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“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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @05:28PM (1 child)
Man's inability to sit quietly in a room?
No, I've traced the real problem to this:
"Everyone is so damn sure they are right"
That is the real problem, Pascal was wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 28 2018, @06:42PM
It’s the same thing. Man is trapped in his ego. The ego doesn’t like silence which leads to it being internally seen as a superficial and a construct trapping the true self.