Communication and Boredom

Abstract

Understanding the other person completely results in boredom since there will be no transfer of actual'information'thereafter between the two systems of consciousness.In order to avoid boredom in human exchange, some techniques of communication are needed to generate ceaselessly new information which will give the sense of 'wonder'to receiver.'Difficulty of style'or abstruseness is one of this technique to keep the sense of edification through the unending process of interpretation.Seclusion of the source of information such as holy books or saints from the secular world is the other method.Disclosure of the information should be restrited to very special occasions so that the negentropy('mana')will not be exhausted.The praise for 'mutual understanding'and equality in the ideology of modern humanism, reducing differences and mysteriousness of the other, seems to add boredom in various scenes of human communication.The logico-structural relationships between the diametrical sub-worlds on the 'Tetrahedron model of the symbolic universe'(presented by the author in Sociology of Laughter, Sekaisisosha, 1983)are discussed in terms of mutual misunderstaning and reification.