Re: USAGE: Words for "boredom"

>From: Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
>
>
>In a way, that doesn't surprise me. In pre-industrial cultures, people tend
>to
>be busy from the moment they're up till the moment they go back to sleep.
>Whether it is by hunting, cultivating, preparing the food, building
>shelter,
>making tools and/or weapons, repairing things, making love, raising the
>children, sitting with all other members of the tribe to decide of what to
>do
>next or listen to the words of the elders, etc... that makes little time
>with
>nothing to do. Boredom appears only when you get moments with nothing to
>do.
>Boredom appears with free time, and free time only appears when comfort
>becomes
>enough that people can stop working without falling immediately in sleep,
>and
>comfort appears with some level of industrialisation. It wouldn't surprise
>me
>that boredom appeared at the same time as history, i.e. at the same time as
>writing :))) .
>
I don't know about this - there's good evidence that many foraging societies
spend / spent a good deal less time each day than we do on average actually
engaged in subsistence; and that they probably enjoyed some measure of
comfort (i.e. daily life was not, in fact, a constant struggle for survival)
- however, whether you were foraging, telling stories, or whatever, they
probably still didn't have a word for boredom....  A crucial factor must be
the kinds of social arrangements that exist in post-agricultural societies
(alone time, etc.) - then again, I guess it depends on how you define
boredom.  I can recall plenty of national geographic specials depicting
animals yawning and whatnot, and if I didn't know any better - I'd say a lot
of them looked bored...



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