Overwhelmed or underwhelmed
When our brains get overstimulated or understimulated, we feel bored. Boredom seems more painful than the heaviest fear. People do anything to escape the feeling. Nature also helps us.
Asleep
After a good (amount of) sleep, we feel refreshed. Sleep, among other things, is to evaluate old input while guarding the brain from receiving new input. Why do we wake up refreshed and not bored stiff? Two ways.
The sleeping brain dreams. It starts with, during the deepest sleep, reviewing fun memories with little fear in them. Gradually, the fears get more serious and the sleep shallower; we need the balance of heavier fears and more contact with the reassurance of here and now. In the end, memories might be so scary that we may need to wake up from them. After reviewing them, we again fall into a deep sleep for some fun memory reviews Now a second way of not getting bored during sleep.
Our two eye nerves are not really nerves. They connect our retinas with the rest of the brain. The retina has a very high degree of integrating and processing the visual input, so the ‘eye nerves’ are rather a bundle of nerve fibers that connect three parts of the brain. (1% transports signals toward the retina—function unknown.) Babies surely notice, but most grownups seem to ignore that in pitch darkness for a couple of minutes, we still ‘see’ things. Shapes, colors, moving, shifting, transforming. On closer inspection, those are visual memories that connect with similar ones.
Awake
When our brains are drugged, all memories are stored inside an envelope of boredom. That’s why drugging people with unpleasant feelings freezes their emotional progress. Boredom is healed by yawning, like sadness and disappointment are healed by crying. Having received drugs before we were born, during birth, being bored in school, and any old memories of boredom can easily heal when we notice we are not actually bored now. Saying, ‘Life is interesting, and boredom has passed,’ may help us yawn.
People do the craziest things to escape boredom: eating junk food, giving into addictions, taking recreational drugs, gossiping, hurting themselves or others, staring at a screen, flipping TV channels or social media posts, etc. Passive consumption of input puts us in a sort of trance in which we don’t feel or think or notice the passage of time. Killing time and awareness not to feel bored. This won’t happen if we learn with the goal to pass it on.
Capitalist society needs workers who can do monotonous jobs without protesting. Therefore, it labels as mentally ill those intelligent children who are bored stiff by regular, dull environments and school settings and who refuse to stare at dull stuff (ADD) (‘they look away all the ’time’—just like undrugged babies) or to sit still forever (ADHD) (‘climb the walls’) in order to escape boredom. They are the high-functioning ones. It’s like calling people without tooth cavities ‘sick,’ since they make dentists poor.
Human learning happens by seeing connections between new information and stuff already known. It’s hard to work with unrelated, loose facts. Don’t just try to get new information; look for inspiration too.
How can one recite the whole Book of Psalms a thousand times without getting bored? Two ways: not doing it on autopilot but by paying attention to details. And: by having in mind a special project you dedicate this to. People who chat during the synagogue service are too intelligent to do it half-asleep. Instead of telling them to shut up, we should tell them to pay attention to smaller details of the prayers until they love it. During the repetition of the main prayer, pay attention to what exactly it says, if need be, to such a degree of detail that you think and see things that are new. Another way is to realize to what this contributes.
Excessive boredom can be a sign of not having committed to anything worthwhile. The solution is simple. Ponder what would be a worthy life’s goal if you didn’t take others’ expectations into account and get going. Start a community garden, take up a sport, learn another language or instrument, visit people in the local seniors’ home, get a hobby or a pet, learn to get your dream job, join your favorite activists, be silly, start yoga, therapy, a course, talk to G^d, join an ethical community to your liking, etc.
Age is a funny thing. There is nothing more interesting to a young human than interacting with another human. It is a mistake to give more weight to giving them presents and toys than to giving them attention. It is a mistake for teenagers to think they now need to grow up and become responsible and productive and therefore must forego their dreams and principles. It is a mistake of workers and parents to take exhaustion as a sign they need TV entertainment until they fall asleep instead of taking a nap and then going out to improve society. It is a mistake to assume that, as older people, we have passed our expiration date and so we should settle for entertainment and calmness in the margin instead of influencing and improving people and wisely further contributing to society and the world more than ever.
MM is a prolific and creative writer and thinker, previously a daily blog contributor to the TOI. He often makes his readers laugh, mad, or assume he's nuts—close to perfect blogging. He's proud that his analytical short comments are removed both from left-wing and right-wing news sites. None of his content is generated by the new bore on the block, AI. *
As a frontier thinker, he sees things many don't yet. He's half a prophet. Half. Let's not exaggerate. Or not at all because he doesn't claim G^d talks to him. He gives him good ideas—that's all. MM doesn't believe that people observe and think in a vacuum. He, therefore, wanted a broad bio that readers interested can track a bit what (lack of) backgrounds, experiences, and educations contribute to his visions. *
This year, he will prioritize getting his unpublished books published rather than just blog posts. Of the 15 (!) books he has in mind, the next two are about homosexuality in Judaism and new rabbinics. Next year, he hopes to focus on activism against human extinction. To find less-recent posts on a subject XXX among his over 2600 archived ones, go to the right-top corner of a Times of Israel page, click on the search icon and search "zuiden, XXX". One can find a second, wilder blog that also may contain updates to Times of Israel posts, to which one may subscribe, here: https://mmvanzuiden.wordpress.com/ or by clicking on the globe icon next to his picture on top. *
He's getting ready to publicize books on: "Free Will, "Judaism and Homosexuality, "His parents in the Holocaust, "Judaism, "A New Torah Translation and "A New Hebrew Grammar, "Co-Counseling, "Vegan Facts, "Immortality, and more. *
Like most of his readers, he believes in being friendly, respectful, and loyal. However, if you think those are his absolute top priorities, you might end up disappointed. His first loyalty is to the truth. He agrees that in a post-truth world, that's irrelevant, but then this is for the record. He will try to stay within the limits of democratic and Jewish law, but he won't lie to support opinions or people when don't deserve that. (Yet, we all make honest mistakes, which is just fine and does not justify losing support.) He admits that he sometimes exaggerates to make a point, which could have him come across as nasty, while in actuality, he's quite a lovely person to interact with. He holds - how Dutch - that a strong opinion doesn't imply intolerance of other views. *
Sometimes he's misunderstood because his wide and diverse field of vision seldomly fits any specialist's box. But that's exactly what some love about him. He has written a lot about Psychology (including Sexuality and Abuse), Medicine (including physical immortality), Science (including basic statistics), Politics (Israel, the US, and the Netherlands, Activism - more than leftwing or rightwing, he hopes to highlight reality), Oppression and Liberation (intersectionally, for young people, the elderly, non-Whites, women, workers, Jews, LGBTQIA+, foreigners and anyone else who's dehumanized or exploited), Integrity, Philosophy, Jews (Judaism, Zionism, Holocaust and Jewish Liberation), the Climate Crisis, Ecology and Veganism, Affairs from the news, or the Torah Portion of the Week, or new insights that suddenly befell him. *
Chronologically, his most influential teachers are his parents, Nico (natan) van Zuiden and Betty (beisye) Nieweg, Wim Kan, Mozart, Harvey Jackins, Marshal Rosenberg, Reb Shlomo Carlebach, and, lehavdil bein chayim lechayim, Rabbi Dr. Natan Lopes Cardozo, Rav Zev Leff, and Rav Meir Lubin. This short list doesn't mean to disrespect others who taught him a lot or a little. One of his rabbis calls him Mr. Innovation [Ish haChidushim]. Yet, his originalities seem to root deeply in traditional Judaism, though they may grow in unexpected directions. In fact, he claims he's modernizing nothing. Rather, mainly basing himself on the basic Hebrew Torah text, he tries to rediscover classical Jewish thought almost lost in thousands of years of stifling Gentile domination and Jewish assimilation. (He pleads for a close reading of the Torah instead of going by rough assumptions of what it would probably mean and before fleeing to Commentaries.) This, in all aspects of life, but prominently in the areas of Free Will, Activism, Homosexuality for men, and Redemption. *
He hopes that his words will inspire and inform, and disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. He aims to bring a fresh perspective rather than harp on the obvious and familiar. When he can, he loves to write encyclopedic overviews. He doesn't expect his readers to agree. Rather, original minds should be disputed. In short, his main political positions are among others: anti-Trumpism, for Zionism, Intersectionality, non-violence, anti those who abuse democratic liberties, anti the fake ME peace process, for original-Orthodoxy, pro-Science, pro-Free Will, anti-blaming-the-victim, and for down-to-earth, classical optimism, and happiness. Read his blog on how he attempts to bridge any tensions between those ideas or fields. *
He is a fetal survivor of the pharmaceutical industry (https://diethylstilbestrol.co.uk/studies/des-and-psychological-health/), born in 1953 to his parents who were Dutch-Jewish Holocaust survivors who met in the largest concentration camp in the Netherlands, Westerbork. He grew up a humble listener. It took him decades to become a speaker too, and decades more to admit to being a genius. But his humility was his to keep. And so was his honesty. Bullies and con artists almost instantaneously envy and hate him. He hopes to bring new things and not just preach to the choir. *
He holds a BA in medicine (University of Amsterdam) – is half a doctor. He practices Re-evaluation Co-counseling since 1977, is not an official teacher anymore, and became a friendly, powerful therapist. He became a social activist, became religious, made Aliyah, and raised three wonderful kids. Previously, for decades, he was known to the Jerusalem Post readers as a frequent letter writer. For a couple of years, he was active in hasbara to the Dutch-speaking public. He wrote an unpublished tome about Jewish Free Will. He's a strict vegan since 2008. He's an Orthodox Jew but not a rabbi. *
His writing has been made possible by an allowance for second-generation Holocaust survivors from the Netherlands. It has been his dream since he was 38 to try to make a difference by teaching through writing. He had three times 9-out-of-10 for Dutch at his high school finals but is spending his days communicating in English and Hebrew - how ironic. G-d must have a fine sense of humor. In case you wonder - yes, he is a bit dyslectic. If you're a native English speaker and wonder why you should read from people whose English is only their second language, consider the advantage of having an original peek outside of your cultural bubble. His posts are spell, grammar, and style polished by AI, but all written by himself. *
To send any personal reaction to him, scroll to the top of the blog post and click Contact Me. *
His newest books you may find here: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AMoshe-Mordechai%2FMaurits+van+Zuiden&s=relevancerank&text=Moshe-Mordechai%2FMaurits+van+Zuiden&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1
