The Creative Power of Boredom

[Decaf]

So lets give Coberst's style a try...

This is an entry in a book called "What we believe but cannot prove" by John Brockman. Its a collection of responses to that question from dozens of intellectually notable figures in science and philosophy. This one stood out to me and I hope you feel as inspired as I did.

To be fair, here's a link to the book if you would like to read more.

Verena Huber-Dyson

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]I believe in the creative power of boredom. Or, to put it into the form suggested by the Edge Question: [/FONT]I believe that no matter how relentlessly we overfeed our young with packaged, interactive entertainments, before long they will break out and invent their own amusements. I know from experience: Boredom drove me into mathematics during my preteens. But I cannot prove it until it actually happens. Probably in less than a generation, kids will be amusing themselves and each other in ways we never dreams of. Such is my belief in human nature, in the resilience of its good sense.

 

[Agent Intellect]

mental boredom for sure. i think i'm at my most creative when i'm at work: physically demanding work but not very mentally stimulating. when i'm just sitting around at home, bored, thats when i feel quite un-creative and un-motivated. i often think better when working or even just going for a walk. something about the physical activity must just get my brain going, then i get lost in my thoughts, lose track of where i am and how much time has passed, and sometimes even start rambling nonsense on an internet forum.....

 

[FusionKnight]

mental boredom for sure. i think i'm at my most creative when i'm at work: physically demanding work but not very mentally stimulating. when i'm just sitting around at home, bored, thats when i feel quite un-creative and un-motivated. i often think better when working or even just going for a walk. something about the physical activity must just get my brain going, then i get lost in my thoughts, lose track of where i am and how much time has passed, and sometimes even start rambling nonsense on an internet forum.....

WHY IS THIS SO DARNED TRUE??!!

I try and survive my boring job by being very creative (INTP debates, sketching, reading, etc) but when I get home, where I can do those things with a clean conscience, I feel totally apathetic...

 

[Agent Intellect]

i think its one of the reasons why i always feel like my weekends are such a waste. when i work, i get so much done inside my head (along with that whole money making thing) then during the weekend, my INTPness just goes flacid (sorry, it was just too easy).

 

[Kuu]

Well its because the INTPness needs lots of foreplay for it to get in the mood

Seriously, I see that the INTP mind needs a lot of time to make subconscious processing. We're like a homely slow-cooked stew, not instant microwave fast-food!

It takes me at least a week of completely doing nothing but rest so that my cranial hamsters can begin to get the wheels a-spinnin'.

And regarding kids creating their own amusements: It's called sex.

 

[Vrecknidj]

I've seen this somewhere else...

"Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself."
--Kierkegaard

Dave

 

[loveofreason]

Seriously, I see that the INTP mind needs a lot of time to make subconscious processing. We're like a homely slow-cooked stew, not instant microwave fast-food!

It takes me at least a week of completely doing nothing but rest so that my cranial hamsters can begin to get the wheels a-spinnin'.

My hamster wheel's rusted.

I just want to say "Me too!!!"

This is exactly what it's like for me.

I once wrote a letter to someone (a J damn them!) - "the fertility of the mind resides in darkness" - in large part attempting to explain how my mind worked.

While all seems idle on the surface (and in the visible life), great things are happening deep beneath.

That same person now complains about the time I spend thinking. Shame they didn't really think about what I wrote.

 

[Decaf]

"the fertility of the mind resides in darkness"

I like that. I think I'm gonna have to steal it

Damn J's...

 

[loveofreason]

Thief.

 

[EloquentBohemian]

While all seems idle on the surface (and in the visible life), great things are happening deep beneath.

Precisely. It seems to me that Western societies have become a collection of 'doers', and if one is not 'doing something', always active, then there must be something wrong with them. The thrust to 'achieve, achieve, achieve' permeates Western cultures. More. Better. Faster.
There seems to be little to no contemplative factor. It's more make something happen, than let something happen. Force it into a predetermined concept or structure rather than allow something, or someone, to evolve its own structure and interject to 'tweak it' in tune with its natural flow.

The mind doesn't do, the mind thinks. If one is more and more in a state of doing, one is less and less in a state of thinking and contemplating.

 

[grey matters]

They say that boring repetitive things like knitting is a mentally stimulating activity. I don't know how true this is. My ENTP husband does get some of his greatest ideas while sitting on the toilet. When he has a problem at work (not the social kind, for that, he is hopeless) I make the joke that he should eat more cheese.



For whatever reason Western Societies confuse quantity with quality. Somehow having a quality life involves getting everything done that is on your list. I would much prefer doing one activity that feeds my intuition like going to a museum show or surfing the internet. Somehow having more is seen as better then having a quality of life.


It seems that public schools focus way too much on quantity instead of quality. The goal is to stuff childrens heads with facts and figures, teach them to compute, or perform a behavior so they can spit out these skills or information on a test. Very little time and effort is spent encouraging the children to understand the ideas, concepts and principles behind those facts and figures. We treat children as if they are computers. Computers do tasks and store information, but they have no understanding of the tasks they are doing or the information they are storing.

Some of this is due to the fact that qualitative stuff is harder to measure then quantitative stuff, the rest I can attribute to an SJ conspiricay. The SJ's want to take over the world so they make it hard for intuitive, creative, and often unconventional thinkers to succeed. Sometimes I think the only place where we can freely exist is is on the internet. It's time for a revolution.

What I have noticed is that American schools (I don't know how they do things elsewhare) have come to a point where they are not able to stuff all the facts and trained behaviors into children's heads so they just hammer away at the same stuff over and over. This, I believe is a sign that they need to try some different methods. Information storage for the purpose of information storage has very little purpose for most people.

Some people are motivated by competition and winning achievements, but for many others the effort involved in winning the prize is not worth it. Mathmatical computations for the purpose of learning how to do mathmatical computations is boring. Mathmatical computations for the purpose of discovering why things in the universe do the things they do is fun and interesting. Math now has purpose. It's not until middle school (at the earliest) that math can be applied to fun things (for example Physics is math with toys, chemistry is math with toys that you can't see, biology is math with toys that are alive)

In order to make school less boring for my elementary age kids I suppliment their "learning" with stuff at home. My daughter is growing a window herb garden my son has an ongoing science experiment in our refridgerator. I want to do an experiment that involves growing plants under different colored lights but I haven't figgured out how to deal with the heat from the incandescent bulbs yet. the heat may be too much for the plants.

I'm done rambling now.

Anyway the point is that

 

[fullerene]

why not use fluorescent ones, but tape up some colored cellophane in front of it to block all but that color from coming through? I'm not sure how much cooler they are... but they're more energy efficient, and I don't think they let out any extra light, so I'm assuming the energy efficiency comes from letting off less heat.

haha and I don't know about a conspiracy... but one of my math profs this year looks pretty damn ESTJ to me, and I chuckle to myself every time he mentions theory or understanding. Just the other day he said "so what's the general concept here? Well first you want to... [outlines a 6 step procedure for solving a certain type of differential equation]." I turned to my (I think ENTP) friend, who I've talked a little about mbti with and mentioned the SJ mindset to, and just mumbled "that concept looks awfully like a procedure to me..."

Its turned into a private joke, now, because SJs don't seem to function very well in the natural sciences. A couple weeks ago we learned a method of approximation for solving something, called "Euler's Method," and then another one called "Improved Euler's Method." The thing was, I was about 85% sure that the Improved Method would give you a worse approximation, if the answer you were approximating had certain characteristics. The details are hairy... but I asked the prof about this and described an example of a graph shape that I thought would prove my point, and he sounded kinda unsure (rare, cause our profs have been reeaally smart and knowledgeable so far) and said "eeh I don't really know... but I don't think so. It's tough to imagine how [ignoring the information that the improved method takes into account] could ever give you a worse answer." So I sort of internally shrugged and said "ok," but then got tapped on the back by 4 people behind me who said "yeah... you're definitely right. I can see exactly what you mean."

so I dunno about saying the only place we can freely exist is on the internet, because I think there's enough support in the natural sciences if you go that route.... but there definitely aren't too many places where the world's set up for us.

 

[grey matters]

but there definitely aren't too many places where the world's set up for us.

When the revolution comes I will make sure the world is adapted to our preferences. Oh wait, then nothing will get done and we will starve to death. Either that or the ENTP's will take over and then blow up the world in some crazy scheme that they have come up with. Would it be bad if we set things up and just have an INTJ run things? Arn't they good at getting things done?

As for the SJ's they will just have to suffer.