Idle Hands

“Among the forces that have shaped human behavior boredom is one of the most insistent and universal.” That was the conclusion sociologist Robert Nisbet came to in his assessment of human history. “Although scarcely as measurable a factor in history as war, disease, economic depression, famine, and revolution,” he said, “it is far from invisible in either the present or the past.”

Boredom, Nisbet argued, could be relieved by “migration, desertion, war, revolution, murder, calculated cruelty to others, suicide, pornography, alcohol, narcotics.” He added that “the pains and the results of boredom are everywhere to be seen, and nowhere more epidemically than in Western society at the present time.”

He wrote that in 1982.

The baby boomers were brought up with the saying “idle time makes idle hands” and then “Idle hands are the Devil’s tools.”

Some sociologists are still wondering how large a part boredom and the lack of industrious activity play in everything from campus riots to school shootings.  People– especially young people– who feel “trapped” in their situation often act out in some way to attempt to change it.

Baby boomers were taught and told to “get a job.”  It was the natural thing to do, the accepted thing to do; we were taught either you get educated or you work.  We soon learned it was true when you worked you got paid, and when you got paid, you had money to spend on whatever you wanted.  As we grew older, our desires changed, but we had learned –and reaped– the benefits of being productive in Society.  We didn’t expect anything that wasn’t earned, and most of us learned the harder we worked, not only did we gain personal satisfaction, but we gained experience, which usually led to better jobs and/or higher pay.

But now there’s a difference:  People with liberal, anti-American ideologies are  whispering, shouting, screaming in the ears of young people of all ages that they are entitled to just about anything they want or need, and if they have to take it by “revolution” then that’s the thing to do.  There’s no such thing as work ethic or social responsibility (at least not real responsibility).   Even common decency is denied to anyone who disagrees with them.  Catch words like “inclusivity”, “tolerance”, “acceptance”, “white privilege”, and “racism”, “homophobia”, “Islamophobia”, and “xenophobia” are used to describe those who stand against them.

It’s all a lie, but the Millennials have bought into it lock, stock, and barrel, and if we don’t change their minds, persuade them of the truth– that Socialism and a “neo-Marxism” will not save us or the World– America will change into a country we won’t recognize.