{"id":1525,"date":"2016-04-13T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-04-13T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simonings.com\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2018-10-19T13:50:33","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T13:50:33","slug":"is-boredom-good-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=1525","title":{"rendered":"Is boredom good for us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"time\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sandi Mann\u2019s The Upside of Downtime and\u00a0Felt Time: The psychology of how we perceive time by Marc Wittmann\u00a0reviewed for\u00a0New Scientist,<\/em>\u00a013 April 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VISITORS to New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art in 2010 got to meet time, face-to-face. For her show The Artist is Present, Marina Abramovic sat, motionless, for 7.5 hours at a stretch while visitors wandered past her.<\/p>\n

Unlike all the other art on show, she hadn\u2019t \u201cdropped out\u201d of time: this was no cold, unbreathing sculpture. Neither was she time\u2019s plaything, as she surely would have been had some task engaged her. Instead, Marc Wittmann, a psychologist based in Freiburg, Germany, reckons that Abramovic\u00a0became<\/i>\u00a0time.<\/p>\n

Wittmann\u2019s book\u00a0Felt Time<\/i>\u00a0explains how we experience time, posit it and remember it, all in the same moment. We access the future and the past through the 3-second chink that constitutes our experience of the present. Beyond this interval, metronome beats lose their rhythm and words fall apart in the ear.<\/p>\n

As unhurried and efficient as an ophthalmologist arriving at a prescription by placing different lenses before the eye, Wittmann reveals, chapter by chapter, how our view through that 3-second chink is shaped by anxiety, age, boredom, appetite and feeling.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, his approach smacks of the textbook, and his attempt at a \u201cnew solution to the mind-body problem\u201d is a mess. However, his literary allusions \u2013 from Thomas Mann\u2019s study of habituation in\u00a0The Magic Mountain<\/i>\u00a0to Sten Nadolny\u2019s evocation of the present moment in\u00a0The Discovery of Slowness<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 offer real insight. Indeed, they are an education in themselves for anyone with an Amazon \u201cbuy\u201d button to hand.<\/p>\n

As we read\u00a0Felt Time<\/i>, do we gain most by mulling Wittmann\u2019s words, even if some allusions are unfamiliar? Or are we better off chasing down his references on the internet? Which is the more interesting option? Or rather: which is \u201cless boring\u201d?<\/p>\n

Sandi Mann\u2019s\u00a0The Upside of Downtime<\/i>\u00a0is also about time, inasmuch as it is about boredom.<\/p>\n

Once we delighted in devices that put all knowledge and culture into our pockets. But our means of obtaining stimulation have become so routine that they have themselves become a source of boredom. By removing the tedium of waiting, says psychologist Mann, we have turned ourselves into sensation junkies. It\u2019s hard for us to pay attention to a task when more exciting stimuli are on offer, and being exposed to even subtle distractions can make us feel more bored.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Mann\u2019s book demonstrates the point all too well. It is a design horror: a mess of boxed-out paragraphs and bullet-pointed lists. Each is entertaining in itself, yet together they render Mann\u2019s central argument less and less engaging, for exactly the reasons she has identified. Reading her is like watching a magician take a bullet to the head while \u201cperforming\u201d Russian roulette.<\/p>\n

In the end Mann can\u2019t decide whether boredom is a good or bad thing, while Wittmann\u2019s more organised approach gives him the confidence he needs to walk off a cliff as he tries to use the brain alone to account for consciousness. But despite the flaws, Wittmann is insightful and Mann is engaging, and, praise be, there\u2019s always next time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sandi Mann\u2019s The Upside of Downtime and\u00a0Felt Time: The psychology of how we perceive time by Marc Wittmann\u00a0reviewed for\u00a0New Scientist,\u00a013 April 2016.   VISITORS to New York\u2019s Museum of Modern Art in 2010 got to meet time, face-to-face. For her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[616,617,78],"tags":[382,77,294],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books-reviews-and-opinion","category-reviews-and-opinion","tag-boredom","tag-psychology","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2416,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions\/2416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}