On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Hugo Alves wrote:
> [snip] Besides, if life was all happiness,
> people would become bored. Otherwise, why would tragedy be so popular?
Tragedy is popular in part because in viewing it, you feel better because
it isn't happening to you. This is a corollary of my "Bad news is good
news if it isn't happening to you" theory and explains why most of the
news one sees on TV or in the press happens to be "bad news".
However the other part of this "if life was all happiness, people would become
bored" raises interesting issues. I get bored very easily which explains
why I go in so many directions at once, to my own detriment sometimes.
Anders and others seem to be much better at managing to channel their
boredom than I. When there are no "survival" problems however, learning
to creatively develop interesting problems for yourself and then work though
solving them is going to be a major area of emphasis. But hey, if the
Reinmann Hypothesis can survive a century or so without a proof, I
suspect there are lots of things that one can find to entertain oneself.
Robert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:41 MDT