From "Dark Flow" to Crossing Wendell’s Bridge

Disguised losses, the burden of self, and the next great division

Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing by Vincent van Gogh, 1888

My Swiss brother-in-law Manfred has hiked through the Israeli desert so many times that he knows the paths and rock formations by heart. As I write these words he’s trekking alone in Norway near the Arctic Circle, with an ultralight backpack and a satellite phone.

Manfred’s English is fluent, though it’s not his native language and he’s often at a loss for words to describe how he feels on his remote hikes. The one thing he often tells me is, “It’s so beautiful, so beautiful.”

What is the feeling exactly? What overcomes him when he’s striding along the fjord glories of Scandinavia or through the Negev desert with its barren vistas and 6000-year-old rock carvings like art treasures scattered around his dusty shoes?

I don’t think that feeling can be reduced to any one thing. But part of it is a “flow experience.” Manfred doesn’t call it that, but he knows what it is. It’s a feeling of being in total connection or engagement. It’s a feeling of effortlessness, even though you may be exerting effort. It’s a feeling of being more human, even though you feel like you’ve lost your sense of self. It’s a feeling of being more present, though in some odd sense you’re absent.

But there’s another kind of experience, not a positive flow, but a negative flow, a “dark flow” that is in many ways equally powerful, yet has an opposite effect. It’s an experience we need to recognize in ourselves, and in our children or loved ones, if we want to keep our natural minds strong in a Machine world.

“Losses Disguised as Wins”

In his book The World Beyond Your Head,

Matthew B. Crawford

describes how some heavy slot machine gamblers stand at their machines for eight to twelve hours and develop blood clots, or get so absorbed that when someone collapses from a heart attack they don’t get out of the way when the ambulance people come rushing into the casino. One woman wore dark clothes so she could keep playing her machine and soil herself without anybody noticing.

Psychologist Mike Dixon and colleagues have been doing research into “dark flow”, which is another experience that can afflict certain gamblers, although I’m going to suggest how it might apply beyond the gambling context.

According to Dixon, dark flow is a trance-like state of absorption that problem players can experience when playing slots. Some players call it the “slot machine zone”.

In the old days, you had to crank a pull handle to get a slot machine going, and then you had to wait for the symbols to line up to see if you might win. Nowadays, you just press a button, and you can win across multiple lines, which can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or zigzag. With all these combinations, it can be difficult for players to tell whether they’ve won or lost after the machine has finished spinning.

Something else happens too. People don’t just win or lose. There’s a third possibility: a “loss disguised as a win”. Let’s say a player bets a dollar on a slot machine and wins only $0.20. Even so, the machine still provides all kinds of reinforcing sights and joyful jingles and sounds, despite the fact the player has actually lost $0.80. The machine basically celebrates the fact that the player has lost.

Of course, losses disguised as wins are far more frequent than actual wins. That means players can end up with a feeling that they’re winning a lot more than they actually are. The flashing, jingling atmosphere of celebration seems to lull them to stay in the dark-flow zone and keep playing.

Dixon and colleagues don’t translate this to digital device use, but it’s worth considering. Our devices and apps aren’t designed for gambling (not primarily), but they can reward our thumb taps with a cheap jackpot of images, messages, likes, surprises, enticements.

In the extreme, our devices can be like mini-slot machines, filled with sound and celebration, yet signifying little or nothing. We know we’re wasting away the hours. We can spend years across a lifetime on social media alone. Sometimes a voice in our heads asks, “Why are you still doing this?” But the voice gets swept away by the sense that something worthwhile is happening—and if not just now, then with the next button press, the next swipe. We’re losing, yet we think we’re gaining. We’re seduced by the logic of “a loss disguised as a win”. Our devices make us liminal gamblers. Our addiction is the digital dark flow.

But the real darkness is happening below the surface of the celebration.