"Stability dispenses with futile efforts to maximize the reservoir of resources. It allows the application and optimization of reliable behavioural rules. one might argue that stability and rules may lead to long and crystalline teleological chains likely to break under the pressure of a changing world. Indeed, some people die or hurt themselves (happily?) "in the flow" over-estimating the endurance of their seemingly reliable reservoir of resources. However, this seems to be far more the exception than the rule.

First, most individuals know that the world is and for some time to come will remain an ´empire of chance´. Second, environmental variability will inevitably remind those who ignore this fact and, thereby, serve as a natural corrective. Finally, the individual is not alone in his search for stability. To find and establish stable ground as a basis of happiness has for a long time become a collective effort of pure and applied sciences. In particular economics, politics, and the juridical sciences provide some of the stability individuals can neither establish nor utilize in isolation..."

"That individuals sometimes can engage themselve so happily in procetures is the result of overall stability by an optimization of invariant environmental conditions on the one hand and corresponding reliable and limited rule systems on the other. Most ´flow activities´ are exercised in strictly constrained environments and, in addition, are regulated by elaborated rule systems ..."

Wolfgang Battmann, Stephan Dutke (Eds.)
Processes of the Molar Regulation of Behavior
Pabst,  360 Pages, Paperback
ISBN 978-3-931660-11-6
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