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I wonder if boredom is like hunger. We intuitively understand that experiencing hunger can have a beneficial effect in one's outlook, but what about boredom? nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opi… .
In today's information society, boredom has become a new scarcity. One can always find an external device to extricate oneself from boredom. However, is extricating oneself without external tools a cognitive skill that is vital?
People with minds overflowing with ideas rarely encounter boredom. Is boredom a symptom of a mind with insufficient ideas worth exploring? Is boredom that realization that there's very little that there is novel in one's thoughts?
That is, when you employ an external cognitive device to relieve yourself of boredom you fail to exercise your own cognitive skills to generate novel thoughts. It's like using a GPS is detrimental to your navigation skills.
Boredom is therefore that emotional nudge that tells you to explore novelty in response to uniform stimuli. Learning to explore novelty in the mind, given the context of an uninteresting environment, is a skill that is rarely exercised in this world of information abundance.
Perhaps this is why Noah Yuval Harrari's practice of Vipassana meditation is extremely intriguing. .
@threadreaderapp unroll please
