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The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You

posted by martyb on Wednesday November 28 2018, @02:38AM   
from the tl;dr dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Medium:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” -- Blaise Pascal

According to Pascal, we fear the silence of existence, we dread boredom and instead choose aimless distraction, and we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind.

The issue at the root, essentially, is that we never learn the art of solitude.
...
our aversion to solitude is really an aversion to boredom.

At its core, it’s not necessarily that we are addicted to a TV set because there is something uniquely satisfying about it, just like we are not addicted to most stimulants because the benefits outweigh the downsides. Rather, what we are really addicted to is a state of not-being-bored.

Deep thoughts by Blaise Pascal. Was he right? Are we addicted to not-being-bored? Is boredom good for us?

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Original Submission

• Re:I Think... (Score: 3, Insightful) by Blymie on Wednesday November 28 2018, @11:59AM

  by Blymie (4020) on Wednesday November 28 2018, @11:59AM (#767272)

  A goldfish, on the other hand, is never bored in its bowl.

  What?! How do you know? Intelligence != capacity for boredom. Otherwise the more intelligent, the more bored!

  Or are you stipulating that there's a cut off. This level of intelligence = able to be bored, less than = not?

  Or is it a specific gene? Much like object persistence, boredom is a capacity that only occurs in certain species?

  For all we know, we're *torturing* fish with boredom.

  Hmm.

  You know, the more I think of this...

  I think anything has a capacity to be bored. It might be as simple as... a stressful feeling, just sitting around doing nothing. That doesn't require intelligence.

  And if creatures weren't bored, then why do they ever move when safe and fed. For example you have a large fish tank, but the gold fish will swim around, look at things, pick up gravel and spit it out, poke at plants it can't eat.

  If boredom didn't exist, then wouldn't it simply sit -- safe and happy, directly under the place you feed it every day? All day long? Forever?

  I think boredom is more complex than just intellect. I think it's a drive, a need to explore.. as you say, but for a variety of things.

  For example:

  - there is a need to seek genetically diverse mates.. boredom helps via exploration
  - sex drive (just finding a mate) requires moving around a bit
  - some fish do have territories, and will often fight for them

  Well, anyhow. This is a silly topic overall, but I had to complain about such a generic assertion.

  Parent

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