Be Bored! #047

The value of not being endlessly entertained

Welcome back!

We have been talking about Bertrand Russell and how we can increase our happiness by first finding out what are the sources of our unhappiness. Russell thinks that another very important point that makes us unhappy is our inability to be bored. This might feel surprising, right? Because boredom normally is seen as something negative. We say "I'm bored, I'm so bored, I need to go out, do something, play with my social media."

But for Russell, boredom and for many intellectuals and writers throughout history, boredom has always been the source of inspiration. If you look at great writers and philosophers, what they often say in their biographies is that there was this situation in which they were bored, in which they were sitting around, in which they were thinking, and perhaps they were doing this for many days or perhaps weeks, and then they had the idea that was at the core of their work.

And you can observe this in children also. When children are bored, after a while, they become the most productive and the most creative because nobody wants to be bored. So if the children are bored, they will sooner or later find something to do. And what they do is start observing the world. Look around, "I am bored, so now I look around and I see an ant, so I start observing the ant," or "I see a shell on the beach, and then I start collecting shells." I will do something, and the thing I will do will take away the boredom, and it will spark my creativity. But for this to happen is that I am bored first.

And this is the thing, and today, and already in Bertrand Russell's time in the 1930s, he says parents have this unfortunate tendency to keep their children from being bored, to protect them from being bored. So, you see it today; you see it everywhere when you go to a restaurant where there are parents and children. At least here in Hong Kong, I know every child will have a phone in their hands, and the parents will talk to each other. In order not to be interrupted by the child all the time, they will just give a phone to the child. So the children are sometimes 2-3 years old, and they are just scrolling through YouTube or some social media feed, which I don't understand, but it's just blinking pictures and flickering images, and it keeps them occupied.

In this way, these children are never going to develop any interest in the world because they are so filled with this excitement and these images and distracted that they never have time to observe anything. Imagine, in contrast, you had the same situation, but now a child that does not really have anything to do. What would this child do? It would start perhaps playing with the cutlery in the restaurant. It would take up a fork and examine it and learn about the properties of a fork. It would learn that the tip is sharp, and you hold it by the handle, and then it would take the knife, and it will slot the knife into the fork and see that this works. And this is a kind of Lego then; it's a kind of geometry play, and there would be all kinds of discovery happening where the child would be active, doing things rather than just sitting there and having their brain fried by those pictures on a phone.

And this is what Russell says. I mean, he doesn't—again, I'm always giving you an interpretation, today's interpretation of what he says because he wrote the book in the 1930s; there were no mobile phones, and my examples, of course, are the examples of today. But this is what Russell says: parents should let the children make their own experiences, and this begins with boredom. Let me read you a little bit of Russell. He writes: "The capacity to endure a more or less monotonous life is one which should be acquired in childhood." So the capacity to endure boredom is something that should be acquired in childhood.

Modern parents are greatly to blame in this respect. They provide their children with far too many passive amusements, such as shows and good things to eat, and they do not realize the importance to a child of having one day like another, except of course for somewhat rare occasions. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony—fruitful monotony, right? The boredom that later leads to inspiration, to discovery, to observation, to science, the scientific mind.

So as you go out today, if you have children, perhaps try to see if you can give them a little bit of that boredom. We always try to do it in our holidays, for example, when we go to the beach. I refuse to engage with the children. I tell them, "Go to the beach, and now that we are at the beach, do whatever you like." And sometimes, they will be bored; they will just sit there and don't know what to do. But after a while, you see there will get up, and they will start exploring. They will go around the beach, and they will try to find shells or go fishing or do whatever they can to explore, to perhaps find a cave somewhere, to collect plants. They will do something, and in this way, they will create their own meaning, and this is something they will need later in life.

And if it is later in life for you, if you don't have children, but you're thinking of applying these things to you, again, try to use the power of boredom. or example, spend an afternoon on the sofa without your mobile phone, just thinking. Sit there and just look around, and it will be very boring in the beginning. But later, you will start having some thoughts, so start thinking about something and start to follow these thoughts. And perhaps observe the room. And this may develop into some kind of meditation. It may develop into ideas for remodeling your room if you concentrate on what you are seeing. It may develop into a melody in your brain if you think of a song. Perhaps it may develop into ideas of what you will do in the next few days. There are all kinds of things that your brain will try to create in order to amuse you, in order to keep you entertained, and some of these may be valuable ideas that you can pursue further.

Thank you, and see you again tomorrow.