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The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You

posted by martyb on Wednesday November 28 2018, @02:38AM   Printer-friendly
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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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 28 2018, @04:19PM (1 child)

    by Freeman (732) on Wednesday November 28 2018, @04:19PM (#767340) Journal

    Constant self-distraction with sex, could be worse things. Sex isn't evil, but also most people have a definite period of not having sex after having sex. Due, to physical limitations and / or pain threshold. After X number of times in a row, one gets quite sore. Good exercise, though.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @09:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @09:23PM (#767502)

    After X number of times in a row, one gets quite sore.

    So it is with most exercise.