Sir Richard Mottram - Permanent Secretary at the Department of Transport - made the following perceptive comment when questioned by the Public Administration Select Committee in 2002:-
What the Civil Service wants, and I always compare it to a rather stupid dog, it wants to do what its master wants and it wants to be loyal to its master and above all it wants to be loved for doing that.
A lifetime of fraud: Donald Trump’s blatant tax swindles unveiled
JNS: “U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) on Thursday were joined by U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in announcing their bipartisan bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Benjamin Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg trials prosecutor.
Social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of profound boredom
University of Bath – “People who turn to social media to escape from superficial boredom are unwittingly preventing themselves from progressing to a state of profound boredom, which may open the door to more creative and meaningful activity, a new study of the Covid pandemic shows. Researchers from the University of Bath School of Management and Trinity College, Dublin, identified that the pandemic, furlough, and enforced solitude provided many people with the rare opportunity to experience the two levels of boredom – ‘superficial’ and ‘profound’ – identified first by German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Superficial boredom – the most common state of boredom – can be defined as a feeling of restlessness familiar to us all, of being bored in a situation such as waiting for a train where we seek temporary distractions from everyday life and in which social media and mobile devices play a significant role. Profound boredom stems from an abundance of uninterrupted time spent in relative solitude, which can lead to indifference, apathy, and people questioning their sense of self and their existence – but which Heidegger said could also pave the way to more creative thinking and activity. The research examined the experiences of boredom during the pandemic of people either placed on furlough schemes or asked to work from home.
The problem we observed was that social media can alleviate superficial boredom but that distraction sucks up time and energy, and may prevent people progressing to a state of profound boredom, where they might discover new passions,” said Dr Timothy Hill, co-author of the study ‘Mundane emotions: losing yourself in boredom, time and technology’.
The New York Times: “…For several years now, I’ve highlighted these kinds of projects in my annual Good Tech Awards column.
“You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances.“
— Václav Havel, book The Power of the Powerless
