A similar argument is advanced in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
It has been a few years since I read this book. Could you elaborate/refresh my memory?
It's been 20 years since I read it, too, so I can't be any less vague :)
Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
41–50 of 97 posts
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#42I cannot remember the last time I was bored. I had an elementary school teacher that told me that "boredom was the sign of a weak mind." I believed her and took it to heart.
Someone told you being bored was bad, so you were never bored?! How does that work?
Well, if you have a weak mind and someone with authority has a strong opinion...
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I don't regret the time I spend just thinking. I do however regret the time lost to boredom. They're not the same thing. Boredom to me is a state of wanting to do something but either not being able to or not knowing what that something is.
Exactly, it's an uncomfortable mental state or cognitive rut that is pretty tough to just ditch by doing things that normally keep you entertained.
This reminds me of something I'm still working to figure out -- the 'negative capability' referenced by Keats.
In one sense, it's the ability to accept an answer of 'unknown'. Maybe it's the ability to choose not to drive towards closure.
Maybe it's just being comfortable watching yourself get bored.
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#44Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#45I cannot remember the last time I was bored. I had an elementary school teacher that told me that "boredom was the sign of a weak mind." I believed her and took it to heart.
Someone told you being bored was bad, so you were never bored?! How does that work?
Boredom is a sign of mental laziness. You can find something interesting about damn near anything- so make yourself search for it.
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#46Each day at work I put in headphones, code for a bit, read HN for a bit, then back to code. I don't know if I could describe it as boredom, maybe confused context switching. It brings to mind how the protagonist of Neuromancer gets hooked on amphetamines after being surgically banned from the Internet. We get so used to everything happening quickly and efficiently that our brains don't have time to rest. If you're no…
I think that one of the helpful side effects of being on the go constantly is avoidance of unanswerable philosophical or existential questions. If you're busy, you're not going to get kneecapped by these depressions-in-disguise. Having time to wallow can be detrimental, because it can build a habit out of wallowing. Capitalism/materalism does a very good job of disguising that even at its best it doesn't necessarily…
This is a bit philosophical, but I'd say the thing you're disdaining here is the ability to handle difficult concepts. It's tough to acquire, because it requires practice failing at it for a while until we begin to succeed at standing in the path of these ideas without getting "kneecapped" by them.
There does come a point, though, where they cease being so threatening. When you're practiced at handling ideas that threaten depression, they're no longer so effective when an attempt is made to use them against you.
Or maybe I just need coffee.
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#47It kind of reminds me of my philosophy regarding programming - that it can never be boring. If it's boring, then something is done wrong. You can always automate the boring parts, and thinking about automation is less boring.
I love playing with and working on projects that transform code into different code and I love that you're drawn to meta-programming, but I have a few issues with a few of the ideas: > If it's boring, then something is done wrong. I have a problem with the tone of this statement, because I've seen it taken to an extreme and it can be a dangerous idea. A better way of looking at it is: If something is boring, take it…
I think I agree that "boring" shouldn't be used as an excuse to avoid work required to understand the problem. Only when you understand you can determine how it can be automated.
I don't think that I agree with the idea that predictable code has to be boring. And vice versa - needless complexity may be boring too.
Anyway, I didn't mean it in derogatory way, just like the original article. What I am saying is that there is probably some smart idea, how to automate things, and you just need to look for it. Where automate really means make computer do it.
In other professions, it's more complicated. Say building a house may be considered boring, once it is designed, but it's hard to automate - some humans still have to do the actual bricklaying and plumbing and so on. Programming is unique profession in this respect (at least until we have very flexible robots).
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#48One thing that interrupts my moments of boredom is the thought of falling behind while the world makes progress. That is precisely the same feeling you get when you move to a quieter town: "nothing goes on here while 'everything is going on' somewhere else". This feeling of 'nothing doing' pushes me to do stuff, be it a hobby, reading, etc. I think the idea is pretty much associated to the 'time is money' or the 'tim…
The problem with that seems to be that if you're always trying to catch up with some overarching scheme of advancement and progress, you won't have a moment of peace until you retire... An old Chinese hobo named Han-shan used to write strange poems on the cliffs and trees of the mountain where he lived. They're called the cold mountain poems. One of them goes like this: Han-shan has his critics too: ‘Your poems, ther…
> The problem with that seems to be that if you're always trying to catch up with some overarching scheme of advancement and progress, you won't have a moment of peace until you retire...
Oh that's not true at all. Inner peace relies not on what you do, but on how you do it. It's easier to clear your head, say, when you're mowing the grass as opposed to creating a new marketing strategy, but that doesn't mean you can't.
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#49For me boredom is the manifestation of a problem. I am introvert and could think on my own for days, but boredom never happens. Animals in the wild rarely get bored. I worked as an assistant in a zoo while teenager and you could see every single animal getting bored there. And today it is much better than in the past, because we are stating to understand them and we make them work for getting their food and so on. Af…
Agreed. Humans do not live in their natural state, and are so far removed from it that they do not know what they do not know that they lack. From this manifests much of the strife we experience. We talk of boredom - because we have grown accustomed to the idea that we must fill our time, and society presents antipathy to those who are content to merely sit and think. "What's wrong?" "You look troubled" "Would you li…
Great post-- I think we're headed for #1.
Indoctrination is already complete, and future technological advances in VR and pharmacology will be sufficient for the rest. The stuff we're not getting we will continue to not get, but we'll get ever-shinier toys to keep us busy.
Re: Boredom is not a problem to be solved, it's the privilege of a free mind
#50Boredom isn't the act of having nothing to do. That's idleness.
Boredom is a problem of a lack of satisfaction. There's various reasons for that but I believe having too much to do, and too much stress is what leads to boredom. People have an amount of attention they can pay to any topic before they need to rest. You can only listen to a song for so long before it stops being pleasant and starts being annoying. You can only hear the same story so many times before it gets boring.
When you are bored, sometimes idleness can even be a fine replacement. If you're bored, and you decide to go and sit in a chair in the sun with a nice cold drink, that's a nice response.
What boredom is, is when you're in class or at work, and you need to keep doing some routine behavior, but you need a break, you need a change, but you can't. Boredom is the feeling that you have to fight in order to keep doing something that your whole reward system of your brain has told you you've had enough of.
Boredom isn't something good. It's something damaging. It's a condition where your mind is tired of a particular action, but you don't have the agency to make a change in your situation to suit that.