In the foundational article on Positive Psychology written by Martin Seligman and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in 2000, Authors predicted that positive psychology..
“will allow psychologists to understand and build those factors that allows individual, communities, and societies to flourish.”
This happened 18 years ago. What about today? Positive Psychology has helped thousand people to find their callings, to accomplish their goals, to achieve a self-growth, to pursue a good life.
In 2012, several young researchers suggested that it would have been possible and reasonable to introduce also emerging technologies in positive psychology to promote people’ well-being. You know what? It happened. This new paradigm of Positive Technology took hold in several countries and has helped out thousand people as well.
Now, we are on the edge of a revolution in the field of Positive Technology. We try to use Technology to convey, invite, facilitate complex experiences in life, such as self-transcendent emotions. This is the Computer-mediated self-transcendence (CMST) paradigm. Are we helping out a lot of people?
This is still an open question. We are still in a “warm up” phase, so, we still have to work a lot. To my best knowledge the “democracy of complex emotions”, which I theorized few articles ago, still needs to take place. I am almost at the end of my doctoral path, so, I need to see that real people outside the lab could benefit from our findings and discoveries. Mu supervisors, who are wiser than me, suggested me to be patient and design the future step by step.
I guess the first step is not to forget our good purposes.
Therefore, as a reminder for myself, I wish to report what I wrote one year ago:
“Usually, we describe awe as a rare emotional state. Its is difficult to live it and to reproduce it. Even more difficult is to find it in our lives.
Awe is not democratic for its own sake.
So, what about people who cannot actively search for natural opportunities of awe? What about people paralyzed and in need for awe?
We can offer virtual opportunity to live awe…
I guess that a new period of democratization of emotions and complex states can begin now with virtual reality. We demonstrated that VR can reproduce complex and ineffable emotional states more affordably. Why not take advantage of it?
Why not expanding human potential instead of only increasing its abilities?
“Molti studiano come allungare l’esistenza, il problema è invece di allargarla“
“Many people study how to extend life, but the real issue is how to expand life”
– Luciano De Crescenzo-
I wrote these words one year ago and writing this blog has been among the best suggestions I received from my advisor. It forces me to be consistent. The first ingredient to build something meaningful. This blog has been the first source of transformation to me.
Now, I really hope that we will be able to reach people all around the world, especially those in need of a change. I still wish to expand well-being and not only to extend life.
AWE 