Childhood is to youth what manhood is to age. Children must first by fear be induced to know that which after when they do know, they are most glad of. Some examinations show wide individual variations, inasmuch as some trace their first reminiscences to the sixth month of life, while others can recall nothing of their lives before the end of the sixth or even the eight years. I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile amnesia—that is, the failure of memory for the first years of our lives—and fail to find it strange in a riddle.   We forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable. We really ought to wonder why the memory of later years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming that these same forgotten childhood activities have not glided off without leaving a trace in the development of the person, but that they have left a definite influence for all future time. Yet, in spite of this unparalleled effectiveness they were forgotten!  This would suggest that there are particularly formed conditions of memory (in the sense of conscious reproduction) which have this far eluded our knowledge. It is quite possible that the forgetting of childhood many give us the key to the understanding of those amnesias which, according to our newer studies, rest at the basis of the formation of all neurotic symptoms.

Of these retained childhood reminiscences, some appear to us readily comprehensible, while others seem strange or unintelligible, much like the gibberish in Rihanna’s song “Work.” It is not difficult to correct certain errors in regard to both kinds.  If the retained reminiscences of a person are subjected to an analytic test, it can be readily ascertained that a guarantee for their correctness does not exists. Some of the memory pictures are surely falsified and incomplete or displaced in point of time and place. The assertions of persons examined, that their first memories reach back perhaps to their second year, are evidently unreliable. Motives can soon be discovered which explain the disfigurement and the displacement of these experiences, but they also demonstrate that these memory lapses are not the result of a mere unreliable memory. Powerful forces from a later period have moulded the memory capacity to our infantile experiences, and it is probably due to these same forces that the understanding of our childhood is generally so very strange to us.  The recollection of adults, as is known, proceeds through different psychic material. Some recall by means of visual pictures—their memories are of visual character; other individuals can scarcely reproduce in memory the most partly sketch of an experience; we call such persons “aduitifs” and “moteurs” in contrast to the “visuels.” These differences vanish in dreams; all our dreams are preponderatingly visual. However, the development is also found in the childhood memories; the latter are plastic and visual, even in those people whose later memories lacks the visual element.

The visual memory, therefore, preserves the type of infantile recollections. Only my earliest childhood memories are of a visual character; they represent plastically depicted scenes, comparable only to stage settings.   In these scenes of childhood, whether they prove to be true or false, one usually sees his own childish person both in countour and dress. This circumstance must excite our wonder, for adults do not see their own person in their recollections of later experiences. It is, moreover, against our experiences to assume that the child’s attention during his experiences is centered on himself rather than exclusively on outside impressions. Various sources force us to assume that the so-called earliest childhood recollections are not true memory traces but later elaborations of the same, elaborations which might have been subjected to the influences of many later psychic forces. Thus, the “childhood reminiscences” of individuals altogether advance to the significations of “concealing memories,” and thereby from a noteworthy analogy to the childhood reminiscences as laid down in the legend and myths of nations. Whoever has examined mentally a number of persons by the method of psychoanalysis must have gathered in this work numerous examples of concealing memories of every description. However, owing to the previously discussed nature of the relations of the childhood reminiscences to later life, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to report such examples. For, in order to attach the value of the concealing memory to an infantile reminiscence, it would be often necessary to present the entire life-history of the person concerned. Only seldom is it possible, as in the following good example, to take out from its context and report a single childhood memory.

A twenty-four-year-old man preserved the following picture from the fifth year of his life: In the garden of a summerhouse, he sat on a stool next to his aunt, who was engaged in teaching him the alphabet. He found difficulty in distinguishing the letter m from n, and he begged his aunt to tell him how to tell one from the other. His aunt called his attention to the fact that the letter m had one whole portion (a stoke) more than the letter n. There was no reason to dispute the reliability of this childhood recollection; its meaning, however, was discovered only later, when it showed itself to be the symbolic representation of another boyish inquisitiveness. For just as he wanted to know the difference between m and n at that time, so he concerned himself later about the difference between boy and girl, and he would have been willing that just this aunt should be his teacher. He also discovered that the difference was a similar one; that the boy again had one whole portion more than the girl, and at the time of this recognition, his memory awoke to the corresponding childish inquisitiveness.  

Having assented to the initial titillation of eavesdropping, the celebrity could not even plead entrapment. Today, 4 April 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown sets the highest minimum wage in the country of $15 dollars an hour by 2022. However, not that I am pushing for this, but many economists report that by now minimum wage should be $24 dollars an hour if he kept up with inflation. Critics are saying that a $15 an hour minimum wage will cause layoffs, raise rents and prices of food, and make it harder for people who are retired or on public assistance. Yet, the whole programs seem to be staged so that no one really loses. There are cost of living increases for retirement benefits and cities and counties even require that private developers set aside housing units for low-income workers.   We are constantly reassured by the government that overrides the critics that everything is real and will be okay because there is justice in America and if your fall short of your dreams, goals, or budgets, there is a safety net you paid for with your tax dollars that will provide a certain percentage of life the life you used to live, and in the meantime, you can find other options to regain your former lifestyle. While people say they understand what is going on, there is a difference between understanding and actually experiencing a situation on a particular level for so long. There is no one to trust, there are constant intrusions and threats. When all boundaries are erased and up for sale, what is there to prevent the selling of people as products in contemporary America? Like most important social phenomena, it begins in innocent ways.   

The popularity of the tabloid picture over the serious story demonstrated again and again that the public preferred the frivolous against the serious. People seemed to want escapist fantasy, a feeling of person identification with fictitious characters and celebrities, even more than they wanted the truth. This strong overlap does not mean that distinction between reality and unreality is useless or meaningless, but rather, like all important social phenomena, it is complex.   If we have a better idea of how and why unreality is produced, then we may have a better chance of assessing both its influence and the possibility of its containment, if not reversal. With boundary warping there is a deliberate distortion and confusion between traditional realms of reality, for example, between entertainment and news; the general rule is that everything that appears on TV, and every segment of our society, is a branch of entertainment. Reality consists of all those sets of carefully negotiated and evolved distinctions between things that many find convenient for giving order to our World. Reality marks off the boundaries between critical things, events and processes.  However, different cultures do not draw the same boundaries around things, especially those that are critical to everyday life. Unreality is the result of the massive infusion of entertainment into every realm of human affairs to the point that everything threatens to become nothing but a spinoff of its truth.  

Unreality occurs when everything not only becomes a sub-branch of entertainment, but does do in ways that many are not even aware that it has occurred. Under the rubric of entertainment there is an invasion into your life and reality is denied, distorted, and generally kept invisible from the public. People start to think that you are a source of entertainment and the things that happen to you are part of a game because they are hooked on massive dosages of entertainment in order to function. Image engineering has become so popular that human beings are capable of producing any kind of appearance (photo, video, hologram) that you can imagine, constructed electronically and is capable of interacting with any other image. Person engineering is also become popular, and it is like genetically engineering, but with beings that are already living. The general principle is that a specific person can be manufactured or made over to embody any set of personality characteristics determined by market research to be appealing to a significant segment of the population.  The human experience has become so deeply organized around recurrent symbols that they continually have more power over many than actions. Symbols are now so powerful that they are archetypes. For example, the young prince no longer is a person, but he is an ancient fairy tale passed on from generation to generation and is a deep part of the culture that he is embedded into the point he is detached from being a living being, but only seen as a representative.   

The young prince is now simply used in the context of selling products, and it is a process that possess a number of disturbing features which thus qualify for inclusion under Boundary Warping. His World may no longer be as tangible as your, but more symbolic and metaphorical. Instead of being human, he is viewed as a hybrid creature, who possess greater power, ability and intelligence. In effect, he is endowed with the ability to solve human problems. However, even more significantly, all boundaries are inherently unstable. In contrast, the humans are generally portrayed as a product of their environment, helpless, and usually crumble in the face of overwhelming problems. Thus, humans are generally portrayed as both passive and paralyzed by their fears and limitation. Boundary Warping thus plays a prominent role in the Universe in which such beings exist because it is a World you can never completely trust. The World is always on the verge of transforming instantly into something else. Because humans are not responsible enough to be accountable for their actions, there is no stability in existence.  The main goal of unreality is to remove history or ordinary time as we normally experience it so that the public can have the illusion that no matter what happens to you, you will live forever. And figures of authority serve to trigger powerful acts of destruction devoid of any moral or social context whatsoever. Indeed, an apocalypse is often a current theme. One of the most disturbing aspects of unreality, however, is that the psychopath may be more accepted and understood than those who supposedly have a grip on reality, and that is why outlandish things are able to happen to some people and the perpetrators go unpunished. The infrastructure penetration and contamination of the manufacturing of unreality has reached such proportions that it has literally infiltrated itself into virtually every aspect of American life; the phenomenon is thus so deeply and widely entrenched into very lifeblood of American society that its eradication is highly problematic at this point.  American culture stands to become a vast wasteland of programmatic ignorance or unreality creation on the face of the planet. This is why experts tell you to limit the time your kids can watch TV and use social media. Make them read books and play outside. This also goes for adults. TV has rendered traditional causality, traditional sequence of events, irrelevant. Boundary warping can be trivial and frivolous to socially significant and potentially Earthshattering.  

News is supposed to give us information in order to function more effectively in a complex World. However, pseudo reality, like reality TV shows, music videos, and the lifestyles of the rich and famous makes the unreal or out of touch looks so entertaining that many people no longer care about reality. And because most people are so tuned into unreality, many can no longer care to differentiate between reality and unreality, even if they could. If someone hears something they do not want to deal with or believe, they just say, “That’s crazy,” or they find someone to take down and unfairly blame for the situation, often times without that individual being around to defend themselves, and will go as far as to make a punishment for them. New critical observers, including the networks themselves, resist any longer the notions that TV news has become so infused by the techniques of entertainment that, for all practical purposes, TV news, in many cases, has become just another form of entertainment. The morning news shows have so consciously and deliberately adopted entertainment formats that the networks not only admit openly that they have become pure entertainment, but they even discuss and debate the percentages of entertainment content the shows are supposed to have. It is probably even fairer to say that at best the thinking of the news networks is perfectly schizophrenic on the issue. The barriers between the entertainment and news divisions have now merged and instead of hard news, you get news with personality. Having crossed over the line into entertainment, the nightly news programs are becoming news soap operas because they are not only face competition from other news programs, which are also trying to jockey their position, but from other prime time TV programs that they are trying to displace. TV news has become almost pure entertainment is clear from its adoption of most of the techniques that are characteristic of entertainment. For instance, after a tragedy, reporters always use the statement, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected,” knowing maybe only 15 percent of them will actually say a prayer.

The most obvious features that news is entertainment is: The glitzy, hi-technology studio sets; the pretty faces, not only women, but men wearing blush, wigs, lip-gloss and lipstick. The entertaining personalities of the anchors and special assignment people; the easy flowing conversation and back and forth banter among the news team that has the appearance of being spontaneous, but is often rehearsed as much as a talk show (at best we witness a form of improvisational melodrama); the fact that rarely, if ever, do we witness open conflict, debate, and confrontation between the news anchors. The fact that mainly only surface issues in the form of numbers get reported (e.g., how many mines are there in Syria, how many combatant soldiers have been captures, etc.), not the deeper why’s of the situation. There are stunning visuals which generally introduce the shows by zooming in on the city or region in relations to the rest of the United States of America; the slick graphics that transition the movement between news segments; the tantalizing teasers with their accompanying provocative headlines announcing segments to comes; the intermingling of the titillating and the humorous with the semi-serious, especially on the morning “news” programs.; the constant interspersing of the bizarre, celebrity guest-sports, the inane, and the potentially World shattering. The overall effect is one where the studio set, the look, and the feel of the show, the newscasters as both personal friends and storytellers of a very special kind to the viewing public predominate. The news no longer just informs you; it entertains you. Ha Ha Ha, Ha! 

The industry of unreality can no longer leave the social construction of reality to society, random chance or accident. Unreality is a major business and manufacturing it and spoon feeding it to the masses is easy. Most people are far too lazy to pick up a book and read because it takes critical thinking and concentration. They would rather be spoon fed sleazy gossip through the media about things that do not matter because they are easy to invoke anger and respond to. It is estimated 70 percent that what passes for news and information in our society is deliberately manufactured and distorted. The end consequence is that society is less able to face its true problems directly, honestly, and intelligently. A further consequence is that it takes crises of increasing impact, like what recently happen in Belgium and Nature Fury of wild weather events to redirect our attention back to reality, if then. However, even mega-crises seem to be no longer sufficient to capture our attention in a society that has become anesthetized to crises of all kinds. How does one separate illusion from reality in an electronic society the serves up soup kitchen visions of disaster nearly every day? It could be that American experienced 911 as yet another media event, something witnessed, but not quite real.

Individuals are getting used to the idea of sudden media temper tantrums followed by sudden recoveries that just take texting a couple of dollars to the Red Cross or the Salvation Army to face. People do not smell the stench of dead bodies that linger in the streets for months, the smell of concentrated urine and feces on adults and child(ren), that would make one throw up. They do not know that injuries are more than just cuts and bruises, but fracture bones that will hurt for life. Great public crises come and go, Aaliyah’s airplane crashes—but life goes on, even though 9 people were killed. People are accepting this weird way of life as a given. Unreality has some serious impacts on individuals, and our society as a whole. Injuries, assaults, threats, harassment and death affect more than just the immediate family. The phenomenon of unreality is so multifaceted that if defies both definition and examination through any single lens. The reason unreality is so powerful a force in our society is precisely that it is a result of a combination of mutually reinforcing influences. Social media, TV, newspapers, religion, film, and politics all illustrate and reinforce unreality. The lies and falsehoods that the media, producers, talent agents, and corporations want you to believe is not only ripping families apart, but the government also. 

Apple recently took the Federal Bureau of Investigation to court to prevent them from having a master key to Apple products, which would be used in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks. No one wants another 911 attack or Boston Bombing, and the FBI should be allowed to use whatever means necessary to stop them. Some people die in these attacks, but others survive and end up with missing feet, arms, and legs, or head injuries so bad that they become intellectually disabled. Sometimes their faces get burned off and become disfigured, and no one should have to die nor live that way when we have the technology to prevent these mega disasters from even happening. Technology should also be used to make our lives safer, not just make people look cool, allow people to get away with doing whatever they want, or destroy families. The media (social media, TV, newspapers, cell phones) plays a huge role in dissemination and fostering of unreality, but it also shows that the role of the various communication media cannot be properly understood unless we also understand how they function within the larger entertainment industry. If it is not fun, cute, dramatic, or packaged in a ten-second sound bite, then forget it. If it cannot be presented with a smiling, cheerful, sexy face, then it is not worth attending to. 

We are all spectators in a grand entertainment society looking up at the few superstars on the stage who not only perform, but stand out enough to be labeled heroes of our age. In contemporary America, one is either a celebrity or one is nobody. The cycle of sin, denial, confession, and sin again is thus another of our principal forms of entertainment. To complete the circle, entertainment itself is one of the biggest factors contributing to the denial of reality, and hence, to the continued rise of unreality. This, then, is the Age of Unreality and Disinformation. People use entertainment as a substitute for dealing directly with problems. We have become so adept at the manufacturing and consumption of fantasy that the distinction between reality and unreality is now virtually meaningless. Unreality One refers to the fact that we are imaginary person, pace, or things that an electronic image and a real person can interact at the same time on a computer screen or TV so that a viewer cannot tell whether one or both of the images are real or not. An image of Matthew Ryan Philippe and Randolph Harris shaking hands or hitting one another can be projected on a screen and most people cannot tell if it is real or doctored. 

Consider another example. We are now able to store electronically an image of, say, Reese Witherspoon in a computer, then substitute for that one of Meryl Streep in Out of Africa so that if one wanted to see Reese Witherspoon in the role, one could do it without having to reshoot the entire movie. So now celebrities can sell packages of copy-written electronic images out right, and one can spend like $5,000.00 to get a photo with Matthew Ryan Phillippe and a handwritten letter and have never met him a day in their lives. But why not, in a society where people are encouraged to sell every fragment of their being or personality for profit? This is why Paris Hilton could be in Paris, France and in Beverly Hills at the exact same time, and you thought maybe there were two of her. The entertainment industry is all about profits and controlling the images of stars. This is a deliberate denial and distortion of reality, complexity, through the massive infusion of entertainment into every aspect of society which on its surface purports to deal with reality. The problem is the stars cannot always control their image and altered photography, in some cases, is used to intentionally rip their relationships apart. Your favorite TV hunk might be being held hostage by an unknown model Pauli Pocket (prostitute). 

As the reality in the World has become increasingly complex, especially since the invention of the internet, social media, and programs that allow one to alter photography, we have developed a fascination with unreality that is virtually psychopathic. Many media outlets, including tabloids, news, social media, and television programs have become some of the most pivotal social forces shaping out time, and the situation is particularly dangerous because we are on a collision course with reality. There is a pervading, powerful sense of unreality infiltrating our land, lives, and minds. People listen to celebrity gossip and watch the Basketball Wives and that becomes their Bible, their primary mode of reference. It dominates how and what they think of themselves and others, how they define their problems, shape their actions, and how they define their World. The media has become a testing ground for what producers and talent managers want to call reality. The Unreality Industry of the media is a disturbing phenomenon. We have seen it rip lives apart in Hollywood all the time. Often times, talent managers want to display a certain imagine to entice fans to like their group or celebrity, so they create fake relationships for the talent and false stories that they think the public would like to generate revenue, but sometimes it is also to privately destroy the celebrity and alienate him so he will feel that he has to submit to the will of his talent manager, or lose his job. 

The talent manager then controls the celebrities’ image through threats, public relationship juxtaposition, intentionally staged videos, and altered photography. The consequence is that the media not only defines what reality is, but much more importantly and disturbingly, the media obliterates families and the very distinction, the very line, between reality and unreality. Some might ask why not just display the real lives of these celebrities, that is what we want to see, what want to know they are real? The problem is that sex and drama sell. It has been proven that when there is a cat fight, threats, or a cheating scandal that ratings, sales, and papers all skyrocket and generates billions of dollars annually. Many of these celebrity stories and photography opportunities are deliberately manifested and sold on a gigantic scale. The end result is society is less able to face its true problems directly, honestly, and intelligently. Everything becomes a big drama or take down. In the process of the unreality industry, TV and other forms of media of mass communication and entertainment have degraded our general level of education and debased our national discourse. Instead of grappling honestly with our problems, i.e., of dealing directly with reality itself, people just ignore what they are doing and when you bring an issue to their attention they respond with states like, “What are you talking about?” or “Are you okay?” or “That’s crazy,” and inevitable drift to unreality reaches new lows. However, unreality is no longer just affecting the media, it has become so pervasive that it is seeping into everyday lives of many people.

 Because commercial television makes so much money doing its worst, it cannot afford to do its best and many have picked up on the fact that ignoring problems and pretending that people are crazy if a good way to save money in the short run, but the long-term cost can be quite expensive when remediation is required. Eventually if people keep drifting into unreality, the principles of evolution will produce a population indistinguishable from lower forms of primates and planet life. People will become super hostile or extremely fragile.  Some people suspect that their used to be life on other planet, Mars was once thought to be capable of sustaining life. There are burps of methane, which could indicate life or evidence of ancient methane been trapped which could show ancient life. There are also these dark, narrow, 100 metre long streaks called recurring slope lineage flowing downhill on Mars and are inferred to have been formed by water, and there is what looks like moss growing on Mars. Many are convinced that Mars was once inhabited by rational human beings like us, who had the misfortune, some 6,600 years ago, to allow television, gossip, and ignorance to control their lives, while ignoring the Word of God.  Unreality rises because of the way the mind is organized, people find it easier to gossip and watch TV, than to read educational books and play sports. 

The unique cultural history of many families predisposes many people around the World to the cult of unreality. The vast, powerful entertainment industry, now mixing with politicians who want to be celebrities, widens the influence the unrealistic media have over the television, print, politics, medical, educational, and the justice system. The power of the media has turned presidential candidates and debates into drama queens and malicious comedy. The deliberate, systematic manufacturing or unreality that has emerged primarily in reaction to our inability to cope with this new World of perverse complexity.  Society no longer wants overwhelming, complexity through longer trains of though necessary to achieve proper understanding of any event or phenomenon of education, technology, religion, nor modern society. God warns of the unreality industry, “You shall not bow down to them nor worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the child(ren) for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  More and more spheres of life are thrown together into instant and strange conjunctions than ever before. 15-to-20-second snips or sound bites of limited and simplified contextless information which concentrate mainly on a single point of view through the use of one liner phrases, and countless disconnected images.

The focus on short term goals such as money, notoriety, instant fame, the attempt to create stability by refusing to update our views of the World. We continue to believe that we are the biggest and best, and that “we got this,” but are $19.2 trillion in debt. The quickened pace of all events through the ability to communicate rapidly through computers and television has prevented people from obtaining verified or credible information. Often times breaking news is gossip being used as a method of hunting people, but the audience loves it and keeps tuning in. Computers and the rapid release of information may actually be driving people apart and increasing stress in our general lives. Socially and economically, we have become a second-rate nation, as more and more of our destiny is controlled by other nations like the Middle East, who are also not our allies, but we are so dependent on their fuel. And more and more family values are severely in question. We continue to believe that we can get along just fine without other and that we are God’s chosen people, and our destiny is to shape the World. So if that is the case, we should get back to our Christian roots and stop removing God from society. 

Life is so fully of wonderful surprises. How can one find out if someone is autotelic (of an activity or creative work; having an end or purpose in itself)? The best method is to observe a person over a long period of time, in many different situations. A short test of the kind psychologist use is not very appropriate, in part because flow is such a subjective experience that it would be relatively easy for a person to fake his or her responses. A prolonged interview or questionnaire may help, but I prefer to use a more indirect measure. According to the theory, individuals should be in flow when they perceive both the challenges in a given situation and their skills to be high. So one way of measuring how autotelic an individual is, is by computing the frequency with which they report being in a high-challenge, high-skill situation over a week of paging with the Experience Sampling Method. We find that there are people who report being in this situation over 70 percent of the time, and other less than 10 percent. We assume that the former are more autotelic than the latter. Using this method, we can look at what distinguishes people whose experiences are mainly autotelic from those who rarely experience this state.

For instance, in one study we took a group of two hundred very talented teenagers, and divided them into two groups: fifty whose frequency of high-challenges, high-skill responses during the week was in the upper quartile (the “autotelic” group), and contrasted them with fifty who were in the lower quartile (the “non-autotelic” group). Then we asked the question: Are these two groups of adolescents using their time in different ways? The most significant contrasts between the two groups: Autotelic teenagers spent 45 percent of their working hours studying, 30 percent watching TV, 20 percent on hobbies, and 5 percent on sports. Non-autotelic teenagers spent 55 percent of their day watching TV, 20 percent studying, 20 percent on hobbies, and 5 percent on sports. Clearly an important dimension of what it means to be autotelic is what one does with one’s time. Passive leisure and entertainment do not provide much opportunity to exercise one’s skills. One learns to experience flow by getting involved in activities that are more suited to provide it, namely, mental work and active leisure. However, is the quality of experience of autotelic youngsters better than that of their peers? After all, the fact that they do more challenging thins is in part true by definition, since we defined being autotelic as being often in challenging situations.

The real question is whether being often in flow-producing situations actually improves subjective experiences. The answer is yes. The results how that when involved in productive activities, the first group concentrates significantly more, has a significantly higher self-esteem, and sees what they are doing as very significantly more important for their future goals. However, the two groups are not significantly different in terms of enjoyment or happiness. How about the quality of experience in active leisure? First of all, as one would expect, in leisure all teens report higher enjoyment and happiness than they do in productive activities; however, they concentrate less and feel that what they do is less important for their future goals. The comparisons between the groups, except for happiness, are all statistically significant. Autotelic youngsters concentrate more, enjoy themselves more, have higher self-esteem, and see what they do as more related to their future goals. All of this fits what we would expect, except one thing. Why are they not happier? What I have learned from doing research is that self-reported happiness is not a very good indicator of the quality of a person’s life. Some people say they are happy even when their home life is nonexistent, when they spend all their time in meaningless activities.

We are resilient beings, and apparently we are able to avoid feeling sad even when all the conditions suggest otherwise. If we cannot say we are at least somewhat happy, what is the point of going on? Autotelic individuals are not necessarily happier, but they are involved in more complex activities, and they feel better about themselves as a result. It is not enough to be happy to have an excellent life. The point is to be happy while doing things that stretch our skills, that help us grow and fulfill our potential. This is especially true in the early years: A teenager who feels happy doing nothing is unlikely to grow into a happy adult. Let to fend for themselves too early, young people can easily become insecure and defensive. It could be argued, in fact, that the more complex the adult World in which they have to find a place, the longer a period of dependence an adolescent requires in order to prepare for it. Of course this “social neoteny” only works if the family is a relatively complex unit that provides stimulation as well as support; it would not help a child to stay dependent on a dysfunctional family.

Other things being equal, a life filled with complex flow activities is more worth living than one spent consuming passive entertainment. In the words of Matthew describing what his career means to him: “To be totally absorbed in what you are doing and to enjoy it so much that you do not want to be doing anything else—I do not see how people survive if they do not experience something like that. My life and career interest me. It is a source of satisfaction. Achieving something that one thing is important. Without such a consciousness or motivation, it seems to me that life could be rather dull and purposeless, and I would not want to attempt that kind of life. Of course, leisure, say, having absolutely nothing to do that one felt was worth doing—that strikes me as a rather desperate situation to be in.”  When we are able to confront life with such involvement and enthusiasm, we can be said to have achieved an autotelic personality. Autotelic is a word composed of two Greek roots: auto (self) and telos (goal). An autotelic activity is one we do for its own sake because to experience t is the main goal. For instance, if I played a game of Trente et Quarante or Rogue et Noir primarily to enjoy the game, that game would be an autotelic experience for me; whereas if I played for money, or to achieve a competitive ranking in the winning row, the same games would be primarily exotelic, that is, motivated by an outside goal. Applied to personality, autotelic denotes an individual who generally does things for their own sake, rather than in order to achieve some later external goal.  

Of course, most people are not fully autotelic, because we all have to do things even if we do not enjoy them, either out of a sense of duty or necessity. However, there is a gradation, ranging from individuals who almost never feel that what they do is worth doing for its own sake, to others who feel that most anything they do is important and valuable in its own right. It is to these latter individuals that the term autotelic applies. An autotelic person requires few material possessions and little entertainment, comfort, power, or fame because so many persons experience flow in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, and even when alone with nothing to do, they are less dependent on the external rewards that keep other motivated to go on with a life composed of dull meaningless routines. Autotelic individuals are more autonomous and independent, because they cannot be as easily manipulated with threats nor rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life. Courage is perhaps the central attribute of a hero. The word courage is derived from the Latin cor, meaning “Heart.” (In French the word for heart is coeur.) We say of a brave man that he has heart; we speak of a fighter’s heart; we day of a man who has given up that he has lost heart. In courage, our blood may run cold for a while, but it is running—and as we persist, it will heat up, flowing more and more strongly, heartening and encouraging us. To truly be a man has long been linked to being courageous.  

The opposite of courage is cowardice; its shadow recklessness.  Courage is not fearlessness, but a resolute refusal to be paralyzed by fear, a deliberate turning and moving toward the dragon, step by conscious step, an activation of our will to persist in difficult conditions. It is the very hearts of heroism. Courage may falter and lose steam, but it does not quit, unless quitting is the more fitting and courageous. Without risk there is no courage. Without fear there is no courage. Without challenging circumstances, there is no courage. We have to be brave and to persevere in that bravery, moving toward our edge in a particular circumstance, navigating the discomfort of doing so with resolve. However, much we might want to give up, but we do not. Though no one else may recognize our struggle, we go on, even if we are on our hands and knees. Courage does not always look like courage, in the process, at least it is commonly portrayed—but when we are being courageous, we do not have to care how we look. We just keep going, again and again finding the optimal pace. To have courage is not only heart, but also guts, intestinal fortitude, and spine. As such, courage is about taking embodied action no matter how much our knees night be shaking. And there is a kind of love implicit in courage, the love of our own integrity, our standing up for what really matters. However small the impact of our courage may be, it nonetheless radiates out, touching more than we can imagine.  

Nonetheless, courage is not the same as aggression. Courage does not mean you go around forcing your will onto people, but it may mean standing up for someone or yourself. Within societies, there is an interplay between affiliative behaviors, which promote group cohesion, and aggressive behaviors, which can lead to group disruption. Conflict within a group frequently develops out of competition for resources, including mating partners and food items and land. Instead of actual attacks or fighting, most intragroup aggression occurs in the form of various signals and displays, frequently within the context of a dominance hierarchy. Therefore, the majority of tense situations are resolved through various submissive and appeasement behaviors.  Competition between males for mates frequently results in injury and even death. In species that have a distinct breeding season, conflict between males is most common during that time. Males who form coalitions to compete with other males, and when outright fighting occurs, injury can be severe. In species not restricted to a mating season, competition between males can be an ongoing process. Not all individuals are territorial. However, some men are highly intolerant of unfamiliar people, especially other males, and they fiercely defend their territories and recourses. Therefore, when other cultures enter an area, they may try to enforce their dominance by asserting aggression, chasing, and actually fighting.  

 Starting in 2007, investigators witnessed at least five unprovoked and extremely brutal attacks by groups of thugs on other individuals. Brutal adult males usually attack lone individuals. Although it is not possible to know what exactly motivated the attackers, it was clear that they intended to incapacitate their victims. Although experts may never understand why these aggressive males are power forcing and attack males who may have a different skin tone, background, or features, it may never be fully explained what the problem really is, but it appears that acquiring and protecting resources (including money, land, and females or males) are involved. Of course, conflict is not just seen in the men. For example, high-ranking females frequently intimidate, harass, and even attack others, who they perceive to have a lower ranking to keep them away from food or mates. Dominant females consistently stalk and chase subordinates away food and mates, and even have been observed to take food from their mouths, their money, or even hold their spouse “hostage” through extortion, intimidation, and threats. Eventually, these actions can cause weight loss, loneliness, poor nutrition, in the intended targets and reduce their reproductive success. Conflict is not always resolved peacefully, and it can have serious consequences.   

 Many intentional behaviors also serve as communications. These include a wide variety of gestures, facial expressions, and vocalizations. Among many, a mild threat is indicated by an intense stare, and indeed, we humans find prolonged eye contact with strangers very uncomfortable. Other gestures are a quick yawn to expose canine teeth; and clapping hands during an argument and even sharking another person. They also use a wide array of vocalizations to make in known they are dominating in the area, and sometimes the aggressors may grunt or say offensive things to let you know they are predators. They may also engage in slapping their own chest and vandalism. Nonetheless, communication is important, for it truly is what makes social living possible. The behaviors listed above are more common forms of communication from animals, not humans. However, it is not appropriate for humans to display animalistic warfare tactics and smuggler language because a sane person is often not allowed to respond to irrational behavior. Many are saying that this type of behavior, displayed by the intergroup conflict may be inherited from animals, and that is why it is suspected some men have a common ancestor with primates, which is why they have a predisposition to behavior common among chimpanzees and gorillas. Whereas civilized men are seen as God’s people.  

When you are a child, adults allow you to play because it has at least two functions. The first is simply enjoyment for its own sake. Secondly, play enables us to learn patterns of enjoyment that continue through life, changing only in the forms or rules of the game. Of course, being able to play is an indication that you are relatively free of inhibitions, restraints, hang-ups, or fears. If you see this freedom as beneficial, as an indicator of liking yourself, it can have all sorts of wonderful carry-overs into your attitudes about yourself as an adult. Liking yourself tends to have a snowballing effect: it builds on itself, just as disliking or hating yourself can do. From eternity to eternity, my life flows along its way of peace and harmony. Time brings but more glory to crown me with its pleasures. My life is forever. Perhaps you read the last paragraph and smiled, saying grimly, “Yeah, I remember the fun I has as a kid. However, I had to grow up!” Emphasis on that “had to” quality is important here. It means “growing up” was not just a natural process of maturing and developing. Somehow, the idea was communicated to you that childhood is one thing, and adulthood something entirely different. The difficulties many of us have in letting go and relaxing, playing and enjoying, often come from that very fact. As a child, I thought, felt, played, and did as a child. However, now I am at a different stage, in a different segment of life, a different World. I have to give up immature behaviors and so things as adults do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 3

I see no evil; I behold only the good. I have seen the drunkard lying in the gutter, and the saint kneeling in ecstasy before the high altar of his faith; but I have found no difference. I see no evil; I behold only the good. I have seen the drunkard lying in the gutter, and the saint kneeling in ecstasy before the high altar of his faith; but I have found no difference. I have perceived that each, in his own tongue, is seeking to express the one life. I will not separate and divide; I cannot condemn nor censure, for I know that there is but one in all. I know and love all. When there is reason to think that we are appreciated, job satisfaction is usually high; whereas the greatest sources of stress in the workplace is the feeling that no one is interested in supporting our goals. Infighting among coworkers, inability to communicate with superiors and subordinates are the bane of most jobs. The core of interpersonal conflicts is the often the excessive concern for oneself, and an inability to pay attention to the requirements of others. It is sad to see how often individuals ruin a relationship because they refuse to recognize that they could serve their own interest best by helping others achieve their goals. Cutting through this bind begins with developing compassion for our weaknesses, viewing them not as liabilities, but as gold that just requires a little polishing. Consider emotional literacy, an essential part of authentic relational intimacy.  #RandolphHarris 2 of 3

We may know that we lack in it—being far from at home with our emotions—but once we stop shaming ourselves for this lack, and view it with some compassion, we can begin working with it, honoring ourselves for being beginners, rather than shaming ourselves for not already being competent in this area. As part of our learning here, we can take a fresh look at our history with emotional know-how, seeing how it very likely was given no significant priority at home or school.  We probably were preoccupied with other seemingly more relevant hurdles than knowing our emotions, such as getting better grades or toughening up or impressing our social circle. It is very helpful to realize that the things we are required to do to have better relationships are the very things we are required to do to further our own growth and evolution. There are such riches in genuinely caring for other people and in doing things to facilitate mutual respect. When individuals feel as if they belong, they are able to provide support and help to other members of society. It matters to the young man who is isolated at home, but finds camaraderie at a park. It matters to the father who is trying to the father who is trying to find a way to bond with his growing son, and one of the few things they agree on is to watch 2 Broke Girls together. We are so fortunate as a society to have outstanding people who care about the goals and feelings of others.  Strength and drive beneficially coexist with transparency, vulnerability, and emotional literacy. #RandolphHarris 3 of 3

It is true, that, in the supposed interest of the child, the idea has been put forward is that that infant should be removed from its natural parents and placed in the hands of nurses skillfully trained in all the science and art of modern hygiene in general and puericulture in particular. Certainly it is possible to find innumerable parents who are completely and lamentably ignorant of this science and this art. This may be especially so in those lands like Russia, where the Platonic ideal is most commended. However, to be content to leave the mothers in ignorance and to train up in the knowledge of the duties of maternity a body of women who are not intended to be mothers, except for other women’s children, seems a perverted attempt to escape the difficulty. It is not calculated to benefit, and still less to render happy, the real mothers, the artificial mothers, or the children. An institution on so unreal a foundation cannot possibly compete with one on a sound biological basis which is just as susceptible to any necessary cultivation and development as the other. As Matthew R. Phillippe says, “social and cultural influences always endorse and emphasize the original individuality of the biological fact.” It is scarcely surprising that we find little indication that this artificial method is likely to be followed on any large scale, if at all. It seems only in place when we are concerned with motherless waifs and stays. The legitimate method of approaching the problem—as is constantly becoming more pervasively recognized—lies in training the real mothers, and, so far as possible, before they have begun to be mothers.

In our World, motherhood ceased to be inevitable fate of every woman who enters marriage and many who remain outside it. It may be said to have become a vocation. It is true that nearly every woman, at some period in her life, desires to become a mother, and that most men desire to become fathers, sometimes indeed without clearly realizing that fatherhood implies motherhood and that it is vastly more difficult task to be a mother than to be a father. However, it is a vocation which not all who are fitted by nature, and also by training, should attempt to follow it. In various countries now, and on an ever larger scale, efforts are being made to provide this training. The establishment of Schools for Mothers, in some countries facilitated by law, constitutes a notable step along this path. There are said to be some of these school still active in Europe and America. In England, Nursery schools for the pre-school child are slowly increasing, and with most of them are formed Clubs for Mothers, which are readily attended and furnish advice and instruction to mothers in the care of children. By such measures it is found that the sense of parental responsibility is not diminished, but increased. Businessmen know that even the most successful company needs constant attention, because external and internal conditions are always changing, and are required to be adjusted.

Entropy is a constant factor, and if it is not attended to, the company will dissolve. Yet many of them assume that families are somehow different—entropy cannot touch them and so they are immune to change. There were some grounds for such a belief when families were kept together by external bonds of social control, and by internal bonds of religious or ethical commitment.  Contractual obligations have the advantage of making relationships predictable and saving energy by excluding options and the requirement for constant negotiation. When marriage was supposed to be forever, it did not require constant effort to maintain. Now that the integrity of the family has become a matter of personal choice, it cannot survive except through the regular infusion of psychic energy. The new kind of family is very vulnerable unless it can provide intrinsic rewards to its members. When family interaction provides flow, it is in the self-interest of everyone to continue the relationship. Yet because families are taken so much for granted, few people have learned to transform the old ties that bound because of external obligations into ones that hold because of the enjoyment they provide. When parents come home exhausted from their jobs they hope that being with the family will be an effortless, relaxing, invigorating experience. However, to find flow in family relations requires as much skill as in other complex activity.

Matthew R. Phillippe says, “Shakespeare has played an extraordinary role in my family as a source of quotations and jokes and references which are fathomless. I feel that I am uncommonly lucky because we have had such a terribly good time together. It is always been an adventure and we have not come to the end yet. We have not finished talking, and I swear that conversation is more important than Netflix and Chill. The skill that made joint flow possible, in my family, is a common love and knowledge of literature. However, others may substitute television shows like 2 Broke Girls, Blackish, Empire, Supernatural, The View, or Grandfathered in the place of Shakespeare for more modern families.” Matthew R. Phillippe goes on to say, “My parents revived their relationship by starting to travel together and work on projects around the house. Others have given a rebirth to their relationship by gardening, breeding children, or starting book clubs. When people pay attention to each other, or to the same activity together, the chances of flow binding the family increases. Parenting is supposed to be one of the most rewarding experiences in life; but it is not, unless one approaches it with the same attention as one would a sport or an artistic performance. The psychic energy invested in a child’s growth can produce enjoyment in parenting. I work with my kids, and they seem to always discover something new.”

Recently Ava Phillippe got a role in Legally Blonde the play, following in her Oscar Award winning mother, Mrs. Reese Witherspoon’s footsteps. Matthew R. Phillippe responded by saying, “I am so proud of what Ava has accomplished, she did this herself, and I love the artistic work she has done, and she is also very proud of it. Her reading is another thing that she is really into, and we read together. She reads to me, and I read to her, and that is a time when I sort of lose touch with the rest of the World, I am totally absorbed in what I am doing. My son, Deacon, loves soccer, and I used to help coach his team and take him to all of his games. I am so proud of his athletic ability. We sometimes, also play catch with a football, but it is not a sport I want him to be involved in, there can be some serious bone fractures and concussion issues with football programs. I love my babies and want to keep them safe.” It sounds like Matthew R. Phillippe really loves his family, career, and life, in closing he tells us, “To experience such simple pleasures of parenting, one has to pay attention to what the child is proud of, what they are into; then one has to devote more attention to share those activities with them. Only when there is harmony between the goals of the participants, when everyone is investing psychic energy into a joint foal, does being together become enjoyable. I do not like to see things on purpose. I like them to soak in. A friend asked me to go to the top of the Empire State Building once, and I told him that he should not treat New York as a sight—it is a feeling, an emotional experience. And the same with every place else.”

An adult who knows how to play as a child does, without a sense of duty or compulsiveness interfering with his play, may be a better worker—whether employer or employee. He will know that work is only one part of living. He will be able to relax, pace his work so that stress and responsibility are balanced by rest and non-responsibility. If you play, but are not really used to it, or do not feel good about it, many difficulties await you. Most adults who have forgotten how to play (if they every learned), or what have put play down as OK but only for kids, will sneeringly think, “Who need it?” We all do! Since playing does not have to involve a lot of money or fancy equipment, we can recommend it with no fear of being labeled exploiters or opportunists. The most valuable secret about play is startlingly simple, and it is free. No coupon to clip and send in with $6.9 million to cover handling. You have to like yourself and enjoy being alive. Simple. It is fact, it is so simple and un-esoteric, we seem to hear the sound the spine of books snapping back all over the land! However, the fact is, many people do not like themselves and so not really enjoy being alive. Nonetheless, it is important to incorporate “Like yourself!” into your life, not only in order to be able to play, but also as a clue as to how to live with yourself and with other people. Just because your body grows up, it does not mean that you have to stop enjoying pleasure in life. If the external environment changed, a human’s activity patterns would also change to accommodate the new circumstances.