sozobe wrote:I have this notebook where I jot down writing ideas and I liked this one so much I thought I'd save it for an essay or something. But what the heck. The title would be "Boredom is Good."
Some of the science of "Boredom is Good":
Quote:Boredom as a temporary state is another matter, and in part reflects the obvious: that the brain has concluded there is nothing new or useful it can learn from an environment, a person, an event, a paragraph. But it is far from a passive neural shrug. Using brain-imaging technology, neuroscientists have found that the brain is highly active when disengaged, consuming only about 5 percent less energy in its resting "default state" than when involved in routine tasks, according to Dr. Mark Mintun, a professor of radiology at Washington University in St. Louis.
That slight reduction can make a big difference in terms of time perception. The seconds usually seem to pass more slowly when the brain is idling than when it is absorbed. And those stretched seconds are not the live-in-the-moment, meditative variety, either. They are frustrated, restless moments. That combination, psychologists argue, makes boredom a state that demands relief ?- if not from a catnap or a conversation, then from some mental game.
"When the external and internal conditions are right, boredom offers a person the opportunity for a constructive response," Dr. Belton, co-author of the review in the Cambridge journal, wrote in an e-mail message.
Some evidence for this can be seen in semiconscious behaviors, like doodling during a dull class, braiding strands of hair, folding notebook paper into odd shapes. Daydreaming too can be a kind of constructive self-entertainment, psychologists say, especially if the mind is turning over a problem. In experiments in the 1970s, psychiatrists showed that participants completing word-association tasks quickly tired of the job once obvious answers were given; granted more time, they began trying much more creative solutions, as if the boredom "had the power to exert pressure on individuals to stretch their inventive capacity," Dr. Belton said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/health/research/05mind.html
this business about raising kids in a highly structured environment looks like a carbon copy of the discredited practice of raising kids in an atmosphere of constant praise. In both cases the parents who don't follow the program are looked at at 'bad" parents, any arguments against the program are ignored, rational reasons are given for why not following the program is neglect of children, and both practices quickly become bad for kids. In the case of constant praise kids never learn to test themselves, and develop such a strong sense of entitlement that they become handicapped for life, in the case of regimented childhoods the individuals never as adults learn to handle their own affairs very well.
what is wanted are adults who can think for themselves, know themselves, and whom can control themselves. How they are treated as children effects their future ability to do these these things well.
