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From Where I Lie: Boredom Is a Boy With a Hoe

Tuesday September 11, 2007

By Larry Johnson

    My father once wrote a poem entitled “A Boy With a Hoe.” Although I don’t remember the words, I vividly recall the general philosophy of the piece. It was about boredom and its various manifestations. And I have to agree with Dear Old Dad that there is hardly anything more pathetic than a young boy hoeing a potato patch; unless, perhaps, it’s a teenage boy forced to associate with adults at some compulsory function, such as a reunion or a company picnic. The pain can be significantly reduced, however, if there happens to be a cute teenage girl somewhere in close proximity (a potato patch rarely produces this pleasant phenomenon). Barring that serendipitous happenstance, a teenager today can now avoid adult- produced boredom in a variety of ways, such as excessive use of his or her cell phone and by plugging surreptitiously into an iPod. You can always tell when this diversion is being employed because of the beatified,  glazed look that comes over a teenager’s face whenever he can be re-channeled, generally through modern technology, back to his or her adolescent world.

     “Modern technology” is the key word here. The modern, bored teenager has learned, almost from the cradle, how to escape via electronics from the adult world, and, I predict, that this is an evolutionary mutation that will significantly change the world we live in. Not since our split with the chimpanzees has there been such an evolutionary bench mark.

     When I was young and an occasional potato hoer myself, the boredom of the task was almost overwhelming. I could think, while I hoed, about happier times and even plan escapes-- that had no chance of materializing-- but what I didn’t have was an electronic mechanism that I could plug into. I had only my own thoughts and those thoughts were usually of a self-pitying nature. Alas! I had no cell phone, no iPod, and no electronic transport to whisk me away from my chores to some adolescent paradise.

     The Boy With a Hoe paradigm has been significantly studied by neuroscientist and has been catalogued as a disease. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, describes “…boredom proneness as being linked to an amazingly diverse range of psychological, physical, educational, and social problems.”

     One major psychological problem that is directly related to boredom is depression. These two states of mind are almost identical and manifest, symptomatically, in closely related ways. The major difference being that the depressed person has more difficulty  breaking out of his slump, whereas any new idea, proposal or environmental change will relieve boredom and return the suffering individual to his normal state, whatever that may be.

     According to Wikipedia, “Some boredom is a form of learned helplessness, a phenomenon closely related to depression. Some philosophies of parenting propose that if children are raised in an environment devoid of stimuli…they will fail to develop capacities to interact with their environment, even a stimulating one.’

     Now most of us consider boredom as being a minor unpleasantness that should be endured or “worked off”. When I was young there was little sympathy for a bored kid. I soon learned to keep my mouth shut whenever I was bored. To say something like “I’m bored, I have nothing to do,” would have been tantamount to signing a work order, and I would soon have found myself splitting firewood, cutting fence posts or hoeing potatoes. So I suffered boredom in silence and waited for it to pass.

     Unfortunately there are static environments where boredom cannot be relieved. Prison, for instance, must be one of those places, although I can’t testify to it personally. On the other hand, I can testify to the tediousness of school and the bone-chilling boredom of learning things by rote. Memorization is boredom producing and is probably the reason that things memorized have a tendency to slip into oblivion unless they are revisited continuously.

     The subject of boredom hasn’t escaped the consideration of writers and philosophers, and it was Heidegger, a philosopher of the mid-twentieth century, who probably delved into boredom and its philosophical underpinnings more than anyone else. He managed to write 100 pages on the subject in his text book “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.” To boil it down to its essence, Heidegger believed that waiting for trains was the most boring of all experiences. It’s safe to say that he never had to fly Delta, Northwest or U.S.Air. Two or three days waiting in a JFK concourse might have changed his mind about the European train system.

     Another philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer, considered the fact that boredom does exist in this world as proof positive that life is meaningless. If life had meaning, according to Schopenhauer, we would be fulfilled as individuals, naturally, and boredom wouldn’t be part of our vocabulary. Conceivably, none of the other negative emotions could possibly exist either. It is obvious to me that Schopenhauer didn’t have a good grasp of the essence of boredom. If he had read his own manuscript he would have had a firmer understanding of the subject.

     Philosophy aside, we once had a hired man who had figured out a sure-fire cure for boredom. Whenever he was set to hoe potatoes, or a similarly boring task, he would put a jug of cider on either of the field. This helped him to concentrate on the task at hand and it gave him motivation in the form reward. It was a satisfactory, non-electronic device that helped to transport him from one end of the field to the other with the least amount of suffering. So much for boredom.


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