Because Of Their Historical Theory Of The

The "brightness" Of The 15 Percent Might Or Might Not Indicate A Profound Feeling For The Causes Of Things; It Is Largely Verbal And Symbol-manipulating, And Is Almost Certainly Partly An Obsessional Device Not To Know And Touch Risky Matter, Just As Freud Long Ago Pointed Out That The Nagging Questions Of Small Children Are A Substitute For Asking The Forbidden Questions.

The Irony Is That In Our Decades, The Combination Of Rationalism, Asceticism, And Individualism (the So-called Protestant Ethic) Has Produced Precisely The System Of Boondoggling, Luxury-consumption, And Status.

We Define Boredom As The Pain A Person Feels When He's Doing Nothing Or Something Irrelevant, Instead Of Something He Wants To Do But Won't, Can't, Or Doesn't Dare. Boredom Is Acute When He Knows The Other Thing And Inhibits His Action, E.g., Out Of Politeness, Embarrassment, Fear Of Punishment Or Shame. Boredom Is Chronic If He Has Repressed The Thought Of It And No Longer Is Aware Of It. A Large Part Of Stupidity Is Just The Chronic Boredom, For A Person Can't Learn, Or Be Intelligent About, What He's Not Interested In, When His Repressed Thoughts Are Elsewhere.

The Importance Of The Beats Is Twofold: First, They Act Out A Critique Of The Organized System That Everybody In Some Sense Agrees With. But Second-and More Important In The Long Run-they Are A Kind Of Major Pilot Study Of The Use Of Leisure In An Economy Of Abundance.

In A Milieu Of Resignation, Where The Young Men Think Of Society As A Closed Room In Which There Are No Values But The Rejected Rat Race, ... It Is Extremely Hard To Aim At Objective Truth Or World Culture. One's Own Products Are Likely To Be Personal Or Parochial.