Pendulum of pain and boredom
Last entry for the year. I value New Year's Day so much that I will be spending it at the office tomorrow.I end the year as I began the last: not being able to find anything worthwhile to do, save for what I have been tasked by others to. But as Arthur Schopenhauer memorably wrote, "Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom", I realise that I would much prefer the latter. Which is not to say that I'm not busy, mind you. In a couple of weeks, my workload will decrease markedly. That means I will need to find creative ways to expend working hours with minimal effort, otherwise known as twanging on the job without getting caught.
I think I've previously suggested that my current work involves poring over columns of numbers and shuffling piles of paper. For some unknown reason, my heart welled up with pride when someone who had been assigned to share part of my load complained that my job was rather boring (N.B. he used an expletive in place of 'rather'). I've always thought of myself as a restless soul, but looks like I'm more tolerant of mindless repetitive work than I'd expected. But strangely enough, I don't find myself lacking in volunteers when I seek help with my stuff. Admittedly, these guys have hearts of gold and time to spare but it would have been perfectly reasonable to expect that assistance would be less than forthcoming. Not at all. When I asked them why they were willing to help me even though they knew the nature of my work, they generally said that they were tired of what they were doing at hand and found my mindless repetitive work a useful diversion.
As you might recall, my thesis was about the extent of boredom people could be subjected to before they seriously contemplated self-mutilation. So I thought I knew quite a bit about human reactions to boredom. Even so, the abovementioned situation came as some surprise, or maybe I'm still blind towards human nature. People sometimes find a quiet simplicity and reassurance in mundane repetitive tasks, though usually in refuge from the complex and chaotic milieu they find themselves struggling against. In other words, the pain of intense existence drives them to seek the other pole in boredom or the languid and chronic perception of passing time. But that said, my colleagues weren't particularly burdened by fast-paced and stressful work when they came to assist me. It was, at least that's how it seemed to me, a choice between tedious work that required some mental exercise (theirs) and tedious work that was simply mindless (mine). Therefore, my conclusion is that people would rather not to use their brains for any extended period if given the choice. That's why intellectually challenging jobs are paid a premium, economic arguments be damned. Why do you think Immanuel Kant led such a humdrum routine existence? Because he was compensating for all the deep thinking and dense writing he was doing in his study.
So it's a Happy New Year to everyone out there and may your pendulum obtain an agreeable oscillation.
posted by KynTheMan @ 9:32 PM
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