robbie36 Posted January 24, 2006 Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 I wonder how humans capacity for boredom developed. I mean we are all bored at sometime or another. Worse still we often get bored of something that sometime ago was our favourite thing in life. Like the quote from Alfie 'Behind every beautful girl there is a guy who is bored of shagging her'. Now I know that evolution is not designed to gives us 'happiness' so the fact that we find boredon irritating is irrelevent. But somehow it must have a purpose or a trait to have survived. Worst still, even though the world is infintely more exciting than it was 100 years or 1000 years ago we still get bored. Anyone got any theories? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pr0nmaster Posted January 24, 2006 Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 interestign question...... furthermore.....why is it the more tv chanells I have...the less interesting any show becomes ? love the alfie quote.....but this is the humna condition I am afraid ..insurmountable .......from a beahavioral perspective....the more conflicting stimuli an organism recieves (choices) .....hat is likely to happen ? also...as with conditioning .....when you recieve a certain stimulant a certain ammount of times..(keep shocking a dog in a cage) .....organisms tend to decrease their response to the stimulant over time (first the dog jumps to avoid the shock.....eventually...he wont flinch and will stand there and accept the "shock" ) ........perfectly obvious stuff......watch porn for the first time and you might have a strong reaction...after the 1000's time you will find your self far less stimulated... within these two phenomenon lives something like the answer I suppose.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robbie36 Posted January 24, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 Yeah well obviously your observations are correct but even you dont seem convinced that it explains the reasons WHY. I guess I could make up a sort of evolutionary answer - if we dont have a mate and children we will bored (while if we have one we will be too busy to be bored) which will encourage us to have a mate and children. Then we get bored and find a new mate and new children. But as an explanation it sounds a little pathetic and hardly convincing. And as you point out the worrying thing about all this is that the more choices we have (which should alleviate our boredom) seems to have the opposite effect. Or maybe I dont really understand your concept of conflicting stimuli contributing to boredom while intuitively you would have thought it would alleviate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pr0nmaster Posted January 24, 2006 Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 And as you point out the worrying thing about all this is that the more choices we have (which should alleviate our boredom) seems to have the opposite effect. nope...you understand perfectly....and yes...I dont have the answer in any objective terms.... theres a wonderful book (my favourite book of all time) by Russel Hoban called "kleinzeit"....who describes a huge fat man who is in hosiptal with a government grant.... when klienziet (our anti " hero") asks him on what grounds is he there on a government grant......the fat man tells him "on metaphorical grounds for the human condition.......you see.....I keep eating and eating...but i'm never full" I suppose thats just the other shitty side of the spectrum... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khun_lung Posted January 24, 2006 Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 Boredom is what makes us social creatures. If we get bored, we socialize with others. TF wouldn't exist if we didn't get bored. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Narmada Posted January 24, 2006 Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 I wonder how humans capacity for boredom developed. I mean we are all bored at sometime or another. Worse still we often get bored of something that sometime ago was our favourite thing in life. Like the quote from Alfie 'Behind every beautful girl there is a guy who is bored of shagging her'. Now I know that evolution is not designed to gives us 'happiness' so the fact that we find boredon irritating is irrelevent. But somehow it must have a purpose or a trait to have survived. Worst still, even though the world is infintely more exciting than it was 100 years or 1000 years ago we still get bored. Anyone got any theories? I think you really address two different things here, boredom and jadedness. Boredom to me is when people sit around and don't know what to do with themselves, a notion I personally hardly ever experience. There are so many books to read, so many things to learn, so much music to listen to, I don't actually find enough time for all of that, so I'm virtually never bored. I wish the day had 36 hours. The other thing, say, when a guy gets tired of shagging that beautiful girl, or of eating that fantastic meal he always loved so much, is simply a tiring of one's sensory faculties. You can only be stimulated so many times by the same old thing until you tire of it. Some tire faster, others slower. It was Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) who said something along the lines that to be a great yogi or seeker you first got to do all the shagging and participate in all the enjoyments of life (I paraphrase liberally). Maybe this kind of jadedness is to push you to 'higher' things, I don't know. Religious people may argue that way. I personally don't think there's a plan or some evolutionary reason behind it all. It's just plain stupid biology and psychology. Kick me in the butt long enough and one day I won't feel the pain anymore. Great question, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoldMember Posted January 24, 2006 Report Share Posted January 24, 2006 Boredom is what makes us social creatures. If we get bored, we socialize with others. TF wouldn't exist if we didn't get bored. nor much else :wink: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiCKeDBiRD Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 .... I think ppl who get bored easily ...... are those who dont know what they want.... .. if you know your -real passion- and you know what you want ..... then you will be challenged and busy fighting/finding your way to your dream..... .. then again, when you managed to get there .... you would probably got bored again.... .. BUT I assume if we get to do what we love doing..... we would NOT get bored... :idea: Like I do love decoration ... I NEVER seem to get bored of it easily.... and when I had something that disturbed me... what I love doing seemed to help me to forget about those silly things.... it keeps me focused & going.... very much like -Alice in the Wonderland- .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_som_tam Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 boredom fills 50% of my day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMG_UK Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Not sure about the cause of boredom, but as George Jean Nathan said, "I only drink to make other people seem more interesting". So, maybe we have a cure for part of the problem anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagle Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 this is a boting thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robbie36 Posted January 25, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Robbie, well, it's not a theory, just an sudden idea. Like greed, boredom can be a motivator. Let's face it...boredom causes some to sleep more, drink alcohol, take drugs or fight, and others to experiment, explore, invent, seek knowledge, etc. I am sure there is something in what you say but there are holes in your arguement. Greed is easy to explain - it helps you to survive and the accumulation of wealth that is associated with it attracts mates who are looking for 'parental care'. So greed is 'healthy' in both survival and reproductive terms. Boredom is clearly counter-productive in survival terms - if you are good at something (usually a result of practice) you can maximise your income which will help you survive and attract a mate. However, we all find boring people very unattractive. Imagine if you had no capacity for boredom. You did what you did best - say make shoes - and because you never got bored you never did anything else. Now you might become very rich but I am sure you would find it difficult to find a mate - their capacty for boredom would make you very boring indeed. (Perhaps shoes are not a good example as women like WB would clearly be all over you.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiCKeDBiRD Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 (Perhaps shoes are not a good example as women like WB would clearly be all over you.) ... :roll: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robbie36 Posted January 25, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 How do you explain Bill Gates finding a mate? Actually Bill Gates is one of my personal heroes. He was hardly a computer nerd - he had to drop out of university because of his addiction to poker (as I understand it). He didnt spend his time writing software - he actually stole DOS from IBM. He just looks like a nerd rather than is one. And you have to give him a lot of respect for the way he is spending his fortune - mostly for the benefit of others. Finally I am impressed by the way he shaped his business not just to make himself rich but to make virtually all his employees rich. (I suspect that Microsoft has made more millionaires than any other business in history.) P.S. Just cos I respect him doesnt mean I want to shag him PPS. I understand your point I just dont think that Bill Gates is a great example Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiCKeDBiRD Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 .. Mmm how about Laziness.... What good does it do ? .. if I happened to lack of laziness ... I would probably earn loads & loads... I would probably be very successful by now. .. then again, I would NOT be at where I am now..... if I were NOT a lazy person.. Mmmmmmm :roll: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robbie36 Posted January 25, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 .. Mmm how about Laziness.... What good does it do ? Laziness conserves energy. Take a cat - it sleeps up to 18 hours a day. That means it needs to eat less in order to survive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robbie36 Posted January 25, 2006 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Actually I dont think we disagree much. I differentiate between Microsoft the company which in many ways represents the unacceptable face of capitalism and Bill Gates himself who had vision, enriched his employees and now appears to be giving away much of his wealth to people who need it more than him. As I see it, he played the game within the rules although the rules are inherently unfair. He had vision and he won. He ensured that the people who believed in his vision also became rich and now that he is 'unusually wealthy' he is handing over his money to people who clearly need it more than him. Ok... maybe I have read the wrong biography...!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeusbheld Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 I wonder how humans capacity for boredom developed. I mean we are all bored at sometime or another. Worse still we often get bored of something that sometime ago was our favourite thing in life. Like the quote from Alfie 'Behind every beautful girl there is a guy who is bored of shagging her'. Now I know that evolution is not designed to gives us 'happiness' so the fact that we find boredon irritating is irrelevent. But somehow it must have a purpose or a trait to have survived. Worst still, even though the world is infintely more exciting than it was 100 years or 1000 years ago we still get bored. Anyone got any theories? it could be an exaptation (no purpose whatsoever) but i think it probably has a purpose. i like the idea of certain capacities of the mind, such as creativity, being loosely analogous to peacock feathers--in other words, an ornament to attract mates--therefore boredom is a tool for discerning which mates are the most worthy--who has the best 'feathers.' that is very broad strokes, but i'm sleep deprived and just happy to spend an entire day NOT driving for a change (what a**hole made the USA so big and spread out?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiCKeDBiRD Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Anyways, nice having a civilized chat with you Robbie...now it's time to eat. ... reminds me of Hannibal .... Mmm .. my Sir Rob : you had better watch out... :shock: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiCKeDBiRD Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Anyways, nice having a civilized chat with you Robbie...now it's time to eat. ... reminds me of Hannibal .... Mmm .. my Sir Rob : you had better watch out... :shock: Is he gonna eat the brain?????????? :shock: noooo Oh well ... judging from Sir Rob's Posts on here... he is a smart one... Oh NO.. :shock: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inamorato25 Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Wow! Very cool thread! 8) I wonder how humans capacity for boredom developed. Now I know that evolution is not designed to gives us 'happiness' so the fact that we find boredon irritating is irrelevent. But somehow it must have a purpose or a trait to have survived I'd suggest that boredom didn't evolve. Our intellect and capacity to evaluate our environment did. So instead of just sitting around like a chimp basking in the sun all day and (presumably) thinking of nothing, we humans evaluate that lack of social activity as boredom. Or rather, we evaluate the inability to have social interaction as boredom. If we were chimps, we could just fight, pick lice, or fling crap at each other on a whim. Our society precludes that, and we evaluate this lack of social interaction as boredom. (Which motivates us to log on to TF for some virtual crap flinging). As for evolution, things don't have to have a purpose to evolve. I mean, eyes didn't evolve because we needed them. They evolved, and as it turns out, sight is a huge survival advantage. The opposite argument is called, if my memory serves, "Lamarkian evolution" and it's gone the way of the dodos. Evolution typically results from genetic shakeup that happens when a very small number of individuals in a species are forced to interbreed. The resulting "founder effect" brings hidden recessive mutations together, and you have a new advanced society of banjo-playing, 6-fingered offspring. Now if banjo playing and extra digits is of a survival advantage, they can outcompete the previous versions of the species for limited resources and survival. So, to make a long story short (too late!) boredom is probably not something that evolved, and is not something that is likely to disappear as a result of evolution. Getting rid of boredom would mean that society has to evolve so we can play and have unlimited access to novel social interaction. Or, to put it another way, c'mon everybody, let's get naked!! :twisted: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WiCKeDBiRD Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 .... if anyone got bored .... I recommend to watch american idol-audition - repeat -audition- on star tv - ubc 57 ..... Tonight is the first tiem I watch it ..... Geez loads of Prats getting themselves to be televised to all over the world .... those Prats on TF can never ever compare.... what a good laugh ... ... Oh well ... it proves that <some> ppl could do anything to for Fame... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagle Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 So boredom evolved and then we evolved into boredom. Amazing how boredom can make a somewhat interesting thread. And this thread too Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoldMember Posted January 25, 2006 Report Share Posted January 25, 2006 Well it all started in the neolithic age .Some guys were sitting in a cave having a cup of tea and scrawling grafitti all over the walls *flintstones woz ere* etc etc.Tv was still 50,000 year away so renting a porno vid wasnt an option.They werent in a German cave either,so gangbangs with dinosaurs never crossed the mind .Hence the start of boredom and its evolution leading to modern day manifestations such as the writing of profuse drivel on TF.End of Brief history of Boredom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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