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was musing around the local public library a year and a\nhalf ago looking for inspiring non-fiction, when what should I stumble across\nin the new books section but this gem. I\u2019ve been hooked ever since. I think the\nreason is because it released me from the necessity of writing ornate literary\nprose about my life, and instead gave me a method for tracking the things that\nwere important to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve delved deeper and deeper into the work of classical\nschool administration and teaching, it\u2019s become more and more necessary for me\nto increase my productivity and decrease my stress levels. As I\u2019ve become a\nfather, it\u2019s become more important to keep my personal habits dialed in, like\ndevotional reading and prayer, exercise, quality time with my wife and play\ntime with my daughter. Bullet journaling has given me a way to track that and\nother things, as well as a space to dream and plan, such that I have a clear\nrecord of my own thoughts and goals and progress. And going back over my old\njournals from the past couple years clears away the fog from my memory, gives\nme a sense of peace, and makes me an amateur historian of my own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This little anecdote, or testimonial (whichever you prefer), is all a prelude to this next installment inspired by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi\u2019s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience<\/a><\/em>. In one of the later sections of his chapter on \u201cThe Flow of Thought\u201d (in which are found more reasons per page for a classical education than most classical ed best-sellers), he discusses the realm of history, as an avenue into the flow state<\/a>: that active ordering of consciousness where the challenge meets our current abilities and we enter a timeless experience of joy in the pursuit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous articles in this series, The Flow of Thought: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 1: Training the Attention for Happiness\u2019 Sake<\/a>; Part 2: The Joy of Memory<\/a>; Part 3: Narration as Flow<\/a>; Part 4: The Seven Liberal Arts as Mental Games<\/a>; Part 5: The Play of Words<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Future installments: Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom<\/a>; Part 8, Restoring the School of Philosophers<\/a><\/font><\/u>, Part 9, The Lifelong Love of Learning<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

History as a Route into Flow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our psychologist begins by conceding that history may be a little bit trickier of a flow activity<\/a> than some other classical subjects:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cAlthough 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.\u201d (132)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ll remember that having clear rules is one of the qualities\nthat make the experience of flow easily attainable. If your brain knows what to\ndo and what not to do, then it\u2019s easier to play the game with full intensity\nand without the hesitation and worry that so often causes our conscious minds\nto step out of focus on what we\u2019re doing and start questioning the activity or ourselves.\nThe saving grace of history is its \u201cunambiguous structure\u201d found in the\nsequence of time. Csikszentmihalyi goes on to claim that amateur historiography\nhas served the purpose of ordering human consciousness for a long time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cObserving, 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.\u201d (132)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Recall our earlier article on The Joy of Memory<\/a> (pun intended), and how the recollection of one\u2019s ancestors was one of the most satisfying and ubiquitous experiences of early, personal history. Just to recount the names of those who came before, often at great length, served the purpose of situating the individual within the larger tribe or clan, within the broader story of time. As human beings we have always felt great pleasure in this rehearsal (at least until our modern ultra-individualistic age). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"old<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a reason the Bible is full of genealogies, and while\npart of that is how they establish the historical purpose and accuracy of the\ntext, the genealogies also witness to this human love for knowledge of the past\nand how it leads up to the present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

History and Modern Individualism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the most striking features of our psychologist\u2019s\nencouragement to amateur historiography is how focused it is on the individual.\nFrom a Christian and classical perspective, this seems both uniquely right, and\nstrangely unsettling and off-kilter. To understand why this paradox could be\nthe case, listen to this paragraph on becoming an amateur historian:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cIn 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\u2019s garbled histories of their childhood.\u201d (132)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, his emphasis here is perfectly understandable,\ngiven that he is a psychologist. His focus on the individual\u2019s story, especially\ntheir childhood, makes perfect sense, given the history of the discipline and\nsuch luminaries as Freud and Jung. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And from a Christian perspective, the importance of a single individual cannot be overestimated: created in the image of God, our personal stories are of immense value and worth. All the hairs of our head are numbered and not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of our Father. Our calling includes culture making<\/a> and making something of our personal past is certainly a legitimate part of the human vocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the way that he approaches the subject seems symptomatic of one of the great failings of the modern era: the abandonment of piety<\/a> and tradition. Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain in The Liberal Arts Tradition<\/a><\/em> diagnose the modern offense of impiety against our whole culture that we have inherited (Version 2.0; pp. 15ff.)\u2014a situation that explains more than any other our particular educational weaknesses in the study of history. I\u2019m alluding to the outcry against our general ignorance of our own history (whether American history for us Americans, or basic world knowledge, like the \u201cWho\u2019s Shakespeare?\u201d comments of young adults). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How does this ignorance stem from impiety, you may ask? Our\npsychologist\u2019s description of the different levels of history provides a good\nexample of what I mean. Notice the order in which his practical suggestions\nflow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere 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 \u2018real\u2019 amateur historians.\u201d (133)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Did you catch it? First comes the individual and the\njournaling that I opened this article with, then comes the \u201cfamily chronical,\u201d\nfollowed lastly by the \u201cethnic group,\u201d the larger cultural unit of one\u2019s\npeople. In a way, this is entirely backward. First in a child\u2019s historical\nconsciousness should be the history of his people, followed by how his family\u2019s\nhistory is situated within it, and only lastly how his emerging personal\nhistory contributes and relates to the history of the family and people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sense of piety<\/a>, of duty or obligation to one\u2019s family, city, culture and the divine, would properly recognize the individual as coming into the world dependent and situated within the broader story of the culture, within which the family and individual find their place. This contrasts sharply with the quest for \u201cself-discovery among a buffet of potential selves\u201d that characterizes modern individualism (Clark and Jain 22). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for understandable reasons, our psychologist\u2019s instruction\nmanual begins with the unmoored modern adult floating on a sea of individual\npreferences, and imagines her taking up the work of journaling to solve her \u201cpersonal\u201d\nproblems, only to delve into the psychologically restorative and satisfying\nwork of digging up her family past, ending in a great culmination of expanding\ninterest in the history of her broader \u201cethnic group\u201d as a sort of hobby to\nfill up the spare hours of old age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Csikszentmihalyi puts it,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cRemembering the past is not only instrumental in the creation and preservation of a personal identity, but it can also be a very enjoyable process.\u201d (132)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What I find most saddening about this set of assumptions is how lonely it must feel to operate in a world of personal-history-making rather than the old ideal of grand historical discovery. We are born into a world that already has a history, irrespective of us and our psychological needs and preferences. And this historical sweep will continue on long after we are gone (assuming the Lord tarries), and it is immensely freeing and enlivening to recognize this fact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside:<\/em> Download the Free eBook “5 Tips for Fostering Flow in the Classical Classroom”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Wondering how to practically apply the idea of flow in your classroom? These 5 actionable steps will help you keep the insights of flow from being a pie-in-the-sky idea. Embody flow in your classroom and witness the increased joy and skill development that result!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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