Communication and Technical Writing

Assignment #03
Topic: critical review
Prepared For: Sir Razm-Ul-Zafar
Prepared By: Ayesha Sattar
Student Id: 13047005003
Class: BBA (Hons)

School of business and

economics
University of management and
technology, Lahore

Critical Review
Introduction:

Boredom and Excitement

This article named Boredom and Excitement from the
book The Conquest of Happiness was written by Bertrand
Russell and published in 1930, who was a famous British
philosopher, logician, historian and social critic. Russell in this
article has vigorously asserted the significance of boredom and
excitement as an importance part of human experience.

Summary:
Boredom has long been a significant problem in human
beings. This term broadly defined as a temporary feeling of low
arousal and unpleasant emotions induced by various
environmental factors and surprising sort of individual
differences. Boredom in human beings can serve as a
motivational barrier. Although, during the past few decades,
there has been a descending trend in state of boredom among
people as compared to ones in the ancient times.
State of boredom as described by Russell, derives from the
interaction of behavioural activation, the environment and the
tasks or routine we are following in our daily life. There exists
an optimal level of arousal, during which individuals maximally
learn or perform with extreme efficiency in a better manner,
which can now convert into a certain level of excitement. But
when arousal is below this optimal level, it may be interpreted
as boredom. That is the reason why individuals feel boredom or
frequently feel under-aroused, uninterested and unpleasant.

Critique:
In this article, Russell explained the concept of boredom
and excitement with full zest. Russell explained that happiness
is not except in very rare cases, something that drops into the
mouth, like a ripe fruit. The human being is adapted to a certain
amount of excitement but the ignorance and unlikeness of the
opposite state removes this ingredient of excitement from his
life. Russell named a term anxiety as a fatigue, which is indeed
a kind of excitement that is incorporated with zest. Humans
often feel over worried or bored.
Russell advised that when you have looked for, sometime
steadily bored at the worse possible situation and said to
2

Boredom and Excitement

yourself with real conviction, well, after all, that would not
matter so very much, you will find that your worry or sense of
boredom diminishes to a quite extraordinary extent. In defence
of boredom, Bertrand Russell said:
A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation
little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of
nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers, as
though they were cut flowers in a vase.

Conclusion:
Based on this review, I strongly favour that the state of
boredom and excitement are both made for each other. There
isnt any importance of either boredom or excitement. Realizing
the significance of both states, it is necessary to accept the
value of both components of life. As analysed in the previous
discussion that life cannot survive or continue by just adopting
a single component or by ignoring the other of our own choice.
But particularly Boredom in life cannot be avoided. It may
prove to be a useful signal because it provides a great
opportunity to engage in productive thinking. So we must need
to tolerate boredom and resist viewing it as to absence of
meaning in life.