Page 78 - The Irony Board
P. 78
Into the World
Sociology of the lounge lizard
Boredom,
Fluid in one
Person,
Freezes
By ritual
In groups.
According to Gluckman in his unpublished memoirs, this
reflection came to him during an unavoidable afternoon spent in a
bar in Sumatra waiting for a bus. A half-dozen or so local youths
also patronized the establishment, similarly seeking refuge from
idleness. At some point he realized that while his restlessness led
him to invent all sorts of table-top diversions, they had evolved set
routines for doing nothing: elaborate pecking-order displays and
tension-releases, repeated with minimal variation. Alone, he had no
external constraints on what he would do next; no outside observer
could find a pattern in his sequence of actions. Evidently the
satisfaction of social needs can override and replace more
idiosyncratic sublimations of frustration. The congealment of
distress in mechanical expressions of solidarity, unfortunately, kills
imagination as well as time; at least the boredom experienced by an
unattached mind can flow into something else.
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