All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
Blaise Pascal · Pensées, 1670
Pascal is not moralising about distraction — he predates every device we blame. He is making a claim about what we are running from, which is not boredom but the arrival of our own company. The room is always available. That is precisely what makes avoiding it a decision.
Pascal called the impulse divertissement — diversion. Same root as entertainment, and he did not mean it kindly.
Goethe’s walk alone, three centuries earlier and far less romantic about it.
Solitude is not the absence of company. It is the presence of yourself.
When did you last sit in a room with nothing running?