Sunday, October 30, 2011

The epidemic of Boredom

I was just hearing my sister read-out her 'Goodbye' mail to her former employer where she cited, 'diversity of experiences'  as one of her needs which the job failed to satisfy. It left me pondering- don't we all crave for this diversity? isn't it what keeps our minds ignited...the bored generation is an outcome of 'jobs' which strive for perfection/efficiency/precision at the cost of creativity/spontaneity. Even the rote learning ingrained in the education system provides little scope for widening one's horizons or to think 'outside the box'. The constant disinterested nature is nurtured by the lack of stimulation to the brain. We need 'entertainment' in the form of movies, music, art all which are outcomes of channeling creativity in a specific direction to maintain a balance and sustain ourselves. If we think about it -the more different things are , the more new they are -a new idea , a different way of doing the same thing excites us. This need for diversity has sparked in me this ever-increasing desire to learn different arts/skills including nuances of photography, learn to speak Russian, become a part of the project Amazon, become a certified scuba-diver and practice my 'professional skills' acquired through formal education without having to sacrifice one for the other because one has higher monetary returns in our industrialized world and it is more conventional.
The society around us,as much as it applauds diversity, does not encourage someone in the initial stages of experimenting and playing around with different things, the word's are always of caution and not encouragement for anyone who is looking to diversify their roles in the society, hence the proverb 'Jack of all trades, master of none'. Universality of the concept of efficiency and division of labour, propounded by the rise of capitalism has been one of the causes of the emergence of this 'bored generation'.The learning curve is inversely proportional to level of boredom.
Karl Marx, the co-founder of socialism was of the view " Increasing the specialization may also lead to workers with poorer overall skills and a lack of enthusiasm for their work. This viewpoint was extended and refined by him. He described the process as alienation; workers become more and more specialized and work repetitious which eventually leads to complete alienation. Marx wrote that "with this division of labour", the worker is "depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine" (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844, First Manuscript, in T.B. Bottomore, Karl Marx Early Writings, C.A. Watts and Co. Ltd., London, 1963, p.72). He believed that the fullness of production is essential to human liberation and accepted the idea of a strict division of labour only as a temporary necessary evil.
It may be, for example, that it is technically necessary that both pleasant and unpleasant jobs must be done by a group of people. But from that fact alone, it does not follow that any particular person must do any particular (pleasant or unpleasant) job. If particular people get to do the unpleasant jobs and others the pleasant jobs, this cannot be explained by technical necessity; it is a socially made decision, which could be made using a variety of different criteria. The tasks could be rotated, or a person could be assigned to a task permanently, and so on.
Marx also suggests that the capitalist division of labour will evolve over time such that the maximum amount of labour is productive labour, where productive labour is defined as labour which creates surplus value.
Marx argues that in a communist society, the division of labour is transcended, meaning that balanced human development occurs where people fully express their nature in the variety of creative work that they do." (Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour)

Sometimes lifetimes pass-by, while people are waiting till they have the cushion of a healthy bank balance before they pursue their other interests and living with a lifetime of regret, So don't let the epidemic infect you and happy learning to all!

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