Chapter 5 Chapter 4 Boredom and Excitement

Boredom as an element of human behavior has, in my opinion, been underappreciated as it should be.I believe, throughout history.It was a huge driving force, even more so today.Boredom seems to be an emotion unique to humans.Animals in captivity do get restless, jump up and down, and yawn, but I don't think their experience is comparable in nature to human annoyance.Most of the time they're on the lookout for enemies, looking for food, or both; sometimes they're courting, other times they're trying to keep warm.But even when they are unhappy, I don't think they are bored.Perhaps the apes are like us in this as in many other respects; but I have never lived with them, and have therefore had no opportunity of making this experiment.One of the essences of boredom is the comparison of the present situation with other, more acceptable ones, which have entered one's imagination obstinately.Another essence of boredom is that the human faculties cannot be kept busy and tense for a long time.Running from an enemy trying to take your life is unpleasant, I suppose, but by no means tiresome.A man who has been executed cannot be bored.Unless he has that kind of almost superhuman courage.Likewise, no one yawns at a first speech in the House of Lords, except the late Duke of Devonshire - for whom he is revered by nobility.Boredom is fundamentally a thwarted desire, not necessarily for pleasurable objects, but certainly for things that make its victims know that one day is different from another.In a word, the opposite of boredom is not pleasure but excitement.

The desire for excitement is often rooted in the human psyche, especially in men.This desire, I think, was more easily satisfied in the age of hunting than in all subsequent ages.Hunting is exciting, war is exciting, courtship is exciting.A savage will try to make peace with a woman while her husband is lying beside her, even though he knows perfectly well that if the husband wakes up, he will die.This situation, I think, will not be annoying.However, with the advent of agriculture, life became dull (with the exception of the nobility, of course, since they were and always were hunters).We have heard many complaints of the tedium of mechanical labour, but I think that labor by the old methods of tillage is the dullest of all.Indeed, contrary to the views of most philanthropists, I believe that the machine age has greatly reduced the total amount of boredom in people all over the world.He is not alone in his working hours as a wage-earner, and his evenings can be spent in various entertainments, which were not at all possible in the old-fashioned country.Look again at the changes that have taken place in the lives of the lower and middle classes.In the old days, after dinner, when the wives and daughters had cleared everything up, everyone would sit around and have the so-called "happy reunion" time.This means that the parents go to bed, the wives knit, and the daughters either hope for an early death or sleepwalk in Jambuktu.They were not allowed to read, and they were not allowed to leave the house; for it was the custom at that time that they should all be delighted when their father spoke to them.If they were lucky, they ended up marrying too, and turned to torturing their children, letting their youth go by as dull and dull as they had experienced themselves.If they were unlucky they became spinsters, or ended up as maids to old granny--a fate as dreadful as that which savages bestow upon their victims.Let us not forget this weary burden when we evaluate the world of a hundred years ago.The further history goes, the heavier the pressure of boredom.Just imagine the monotony of winter in a medieval countryside.People can't read and write, only candles give them faint light in the dark, the only room is filled with smoke from firewood, and the room is still as cold as ice.Outside the house, the road is practically impassable, so pedestrians from neighboring villages are barely visible.It must have been this boredom that gave rise to the custom of witch-hunting, which afterwards became the only somewhat lively activity of the evening.

We are less bored than our ancestors, but more afraid of boredom.We come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not a part of man's natural lot, and that it can be avoided by a sufficiently intense pursuit of excitement.The girls are now mostly self-sufficient.Mostly because it enables them to seek excitement at night, to escape the "happy family" time their grandmothers had to endure.In the United States, everyone can now live in the city; those who cannot afford a car at least have a motorcycle to ride to the movies.And every family has a radio.It is much easier for young men and women to date than before, and housemaids can have at least one exciting meeting a week, which is enough to make Jane Austen's heroine look forward to for a long time throughout the novel.As social status increases, the pursuit of excitement becomes more urgent.Those who are able move from one place to another, bringing excitement wherever they go; they sing, dance, and drink.But for some reason, they always look forward to having more fun in a new place.Those who have to earn money to support themselves have to suffer boredom at work, and those who have enough money to not work make it their ideal to live completely free from boredom.This is a noble ideal, and I have no intention of undermining it.But I am afraid that this ideal, like other ideals, is a more difficult thing to attain than idealistic imagination.Mornings are always tiresome compared with the cheerfulness of the previous evening.People will have middle age and even old age. At 20 people think at 30 life is over.I'm 58 and it's impossible to hold that view any longer.Perhaps it is unwise to spend human life as monetary capital.A certain amount of boredom is perhaps an integral part of life.The desire to be rid of boredom is natural.In fact, every nation manifests this desire whenever it has the opportunity.When savages first tasted wine from white men, they found at least one way out of the drudgery of life, and so, unless the government intervened, they would get drunk and die.Wars, massacres, and persecutions are some of the ways in which attempts are made to escape boredom, and even a quarrel with a neighbor is better than doing nothing.For the moralist, therefore, boredom is a matter of extreme importance, since the fear of boredom is at least half the cause of human vice.

However, boredom should not be seen as entirely evil.There are two kinds of boredom, one is the frustration type and the other is the sluggish type.The frustrated type is caused by lack of drugs, and the sluggish type is caused by lack of activity.I don't deny that drugs have a certain effect on people's lives.For example, opiates are sometimes prescribed by a sensible physician, and I think this happens far more often than the anti-smoking activists imagine.But getting addicted to drugs, or even allowing your instincts to get out of hand without restraint, is never right.After getting rid of the boredom that one gets used to taking drugs, I think time is the only cure.What applies to drug addiction applies, within limits, to dealing with highs of all kinds.The exhausting life of an overexcited life requires a continuum of intense stimuli in order to produce the thrilling ecstasy which is often regarded as the chief ingredient of pleasure.A man accustomed to overexcitement, like a man with an insatiable love of pepper, cannot even taste a quantity of pepper which would choke others.A certain amount of boredom is indispensable in order to avoid excessive excitement; excessive excitement is not only harmful to health, but also weakens the appreciation of pleasures of all kinds, so that extensive organic satisfaction is replaced by excitement, and intelligence by ingenuity. Instead, beauty is replaced by astonishment.I'm not entirely against excitement.A certain amount of excitement is good for the mind and body, but, as with everything, the problem is quantity.Too little can cause intense cravings, too much can lead to exhaustion.A certain amount of boredom tolerance is therefore necessary to make life happy.This should be taught to young people from an early age. .All great books have boring chapters, and all great men have dull moments in their lives.Imagine a modern-day American publisher with a newly acquired manuscript of the Old Testament.It is not difficult to imagine what kind of comments he will make at this time, such as "Genesis". "For God's sake, sir," he would say, "this chapter is a poor one. With such a list of names--and with so little introduction--don't expect our readers to be interested. I admit, Your story started well, so I had a pretty good impression at the beginning, but you also talked too much. Cut the length well, keep the main points, squeeze the water out for me, and bring the manuscript with you Come see me." The modern publisher says this because he knows the modern reader is terrified of boredom.He would think so of Confucius, of Islam's Koran, of Marx's Das Kapital, and of all those sages who are considered bestsellers.Not only the books of sages, but all good novels have dull chapters.If a novel is gripping from beginning to end, on every page, it is certainly not a great work.In the life of a great man, apart from some dazzling moments, there are always not so dazzling moments.Socrates could enjoy the joy of reunion day after day, and when the poisoned wine he drank began to attack, he would definitely get some satisfaction from his high-spirited talk; but most of his life was still unknown Lived with Keshansibi, perhaps meeting a few friends only on evening walks.Kant is said to have never been more than ten miles from Hoenesberg in his life.Darwin, after traveling around the world, spent the rest of his life in his own home.Marx, after starting several revolutions, decided to spend the rest of his life in the British Museum.In conclusion, it will be found that a quiet life is one of the characteristics of great men, and that their pleasures are not such exciting pleasures to the beholder.No great achievement is possible without persistent toil; a toil so engrossing and arduous that it leaves no energy for more intense amusements than to join in the holidays. Rejuvenating recreational activities that eliminate fatigue, such as climbing outside the Alps.

The ability to endure a more or less monotonous life is one that should be cultivated in childhood.Modern parents are quite responsible in this regard. They provide their children with too many passive entertainment activities, such as movies and exquisite food.Little do they realize, with some rare exceptions, the importance for children of living a life of monotony, day after day.The happiness of childhood should mainly be created by them through their own efforts and obtained from the environment in which they live.The kind of entertainment that is exciting on the one hand and does not require physical exertion on the other, such as going to the theater, should be as rare as possible.Fundamentally speaking, this kind of excitement is like a drug. The more excitement there is, the stronger the desire to pursue it. However, the passive state of the body during the excitement period is against human nature.A child, like a young plant, develops best when left undisturbed, always in the same soil.Too much traveling and too many perceptual things are not good for teenagers, because this will make them less capable of enduring a lonely life when they grow up, and only loneliness can make people creative.I am not, of course, saying that there is any good in solitary life in itself; I am saying that only with a certain degree of loneliness can certain good things be attained.Take Wordsworth's poem "Prelude" for example. It is obvious to some readers that Wordsworth's thoughts and feelings are valuable; Can't be felt.A child or youth, when he has a serious and creative aim, will willingly endure great boredom, because he finds it a necessary condition of success.But if a child lives a bohemian life.If he is enjoying a life of luxury, such creative goals do not naturally arise in his mind, because in this case his mind is always preoccupied with the next pleasure and enjoyment, not with distant success. .For these reasons, the generation that cannot bear boredom will be a generation of villains, a generation that detaches itself unduly from the slow natural development, and in whom every impulse of life will die away like a broken vase. The flowers withered and withered.

I don't like esoteric language, but I don't know how to get my point across if I don't use language that sounds a bit poetic rather than scientific here.However we may think, we are always creatures of the earth, and like animals and plants, our life is a part of the earth, and we also draw milk from it.The rhythm of life on earth is slow.For it, autumn and winter are as important as spring and summer, and rest is as important as exercise.Children, more than adults, should have some connection with the undulating rhythms of life on earth.Through countless generations, people and bodies have adapted to this rhythm, and the Christian Easter reflects this rhythm adaptation.I have seen a boy of two, who had been living in London, once be taken for a walk in the green country for the first time.It was winter, everything was wet, and the roads were muddy and difficult.In the eyes of adults, all this is not eye-catching, but the child's eyes flashed a look of surprise, he knelt down on the wet ground, put his face in the grass, and let out a cheerful smile. Whoosh.The joy he experiences is raw, unadorned, and vast.So great is this satisfied organic need that it may be said that the man who has it unsatisfied is seldom sane of mind.There are many kinds of pleasure, which are not connected with the life of the earth in themselves.Take gambling, for example.Once this kind of happiness is terminated, people will feel bored and dissatisfied, longing for something, but not knowing what they want.The feeling that this kind of happiness brings us cannot be called happiness.On the other hand, in those joys which bind us closely to the life of the earth, there is something so satisfying that, even if it ceases, the happiness they bring remains, Although less intense than the more exciting orgies.This distinction, it seems to me, runs the gamut from the simplest to the most civilized trades.The two-year-old child whom I have just mentioned represents the most primitive possible form of connection with earthly life.But in higher forms the same thing can be found in poetry.What makes Shakespeare's lyric poetry extraordinary is that it is full of words.The same joy that makes a two-year-old embrace the meadow.Read "Hear, Hear, Lark," or "Come to the Golden Sands"; and you will find that the emotions that two-year-olds can only express in inarticulate cries are expressed more clearly in these poems. Expressed in the form of civilization.Please think again about the difference between love and pure sex.Love is an experience that rejuvenates and rejuvenates our whole being, just as a plant receives rain after a long drought.Sexual intercourse without love has no such experience at all.After this temporary gratification ceases, weariness follows.Disgusted as the consciousness of the emptiness of life.Love is part of the life of the earth, sex without love is not of it.

One of the extraordinary boredoms of modern city-dwellers is bound up with their separation from the life of the earth, which makes life hot, dirty, and hungry, like a pilgrimage in the desert.The excruciating boredom they suffer among those who are rich enough to choose their own way of life is, as absurd as it may seem, their fear of boredom.In order to escape the frustration-type boredom, they fall into another, more serious boredom.A happy life must in large measure be a life of tranquility and ease, for true happiness can exist only in peaceful surroundings.