Why Is Boredom So Uncomfortable? - Social Media, Wittgenstein, and Dissatisfaction
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
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A video essay on Wittgenstein's language games, the dangers of storytelling, and how to embrace the mundane and face boredom directly.
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Languages are beyond complicated lol. Language learning is no joke. Boredom is a part of learning, no matter how fun the subject is. There is always gonna be some part that's boring.
Indeed. Occasional boredom is a part of all work and all play (play/work being two sides of the same coin), and that boredom stems from disinterest in some aspect of the activity, that disinterest may be from the discouragement of not yet mastering the specific task or of having mastered it and not being able to engage in more challenging tasks (whether from internal factors as simple as not knowing how to proceed or external factors).
When you experienced extreme suffering you see boredom as a luxury
i would mostly agree except for boredom itself can be "administered" as a form of suffering. think: solitary confinement or "Chess Story" by Stefan Zweig.
Leisure is a good thing. Suffering isnt to be publicly shown off asking for attention. By nature people who suffer love getting attention. People of leisure don't need attention ironically like your comment.
Often when watching these videos, I find myself unable to reach the end without wanting to go and write something, read something, change something about the core of my being. And if you ask me, I would say that - in essence - that is great.
“Boredom is the root of all evils”-Soren Kierkegaard
@@natbrownizzle1387 Yeah,same here. Either/Or was hell of an ironic experience.
Wonderful video. This "re-wiring" is exactly what I've begun to do this week and the fruit of it has been incredible. Everyday I ask myself: "What does life look like today?" and record the answers throughout the day in my Hobonichi Techo. Some of these are demands I must meet based on my various responsibilities. Some of these are things I enjoy and that have a positive effect on me: a walk on the trail, coloring, meeting a friend for lunch, reading at the park, munching of a cookie from Chick-fil-a (too yummy). There is a thrilling slowness that has begun to characterize both my days and my mind. I think more clearly, I have more productive thoughts, I AM more productive, in general -- in a more organic way. I've been making space, by embracing "boredom," for unexpected thoughts (one of which sparked a fruitful dissertation idea) and spontaneity and connection to the physical world. I no longer feel dissatisfied or like life is anticlimactic. Life is teaching me what it is and the borders of my agency. Some things are unavoidable; there are other things I can control, but only to a certain extent; there are events in life that take us out of the norm, out of the mundane, and that's wonderful. But it's okay that life today is cleaning the house, and preparing food (I have a lot of thoughts about the ways in which our lives are being made more "convenient" so that we can have more time for the things that "really" matter. I think some of the things that "really" matter are the very things convenience is dissolving...). Anyway, the items of life that seem "boring" can be enjoyed; it would behoove us to adjust our expectations of life. I have found such delight in sitting, walking without music/podcast/phone call/texting, etc., silence, tidying my apartment, and even the tasks I don't want to do - there is unexpected delight that has come from confronting them and completing them.
I realized that the things that seem mundane, banal, and anticlimactic are the very things that life is made up of. For me, though, it isn't social media that breeds dissatisfaction with reality, but too much engagement with shows and movies, and the internet in general. Living in the physical world, embracing its ordinariness, delighting in its ordinariness can teach you what your rhythms of life are and you'll begin to enjoy them.
Also, great explanation of Wittgenstein! He's my favorite, too.
It was a delight reading this comment... I could relate to every single word. Thanks for this.
@@amorr_fatii Thank you :)
I've been in a state of boredom for the longest time, and I've been trying to make my life like others' instead of focusing on what actually makes me happy. Its not the first time, but social media does tend to be the reason I always feel like my life is not fun or adequate enough.
Thank you for this video. It was very insightful
What you’re saying goes beyond the domain of spoken language. It can be a pose or a smile in an instagram picture. It is not just a smile anymore but a symbol manufactured to express a message. Whether it is an image, sound or collection of words, when isolated from the actual real-time subjective experience and recorded on a medium (books, instagram, canvas, spotify), the reality is being reduced to a size which can easily be turned into a narrative by the “pattern detection” faculties of our minds. Real life has too many elements to it with no obvious patterns and that’s why it is harder for us to convince ourselves that our lives have narratives. But when we consume the records of other people’s lives in a minimized form through some medium, because of the reduced complexity, we can easily detect symbols and narratives (both real and imagined) and thus assume that their lives are far more interesting than ours. Symbols create narratives by compressing or minimising (or reducing) the reality into a form that can easily be digested by the human mind.
In conclusion, symbols (language being one of them) compress reality and at the same time, compressed reality with no intentional symbols (a picture taken at a completely random moment) automatically arouses symbols or patterns in a consumer’s mind thus building a narrative.
That's Barthes' theory for you
really useful piece of applied philosophy. thanks! we really are obsessed to fill those gaps(the mundane) with thoughts about our next ''peak'' or about other people's ''peaks''.
This is exactly what I needed to hear, thank you!
Hey your french accent is great, really. And t's nice when someone applies Witty's theories to real life. Slightly suicidal, but refreshing. Thank you for your work!
Btw about building our own life story, I highly recommend reading Martin Eden by Jack London. It's an eye-opening, rough but beautiful, fascinating book.
A brilliant explanation about influence affecting our perception of our reality and its value in the eye's of others, which might just be dependent on the narrative; and language used. Thanks. That was very meaningful!
Sagacity as profound as it is beautiful - thank you for your effort & energies, thank you for caring enough to make these.
it is very calming to listen to your voice while sewing. Great narration. Thank you for sharing these insights on Wittgenstein! Greetings from Amsterdam
this is such a helpful video. thank you so much, graduating this week and i needed this.
While I understand that the people online don't have the extremely exciting life we picture them having but, there are people that live that way. There are also many people who just have simpler lives. When we accept that it will be easier to live. The imprint shouldn't be deleted but it also shouldn't be framed. It will serve as a reminder that all lives are different. A boring life is not a bad one. Something that people often forget is that when we have nothing else left we have other people to connect with. The connection may not be direct but simply being around others can help. Being bored is an opportunity to find our favorite distraction. I really like the way you connected to two topics. The concept is simple "comparison is the thief of joy" but the attachment of philosophy to a somewhat cliche was neat. Thank you for the food for thought. :)
Thanks a million!!!! 🥺💖
Wow 😍
It just amazed me.
I am living the same life I have no social media accounts, I never opened Instagram, not Facebook.
I don't know why but I am feeling so proud right now.
I am a college student for the last 3 years my life was like moving in the same loop every day .nothing was existing. But now I am living peacefully with this boring life in which I have nothing to do even though I don't have to study that much. I have not that many close friends I have no exciting stories to tell about myself.
Although sometimes I felt like I am wasting my life by doing nothing or I am just a burden for this heart but even if I am not doing anything at least I am learning how to live with my thoughts and in the world of living extraordinary life I still manage to live a simple peaceful life.
Thanks to you Waldun for such an amazing video and thoughts.
I truly appreciate you.
you are so wise woww !! your channel is criminally underrated
so happy i came across your channel!
Very inspiring! Thank you!
Thank you for this video! It makes you think about your daily life.
Thanks a lot!
Interesting! I always looked at it from the neuroscience perspective and never thought would be so fun to think about it philosophically
St Augustine’s The Confessions is a great book that touches on the shortcomings or “sins” (as st augustine calls them) of theater and storytelling. It’s fun to see conversations be had over millennium. Great read for anyone interested in the topic
This is a really great comparison between Wittgensteins work and the modern day social media craze. Thank you for making this connection and sharing your thoughts about how we can start to become mindful of the beauty in the mundane of our own lives. It's a very important part to life that has been lost.
İ watched ad just because the joy of listening your joyfully speak
Pont rès bien construit entre le langage et l' ennui. J' adore l' idée de "vidéo éssai". Fort intérressant. Tu mûris et il y a de la profondeur bien expliquée. Châpeau mon ami!
I love your pholosphy alot, I am new here for your channel, I really admired your going into the deep of the problem or the thing.
Amazing. Mind- blowing conceptual debunk. Amazing. Helped me a lot lol this is why I felt stuck these days
Very interesting video! 👏🏻
Nice perspective!
Great video thanks
I was thinking, for the longest time, what is he getting at?! Thank you so much for sharing this interesting prospective！
A while back, I came to appreciate as best I could the most boring of moments - being stuck driving in heavy traffic on a rural highway, full stops alternated with short distances at 10 miles per hour. It was only on these occasions that I could divert my attention from the roadway and observe the scenery, the wildflowers and insects on the median and on the roadside. Images I am forbidden from studying when I am driving at speed.
This is why I romanticize the mundane things. It brings me a sense of peace.
Good to see people talking about good old Ludwig
This video reminds me of the last day of school of 4th grade. This would have been around 1996 or so. It was a warm day in early June, probably high 70's and the windows were open with a slight breeze coming in. We didn't have air conditioning at my school and it was fairly warm and miserable in our uniforms. I remember looking at the clock for almost the entire last 5 minutes before summer break, just itching for the bell to ring, looking at that round clock up on the wall tick, tick, tick with the second hand advancing ever so slowly. It was driving me insane. I swear at one point the clock went from 1:58 backwards to 1:57. I just wanted to go on summer vacation. I just wanted freedom from school work and to get a nice long break. Those 5 minutes were probably the longest 5 minutes of my life and I have never been more bored in my entire life. Why this memory resonates with me though, I do not know. I think perhaps it is because I do appreciate that the one moment of time in my life seemed so powerfully infinite in the excitement and anticipation of summer activities.
Starting to appreciate the mundane things :)
Wonderful video
I think a third-person narrative might be a really fun way to see our own lives.
wow thank you you are very smart
First: I love how authentic these videos are. The natural flow of speech is so weirdly refreshing against the fast-paced, animated, & error-proof.
Second: this couldn’t have arrived at a more relevant time. I am someone that moves from stimulus to stimulus when my world gets static. I just NEED something to fill the gap-anything to avoid what I really should do. (And God, it doesn’t help that everyone around you seems to be the same way!)
...Since quitting Instagram, I sometimes feel the need to be a part of that community (and have even considered being conscious of what I view, who I follow, etc). Yet, like you said, the language... the impression...is often unavoidable. Despite all our best intentions, social media can leave you feeling vacant, even when you can’t exactly place the source. Language underestimated, indeed.
Keep those thoughts a-stirring! Looking forward to more!!
👍🏽 Live & appreciate your life as your own movie - complete with its own soundtrack (headphones).
How do you use social media, curious to know about it.
I had no idea - Wittgenstein - such a significant name, but only one published work/book! It goes to show - if you have something to convey - convey it, & 'success' be damned!
Intresting points. How can one learn to write at the basic level?
Appreciate being 👏👏👏
Good video.
I can’t find the book on Amazon. can someone please help me find it online. Thank you
In that narrative I think book screw up my life, precisely my view on life. From very young age I was reading fantasy books and living in them in my head. Now being an adult I can't live in real world, it feels to me boring and not exciting without magic and heroes.
I like how your French sounds,can you make a whole video in french?
you are amazing
I wouldn't say that one should necessarily believe that the current material conditions of their life, is "all there is". That's of course, easily disproven, because one can be rather certain that within the next hundred or so years their life will definitely have changed, because they will have definitely died. It doesn't have to be as depressing as that, though; there are a lot of changes that happen between now and death - you know that probably within the next few years you will probably graduate university, there will be changes there, and new perspectives, maybe you will start taking a different train ride to a different part of town.
But one can't hyperfixate on this process of change at the expense of the experience of the present. It's always true that it's folly to aim to transplant images coming from others' experiences OR the image of one's future onto their own present, mundane existence, to the point of great dissatisfaction.
He's smart and cute. I love this channel 😍
further reads?
Most people just go to work, spend all day scrolling , then eating then going to sleep and repeat
I learned this a few yrs ago. That nobody else is living some perfect life that I want. Everybody has problems.
In my opinion, if life is absurd then that automatically excluded a cohesive narratives.
Всем Привет из Казахстана, я конечно не понимаю он очень интересно🇰🇿
What are your opinion about people who are bilingual? I think I find it that language influence one’s behaviour. I cant really precisely explained it, however I noticed that my behaviour shifts depending on what language I use. Has anyone experience this?
I'm pretty sure if you look up there are some scientific experiments that have came to this conclusion : it's something pretty common among two (and even more) languages speakers :)
I certainly have experienced it! I'm trilingual, and the multitude of moments where I caught myself shifting in behaviour when alternating two languages is baffling. :)
Random House has published good bilingual dictionaries if you want a written tutorial.
Embracing boredom and getting through it seems to lead to liberation. An embracing of 'nothingness'. The opposite to a hyperstimulation of our current reality.
I agree with everything you said. I think at this point in our lives, there’s a compulsive (false) need to impress upon others that we are living the best life. Hence, we only show the parts of our lives that seem picturesque. We’ve forgotten to appreciate the mundane.
9:36 11:18 15:17
Why is divergence in social media so much larger than in real life? After all in both cases we use language
i enjoy the content of this video but the title...
i don't know if boredom is about comparison or believing that other people are having more fun. i actually genuinely think i have more fun than most people, NOT because i do things that would impress them from the outside. from the outside it looks like i'm reading or writing or thinking or walking. but from the INSIDE i feel stimulated.
but nonetheless i also have moments when i'm bored. and when i look at other people i sometimes pity them because i feel that they are much more bored than i. i just don't think boredom is about believing that other people are having so much fun.
i think boredom is the brain needing exercise.
you know that nasty stagnant feeling you get in your body when you don't move for a long time?
i think boredom is that for the mind.
i think what you're talking about is less about boredom and more about dissatisfaction and comparison.
I am shedding tears of ecstasy at the sight of a fork on my kitchen table... I think I took your advice a little too far...
this is so funny to me lmfao💀
I wish Wittgenstein could be a painter..
1) How do you know when something is real?
and
2) Are you living in a simulation?
Hmmmmm...
🥇 First
bruh
Lol, what? Boredom isn't uncomfortable. It's boring!