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The oddly interesting history of boredom + History of food

#1
C C Offline
History of food: Will we ever get a clear idea about what to eat?
https://aeon.co/essays/will-we-ever-get-...should-eat

EXCERPT: . . . But there’s a flip side to that frustration. Maybe the reason that diet is so difficult to optimise is that there is no optimal diet. We are enormously flexible omnivores who can live healthily on varied diets, like our hunter-gatherer ancestors or modern people filling shopping carts at globally sourced supermarkets, yet we can also live on specialised diets, like traditional Inuits who mostly ate a small range of Arctic animals or subsistence farmers who ate little besides a few grains they grew.

Aaron Carroll, a physician in Indiana and a columnist at The New York Times, argues that people spend far too much time worrying about eating the wrong things. ‘The “dangers” from these things are so very small that, if they bring you enough happiness, that likely outweighs the downsides,’ he said in 2018. ‘So much of our food discussions are moralising and fear-inducing. Food isn’t poison, and this is pretty much the healthiest people have even been in the history of mankind. Food isn’t killing us.’

Food is a vehicle for ideologies such as nutritionism and essentialism, for deeply held desires such as connecting with nature and engineering a better future. We argue so passionately about food because we are not just looking for health – we’re looking for meaning. Maybe, if meals help provide a sense of meaning for your life, that is the healthiest thing you can hope for... (MORE - missing details)


The oddly interesting history of boredom
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/...is-boredom

EXCERPTS: . . . "Just like acedia in early Christianity was thought to only afflict monks, ennui in early America was thought to only afflict the wealthy," Feifer says. "[...] ennui was what people felt when they had too much leisure and not enough to do. It was a very real boredom, but also a kind of guilt or shame for all their excess time, which made ennui a complex experience."

Luke Fernandez, also a professor at Weber State University and the other author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid, explained that working people certainly experienced what we might call boredom, but they were more likely to use words like wearisome or dull. And they didn't ascribe a moral function to it — it was just a product of their work.

"When you're out there on your farm or on your homestead and trying to plow the land or harvest a crop, there's a lot of tedium and monotony involved in that activity, but you don't attach much import to that because you see so much virtue in the actual work you're doing," Fernandez says. "And so, people from the middle classes, the yeoman farmers, the people out in the homesteads, they felt tedium, they felt monotony, but they didn't worry about it the way upper classes did."

[...] In the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of work changed dramatically because of industrialization. And with this change came a change in the nature of what boredom was, who experienced it, and how. "When industrialization increased ... it changed the way people thought about work. Beforehand, many Americans worked for themselves," Feifer says. "Now, more people were working for others doing a single task in a factory over and over. And they found very little virtue in that."

It is under this backdrop that the word "boredom" finally takes center stage. "In the 18th century, the word 'bore' described a very dull person," Feifer says. "And then in the mid-19th century, that evolved into the word 'boredom,' which was a state of mind. This became a useful word because of course, the word ennui was still associated with the wealthy, but anyone, no matter their job or status, could be bored."

But if the overriding sentiment about work is that it generates boredom — rather than some intrinsic value — that creates a problem for employers. What value system can be used to keep enough people in the jobs for the enterprise to continue?

"When work sucks, then your off-the-clock time must compensate for it," Feifer says. "Very quickly, the entertainment industry also stepped in to fill this void and this, workers were told, is your reward for a hard day's work. [...] And workers took the deal. I mean, not like they had much choice, but they did like all of this new leisure."

This shift in work brought about a deeper shift in how we view our lives in general. "This was a revolution in how many conceived of life's meaning, it altered their expectations for what they were entitled to, rather than sadness and passive acceptance of routine drudgery. Many came to believe that pleasure, happiness, excitement and novelty were their birthright," the authors write in Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid.

Not surprisingly, this is also when we begin to see the seeds of our current concern about the role of sensory distraction and overstimulation in public discourse. "In the 1920s and early '30s, there [was] a real discourse [...] is it good for humans to be exposed to movie theaters, to concerts, to radio's blaring?" Matt says. "Is this too much sensory stimulation? Is it going to lead to sensory overload, is it going to lead to nervous people who demand ever more excitement in their lives?"

As time went on, these questions transformed into professional concerns and major topics of debate. "That's when doctors and intellectuals start saying, 'Wait a minute, I don't know if all this entertainment is very good for you people,'" Feifer says. "By the 1950s and '60s, the narrative had shifted even further, the idea of boredom and the entertainment that helps people escape from boredom melded into one singular thing. The entertainment industry itself was now seen as the cause of boredom, or at least the trap that kept people from truly accessing their minds." (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Leigha Offline
Interesting that there was a sense of guilt for having too much idle time on their hands.

There's a phrase in Italian...Dolce far niente and it means, the ''sweetness of doing nothing.'' Italians don't view idleness as boring, as many do in the US. They don't view it as negative, either. Well, it doesn't have to be, anyway.

As an aside, here's Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions:


[Image: g8gqmlY.png]
[Image: g8gqmlY.png]



Look where boredom falls on this chart -- next to ''disgust.'' Is it fair to say that when we're feeling bored, we're slightly annoyed/disgusted that we're ''wasting time?'' At first, this chart seemed totally off the mark to me, but maybe there is something to be said about how we interpret boredom, and the emotions that get stirred up from it.
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
I don't view boredom as a expression of disgust or of any positive emotion. Rather, it is best described as: " an indication that the mind is craving to be engaged." I find myself bored when an experience lacks challenge to my mind and is too simplistic. I seek mental engagement and thought provoking content. When something is stimulating me to think and to wonder about things that is when I am least bored.
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#4
Leigha Offline
I found it surprising that boredom was positioned near “disgust,” but looking back, that seemed to be the general feeling during the Covid lockdowns last year, when people couldn’t freely go about life as they wished. In general, I’m in control of my own boredom so if I’m upset by it, it’s my own fault. lol Boredom doesn’t always signify a bad thing, it can be peace in disguise.
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#5
Syne Offline
I know I'm often disgusted by those who are easily bored.
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