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Infested Cats
12-08-2003, 10:50 PM
I picked up the latest issue of Adbusters recently, and within was an interesting article regarding boredom. I agree with this article, and consider myself (sadly) an example. What do you think:

Boredom is a cultural phenomenon unique to western culture (but now, unfortunately, being spread like a virus to non-Western cultures). Bedouins, for example, can sit for hours in the desert, feeling the ripples of time, without being bored. Traditional societies know nothing of boredom. Traditional life is a goal-oriented existence where the goals are deeply embedded in the worldview of the tradition and have real meaning for those who imbibe the tradition. It is enriched by countless face-to-face, intimate relationships, based both on extended families and communal life; personal relationships in traditional societies tend to be shared, close and intimate, leading to a host of duties and responsibilities that give orientations and meaning to individual lives. In most third world societies, individuals and communities are normally too busy trying to survive to be bored. Boredom is a product of culture where individual and communal goals have lost all their significance and meanings, where an individual’s attention spans is no longer than a single frame in an MTV video: five seconds. In such a culture, one needs something different to do, something different to see, some new excitement and spectacle every other moment. Netsurfing provides just that: the exhilaration of a joyride, the spectacle of visual and audio inputs, a relief from boredom and an illusion of God-like omniscience as an added extra. But, of course, travel at such a high speed has a price. Hypertext generates hyper-individuals: rootless, without a real identity, perpetually looking for then next fix, hoping that the next page on the Web will take them to nirvana. The individual himself is reduced to hypertext: a code of information. And this process seems to be accelerating.

Aiauddin Sardar, from
The Cybercultures Reader (Routledge, 2000)

Edit: Typo.

dwightfry
12-08-2003, 11:01 PM
It's funny that you posted that. I was just pacing back and forth through the house I was so bored. I was actually shaking.

Skweeky
12-09-2003, 12:15 AM
hmmm, weird, I'm almost never bored.

I can just lie on my bed, stare at the ceiling and think about things...hell, I could that weeks in a row.


Once in a while I just need to get out, that's it

clocker
12-09-2003, 12:50 AM
Ah, the noble Bedouin.

Malarkey.
A Bedouin who has sat for hours is not contemplating the "ripples of time".
He is dead.

Most likely from dehydration, possibly overwhelmed by the stench of camels.

The shallowness of Western culture is a favorite subject of those who don't have Gamecubes.

J'Pol
12-09-2003, 01:26 AM
Originally posted by clocker@9 December 2003 - 01:50
Ah, the noble Bedouin.

Malarkey.
A Bedouin who has sat for hours is not contemplating the "ripples of time".
He is dead.

Most likely from dehydration, possibly overwhelmed by the stench of camels.

The shallowness of Western culture is a favorite subject of those who don't have Gamecubes.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Superb, I can actually hear you say that.

You may be the forum's first sit-down comedian.

Cheese
12-09-2003, 02:19 AM
I do have a much shorter attention span since...nah I'm bored of this thread...lets find another.....

Billy_Dean
12-09-2003, 04:48 AM
I've had a problem with my son for years with schools. He finds them boring, always has, and he doesn't learn there. At one stage things were so bad that I was issued with a home teaching permit, I taught him for six months. In that time he went from being six months behind, to six months in front. He finally left when he turned 15, no-one complained, the schools had had enough of him. He had a file three inches thick, dozens of suspensions, expelled from three schools, they would have breathed a sigh of relief.

He has had computers all his life, he was pressing buttons to find colours at a year old. Add that to all the game consoles, the skateboards, the motorbikes he's had since he was three, the go-kart racing, the car he drove around the farm, and all the other things. It adds up to a very stimulated existance. As you can imagine, he's very easily bored.


:)

j2k4
12-09-2003, 05:55 AM
Originally posted by Billy_Dean@9 December 2003 - 00:48
I've had a problem with my son for years with schools. He finds them boring, always has, and he doesn't learn there. At one stage things were so bad that I was issued with a home teaching permit, I taught him for six months. In that time he went from being six months behind, to six months in front. He finally left when he turned 15, no-one complained, the schools had had enough of him. He had a file three inches thick, dozens of suspensions, expelled from three schools, they would have breathed a sigh of relief.

He has had computers all his life, he was pressing buttons to find colours at a year old. Add that to all the game consoles, the skateboards, the motorbikes he's had since he was three, the go-kart racing, the car he drove around the farm, and all the other things. It adds up to a very stimulated existance. As you can imagine, he's very easily bored.


:)
Nicely summed-up, Billy.

It is only when our minds become inured to internal stimulation (thought, primarily) by the growing cultural addiction to external stimulus that boredom occurs.

I used to sit and think for hours. ;)

Now I do this. :huh: