SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Medium [medium.com]:

“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?

Original Submission