[anvandare]

"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d’une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une chambre."

"All the unhappiness of men arises from a single fact, which is from not knowing how to stay at rest in a room."

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 139)

It is no coincidence that the word 'idle' means both 'doing nothing' and 'being worthless'. I could write out a longer comment with some more thoughts on the health of a society that is obsessed with productivity and 'staying busy', but I'd rather spend those minutes doing nothing instead.

[akomtu]

Most people today are still learning to control their emotions, and since emotions dont exist in a still form, such people have to keep talking or moving. Some people are mastering thoughts at the moment, and few are learning to use intuition.

The 1st kungfu panda movie shows a great allegory on these three stages. Po is a beginner: his emotions, by virtue of their momentum, keep Po making talk endlessly and make lots of random moves that summarily achieve nothing. Shifu has mastered emotions, and is mastering thoughts: he knows lots of tricks, but he isn't wise, precisely because he is too busy with the tricks. Oogway shows how to use mind properly: he is balancing on a stick of attention, perfectly still, and is waiting for the voice of intuition; only when a droplet of wisdom falls on him, he engages his mind and with a few precise moves turns that droplet into knowledge.

Great scientists can switch between the two modes. Good ones are too busy with symbolic trickery and never hear the voice of intuition.

[liberia]

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

For another spin on it.

That quote is brilliant and profound. Sad that thinking is regarded as an afflicting disease and our devices are the cure.

I purposefully dedicate an hour to just do jack shit and be alone with my thoughts.

‘Oh you saw something in your mind? Relax it’s called an idea. Get used to them’

[nonrandomstring]

"The Belcerebons of Kakrafoon Kappa were sentenced to telepathy by a Galactic Tribunal because the rest of the galaxy found peaceful contemplation contemptuous." - HHGTTG

I often think smartphones were inflicted upon Earth by our alien neighbours to distract us and stop us ever getting off this rock.

[marttt]

I also liked the digital watches quote:

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."

Douglas Adams seems strangely forgotten these days (or is he, in the UK?), considering how great he really was. It would be extremely interesting to hear his thoughts or spinoffs on the climate crisis.

Then again, he did offer many straightforward solutions, though, e.g.:

"FOOT WARRIOR: Do not panic! Lay Down your arms. We just want you to relax and enjoy your shoes."

[slowmovintarget]

> ...And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains. -- Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut

We don't need Diana Moon Glampers, we do it to ourselves.

Another quote:

"Writing is thinking." -- David McCullough

We need to write more, for ourselves, to others, in slow, careful sentences, building arguments. Tweets don't cut it.

[lazide]

Good luck with young kids!

[marttt]

I think young kids are much more OK with boredom than adults, at least up to a certain age. The whole idea of "boredom = bad" is, IMO, a cultural meme. In the course of time, kids are simply taught to think this way.

Before going to the kindergarten, our firstborn was fine with "doing nothing". He rarely questioned it. As soon as the first months there were passed, he started complaining about "boredom" at home -- obviously, either other kids or the teacher had brought this meme up. He is 2nd grade now, and with some success, we teach him to think that boredom is OK and a source of unexpected, inspiring ideas.

I think kids are fine as long as you don't completely forget the right buttons.

[theshrike79]

I think my kid is broken, they can just leave their phone at home when we go out.

They can also not check their messages for a few days.

Dunno if we did something right or wrong =)

[carrolldunham]

If you reflected on the meaning you might have questioned your impulse to have kids

[lazide]

Pretty sure Buddha warned against nihilism. The void may be tempting, but is ultimately empty, after all.

[carrolldunham]

What does that have to do with anything? We're talking about Pascal's claim

[lazide]

Because you implied in your statement that having kids is due to a lack of reflection, rather than due to reflecting.

I'm pointing out a fork in the road in mindset.

[Kaze404]

What makes you think they haven’t? I don’t buy it for one bit that people simply have kids on impulse, and you can question an impulse and come out the other end still wanting to go through with it.

[stevage]

Chambre would normally be translated as bedroom.

[WXLCKNO]

Not usually and definitely not in this context.