Some Notes on Boredom and Leisure Time

It seems like routine and the transcendence from around and through routine is a central way of attaining goals. It's not a lot of bite; there's no drama there. I think that some of the best things in life are from boredom. there are positive theories of invention from and about boredom. That is, Jared Diamon entered, in Guns Germs and Steel, an empirical argument for invention, in terms of mechanical engineering, with the theory that invention and synthesis could not happen if not for agriculture and farming. Recently, the May 11, 2009 issue of the New Yorker has a reflections piece from Adam Gopnik which seems to second this theory. People would not have time to invent new production methods of food if there were not abundances of food in order to make that time in the first place. The advent of leisure time in the 20th century coincides with some of the greatest inventions ever.
The Aesop's moral and fable in question reads like this: There's a crow with a beak too short to get to a berry at the bottom of a bowl. The crow needs to get to the berry so that he can eat it. He picks up a stick with his beak and uses the tool in order to grab the berry. In this way, and in terms of the moral, necessity is the mother of invention.
Diamond reverses this and says that invention is the mother of necessity, in that people usually make the inventions and then find the uses. For example, Edison invented the phonograph in order to record wills and deeds; legal documents. He didn't especially think that people would use that invention for music.
Gopnik says that frivolity is the mother of invention. He enters the Devil's Paradox of invention that when a problem has been solved there seems to be inventions.
All of this factors into my complicated arguemtn for laziness. Dr. Samuel Johnson said of his life that much was intended and little was done. This, from the man who wrote the English Dictionary and revolutionized criticism. All of this also ignores that laziness, boredom, syntehsis, invention, they are all radically different. They have overlaps, but their connotative meanings are especially important. As illustrative example, Dr. Johnson worked hand to mouth for most of his life. He might have been indolent by his own standards, but he certainly worked like heck all the time. Because of the connotative meanings, we know that there does not have to be an inconsistency here. You could work very hard and still intend to do so much more.