Boredom

What percent of the time would you say you’re bored?

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  • boredom <1 (For some reason it wouldn’t allow, "0.")
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I don’t really become bored, I can just sit and mull over random stuff for hours, which brings a few questions to my mind:

What exactly is boredom, from a philosophical standpoint?

Are intelligent people less susceptible to boredom?

And, finally, why is it that people can’t conquer boredom with even the most mundane stimuli? For instance, if I even feel like I’m starting to get bored, I take a walk.

I think the boredom of the herd animal lies in the fact of living in a nihilistic void after the death of god. Its replacement, perpetutual consumerism, often fails to fill this hole.

But, I believe in God and am often bored. I don’t think belief in God has made society-at-large less bored merely out of recognition of existence.

I am just bored from a combination of an attention and an anxiety disorder. It kind of sucks that I cannot focus on anything for any given length of time, and when I do I question my own motivation for being able to do so.

Boredom is the minimum reflection on the redundancy of existence. It’s not precisely a weltanshuung, but perhaps the recognition of an imaginative excess or real deficit.

Boredom’s why there’s music, that is, why we endlessly produce variations upon a theme. There’s no escape from the fact that there’s a pulse, and a grouping of pulses, and a dominant tonality, and specific harmonies and resonances in the aural field.

The question of existence is entirely one of style, the way to make the cut-- the way the instrument is played. In a universe made entirely of abstract machines, which instruments do we identify ourselves with? Which animals, which of our own organs do we desire to become? (Nietzsche would add: Which style desires life itself endlessly, which style laughs at resentment?)

Which of the very organs of nature are we becoming? Which even of the cosmos–of our unconscious mythology?

The questions of style and boredom are therefore the same: how do we desire better desires?

/ So, I guess when you’re bored, remember you’re still always acting bored to some degree-- minor or virtual boredom is a failure of the unconscious to invest desires where attention needs to be paid. Real boredom, on other hand, would actually become a crisis of bodily integrity, perhaps even of faith… Guy Debord even says that boredom is counter-revolutionary.

You can’t really know how profound boredom is until you get a feel for Kierkegaard and Sartre. These guys are not kidding when they say that at the heart of man lies boredom. Man, who intuits his meaninglessness and his contingency, knows he is a “useless passion”, despite what he believes might be a greater “purpose” to his actions. There isn’t any greater purpose, and simply because you can make this mortal life “meaningful” meanwhile does not mean any of the things you did are an exception to the totality…or the ultimate gratuity of existence.

Other than this existential rule, boredom is simply the experience of inertia- a state where any action at all seems useless, or not worth the effort to act.

You can go get an apple outta the fridge. You are kinda hungry. But not really. You are kinda tired, and comfortable in that chair. You don’t want to get up. But you are kinda hungry. Maybe not hungry enough to get the apple, or sacrifice the immediate comfort of the chair to get the apple to satisfied the hunger. If you were really hungry, you would, or, if the chair wasn’t so comfortable, you would. But between the chair and the apple, as each one provides a desired end, neither one is thought of as being “progressive” or worth the effort to make an effort with one act or the other. This is boredom, a “stalemate of intentions”.

Any time you are in a state that, in order to be changed, must be decisive and voluntary, but have no alternative which is worth the effort of change, you become bored.

Where there is a sense of urgency, danger, risk, etc., there is no possibility of boredom. Even considering these things, we know that our acts are ultimately purposeless.

I feel rather disgusted when someone tells me they are bored. There is so much to learn and wrestle with that I never find myself becoming bored. In fact, I don’t feel I have enough time.
My family members have told me that If they didn’t have their work they would become completely bored to death. I find that quite sad. For I don’t want to go to work because it means less time for philosophy.

Hmmm … do you believe god has given you attention and anxiety disorder?

I came to my conclusion that boredom arises after the death of god because I haven’t read any reference to boredom before Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer I think was the first atheist to elaborate on boredom.

I am always rather pathetically bored.

Where is a beautiful young agressive woman when you need one to occupy your time? Sighs.