Flow and Wu Wei

This past week, I’ve been working on the final cut of the Fall Creek prototype (version 2.18). This version cements the game’s structure and signals the last round of testing before publication. Final edits are grueling because they rely entirely on the observer.  My favorite kind of work is done when I can enter the flow state, a term coined by psychologists in the 80s to describe a certain kind of peak performance.  The original studies of flow described a state of effortless activity, where intense focus is combined with a disconnection from conscious thought.  In this state, the observer rests and the body automatically executes without any need for deliberation or direction.
It’s easy to enter this state if I’m drawing some art or designing the game’s mechanics.  Days can pass like hours if I’m in the rush of it, and I’ve dedicated a great amount of time to understanding how flow relates to my life and my goals.  The focus on flow becomes an issue when I have to do work where I’m forced to consciously observe, such as during editing.  I have to begrudgingly accept that my goals involve periods of time where I can’t rest the observer, and that committing to the search of flow doesn’t solve my greater goal of ceasing to exist.  I can rest in moments of pleasure like food or drugs, I can rest in moments of flowing work, but I can’t rest when I consider the whole big future ahead of me.  

For a long time, I was content to exist with no conscious cohesion or structure to my activities.  I was happy to commit to the flow, to paint or write poems with no intentional cumulative goal.  It was easy to cease to exist.  Gradually, a restlessness within me grew greater and greater, driven by a helpless acknowledgement of the impending future.  The restlessness is addressed by the observer, the entity who calculates plans and simulates futures. The Ruben of today has addressed the future by committing to game design, with a plan of publication that denies the observer its rest.  At times it is hard to bring myself to keep executing this plan, but I really must know what happens at the end, to see if it works or not. My plans to publish are written with the laws of Blob Theory, and my curiosity to verify my hypothesis keeps the rest of me marching forward.

Blob Theory has been developed and tested during the last two years of game development.  Recognizing and maximizing flow was one of the first applications, because I was so charmed by the fact that peak performance can occur in the absence of conscious thought, rather than in the depths of it.  As curious as flow is, it’s a rather isolated observation in the sense that it doesn’t connect to any other theories.  We know that it’s real because we observe it to be real, but there is no existing system in the West that would expect it to occur in the way that it does.  Similarly to how Einstein’s formulas predicted black holes, the best theories are those whose conclusions are evidenced in reality.  A good theory of psychology or consciousness should be able to imply the existence of “flow” as predicted by core principles.



Such a theory exists in the East.  It’s a very old system, with many branches and evolutions, but its history begins with Taoism and it has been documented for at least the last 2500 years.  The system itself is hard to formally describe, but it’s basically about living in the moment and harmonizing with nature. The concept most connected to flow is the idea of wu wei, which describes a state of trying not to try.  Wu wei means effortlessness and spontaneity, a complete absorption of the moment, an experience disconnected from conscious thought.  In both flow and wu wei, the boundary between self and the activity dissolves, and there exists only a fusion with the moment that excludes the conscious observer.  

Both flow and wu wei are described as ideal states to exist in, but only wu wei has an accompanying ideological framework that connects the qualities of wu wei to the value systems of a particular base model (Taoism).  Flow is described in Taoist texts as a justification to practice wu wei, but it was not named and studied in the same way as it has been in modern psychology.  There is a certain fundamental incongruence between the values of academia and the Tao, because they exist within different metaphysical frameworks.  Western knowledge seeks order through measurement, while Taoism embraces the ineffable and rejects explicit descriptions.  Taoist values go contrary to our modern intuitions of substance and reason, for they imply a universe that operates in an entirely different way from how we normally understand it. 

Flow and wu wei both show us how to navigate life without the observer. Blob Theory extends these insights into a framework that combines Eastern values with modern, practical categorization.  Just as the principles of the Tao guide the practitioner to find ideal states of being, so does Blob Theory propose a guide on how to cease to exist.  In the next issue, I’ll break down the core axioms of Blob Theory and explore how they shape my approach to goals and decision-making, and how they ultimately offer a blueprint for ceasing to exist.


When do you let your observer rest?  I’d love to hear moments about when you lose yourself, whether it be through flow, food, meditation, or any other experience.