Question How come cultivators don't go crazy over boredom?

I get that this is part of a "writers have no sense of scale" problem. But bear with me for a minute.

I was reading this cultivation novel and this mini boss was conspiring with the demonic sects because he was about to die, in his youthful age of 1200. And that is kinda nothing compared to other novels with 10000, 100000, million year old cultivator.

How are you not bananas? No seriously, think about how you feel about reading copy paste cultivation novels in say 2-3 years time. Now imagine that is your life you have been seeing those cliches repeating themselves for 10000 years. Orphans with fortuitous encounters, young masters, sane demonic cultivators, insane orthodox cultivators. Everything. For. Ten. Thousand. Years.

What are they doing with their life? Reading entire wikipedia as a hobby would take like 500 years (non-stop reading is 80 years or so). If you collect every movie ever you have like 50 years total runtime.

It's just madness to me.

 

If you think cultivators are sane, you have another think coming.

 

Because cultivation gets rid of the boredom. I am not sure how, but it is extremely addicting. It seems they can see their cultivation method do one cycle over and over again and they will find it interesting. I guess they are something like crackheads.

 

I think in some the dao heart is important, without it you can’t make it too far, and certain dao hearts allow you to retain your mentality and even your immaturity potentially. That’s not the case In all novels but yea

 

You're assuming they actually doing something for a significant fraction of those years. It's almost all spent in meditation/cultivation, trying to raise their realm so they have even more years to spend cultivating.

I half-wish I were transmigrated to a cultivation world just so I could tell every cultivator I met "I don't really see the point in living for a thousand years if you have to spend 9 hundred of them cultivating." Ok... make that 1/4 wish. 1/10th wish? It'd be funny as hell but I'd only survive telling a few that before one decided I was mocking him and killed me.

 

Okay not necessarily on topic but there’s a really good rebirth novel where a girl has to go through like ground hog day but like ground hog year and she dies a horrible death like 70 ish times and goes insane.

 

Can Immortal cultivators really be judged by the standards of mortals? Maybe mortals like us would be driven mad by boredom, but immortal cultivators are depicted as those who have transcended mortal humanity. Perhaps their minds work in ways we can’t really understand.

 

Why are we assuming immortals have same time perception as mortal? Heck even us humans have different time perception in our various stages of life as we get older. Like we are perceiving time getting faster and faster as we get older.

 

It's like an unholy combination of MMO players and gym rats. They don't mind any amount of mindless repetition no matter how long it takes as long as they get a little stronger or improve their skill levels.

But more seriously, if you do it right, meditation makes the time pass as well as sleep. There's no boredom for cultivators, just keep meditating until you reach the next level or run out of time. And if you can't meditate well enough, you won't be able to even start cultivating... Of course, there are still impatient people among cultivators who prefer faster progress, but most of them won't live long enough to go crazy from boredom.

 

I think it's because humans love power, strength or something along the lines. Human nature is greedy and interests are always placed first. According to this, I can imagine a cultivator being immersed in cultivation. It's like a person is addictive to something and everything is second before that addiction, my meaning is they feel joy because their efforts are rewarding, then they see they are powerful and every human have survival instinct, no one wants to die early. Cultivation is like gambling, a way of survival and joy of strength so everything else can be bearable.

 

But they are "bananas"? Any cultivation novel is a Darwinian world, every day it's fight to the death and do or die type of stuff. They are always busy plotting shit, exploring ruins and doing cultivation. Just think about a typical situation where as soon as it becomes known that someone has some treasure, everyone immediately organizes a hunt and then they fight to the death for it. If this is not "bananas", I don't know what is.

Also, consider the fact that they probably spend most of the their life (sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions of years without a break) in a sort of meditative state where they are cultivating and are not in conscious of the world. They spend significant time comprehending techniques, sutras and other stuff. When they are not actively cultivating or practicing, they might be crafting items or refining pills. At other times they are plotting, running errands, murdering, raping and pillaging. There are also things like governance of sects and territories, which keeps people quite busy. All in all, quite an exciting life.
In addition remember that during cultivation they also strengthen their mentality, so they supposed to be more resilient to "going bananas" as they grow stronger.

 

Hmmm….I feel like just because they live longer lives doesn’t mean they are any different from us. They are still able to find stuff to do. Most novels talk about how they can cultivate for years at a time. Then when they are done/come out they can either,

1. pick fights with others (sects, clans, empire, etc) to get ahead
2. go out to look for opportunities to get stronger (some even die while doing so)
3. teach their younger generations
4. stabilize themselves
5. plot against someone
6. enjoy the pleasure of life
7. get involved with the mortal world
8. start/fight a war, against stuff like demons
9. build a sect, business, etc
10. travel/learn more skills/try to to ascend, and there are lots more.

….and they repeat like how most of use repeat the stuff we do every single day…

You’re probably asking this question due to how long they live right? Let me make an example with present day.

The oldest someone had lived is somewhere around 120-125 years (if I’m not mistaken) our live expectancy around 200 years ago was around 35. That’s almost more than three the amount people in the past can live up to. We don’t ask “how can people in the past live their lives out to the fullest with such a limited amount” or anything of the like. These are ofc just my opinion and I believe that no matter how long or short our lives are we can still find something to do to live on. Ofc there are time we are bored out of our mind even tho there are so much in life to do (like me rn that’s why I’m responding to threads XD). Andddddd….play a tone

 

Because the average age of someone made it to adulthood was like 65 or 70 it was brought down by early deaths not people not living into the 90’s…

 

not that your point isn't valid, but you are confusing average lifespan with an individual one. Average lifespan was very low due to high infant and child mortality, but people often lived up to 50 and way after. It's very common misconception that people in their 30s were pretty much our modern day grandparents. Aristotel, for example, lived to about 60 and Plato lived to around 80. That's way more than 35 and it was BC.

 

Oh yeah I didn’t think about how many infant died cuz of how medically bad they were in the past.

Oh yeah I know that it was an individual one. I was just assuming how most people die due to accidents and stuff and how there are many people who are living into the 100s nowadays due to better food and medicine. At first I wanted to make a comparison of animal age and human but I felt that it was too awkward since they are too different species lol. Thx for the knowledge tho

 

I think cultivating is like sleeping, where they just have longer sleep time 1000 years or something compare to mortals, and so they don't get bored during the long span of time. Also, some deal with it like game grinding, where e-sports gamers can play up to 10 hours plus without pause just to complete an event, and you can multiply that amount 100 time for cultivators, and that's how they can pass the time without boredom.

 

Yeah. My take is that serious cultivators need to have:
- OCD to be comfortable and enjoy doing the repetitive Qi circulation grinding
- self hypnosis to set yourself on auto pilot while your mind zones out
- and gamer mentality where seeing numbers-go-up! rewards their brain a dopamine shot

 

I'd say there are two common issues people make in regards to their assumptions around this. The first is in regards to what happens during cultivation, and the second is regarding memories.

With the first part, you have to question what cultivation and meditation even is. If you go by the actual definition of the words, they involve a lot of thinking. Yep, it's a common misconception that meditation simply involves "emptying your mind." Actually, it's emptying it of distractions so you can focus it on something specific. The stronger the cultivator, the more complex the things they need to think about, and the more time it takes to do so. They are probably to focused to care about something like boredom. Of course, if the novel does a boring method of cultivation without real "meditation," where they just absorb energy, it is generally written to feel very good for the cultivators. So yeah, they are just feel pleasure for crazy long periods. Who knows if they might feel like they are using drugs or are even clearheaded in that case.

In terms of memories, not all cultivation novels have cultivation increase a person's ability to remember. Naturally, if you forget things over time, they will feel fresh when you try them again, so why would you feel bored? On the other hand, even if they have crazy good memory, why couldn't they just temporarily seal it to enjoy an activity like reading a book more than once? Thay sounds like something easy to do with all their powers. If anything, they probably enjoy life MORE than us!

 

It depends on which cultivation you are talking about as there is mind based cultivation and physical cultivation. Then there is Taoist vs Buddhist as they have different mind cultivation.

As to how they can do it without being bored, supposedly mindful cultivation at a certain level is more pleasurable than having sexual orgasms. This was described by one of the monks who meditated for 6 years in a cave (he was married or had a girlfriend before being a monk I believe).

As for the Taoists, their cultivation comes from achieving goals and powers. They get their high from feeling more power when they cultivate and they can either can live longer, feel younger, do more magic, or survive better. Wouldn’t you cultivate for years too if someone told you at age 60s you could get a body of a 20 year old again? That’ll drive people insane to cultivate.

 

More on greed and pride so they just fight each other and basically have ego measuring contests and if a dude is inlove with someone that doesn't want him he starts a war over it and then campaign to others about the importance of it making a cycle