Finding comfort in boredom.
Boredom is a concept that has been vilified by philosophical pessimists to such an extent that I feel the need to speak out for the need for boredom.
Namely, boredom can be seen as a stable state of affairs where needs have been met and wants are not arising. Stoicism would have called this blissful apatheia.
What the philosophical pessimists have done is turn a perfectly respectable virtue of being bored and turned it against itself. Why? What is wrong with boredom? What's wrong with a little boredom to read something or think about something?
I have begun to like boredom. It means that things are going on well. I don't experience Akathisia or some other form of philosophical pessimist restlessness. Life is going smoothly without all that excitement and jazz. My needs are met, and that's all that matters. Who needs stimulation, when you can rest in your inner citadel and review the past or think about the future a little. Not in excess, but the idea is clear... Boredom is not evil. It can actually even be a sign that things are going on very well.
Namely, boredom can be seen as a stable state of affairs where needs have been met and wants are not arising. Stoicism would have called this blissful apatheia.
What the philosophical pessimists have done is turn a perfectly respectable virtue of being bored and turned it against itself. Why? What is wrong with boredom? What's wrong with a little boredom to read something or think about something?
I have begun to like boredom. It means that things are going on well. I don't experience Akathisia or some other form of philosophical pessimist restlessness. Life is going smoothly without all that excitement and jazz. My needs are met, and that's all that matters. Who needs stimulation, when you can rest in your inner citadel and review the past or think about the future a little. Not in excess, but the idea is clear... Boredom is not evil. It can actually even be a sign that things are going on very well.
Comments (19)
When I’m just sitting with the radio on and thinking, I am usually not bored. Most people would find this boring, but I do it for many hours every day. Then again, I am capable of having conversations in my head. From what I gather, many many people don’t or can’t do this.
but being in a state of boredom doesn't really say much about whether things are going well in your life or not.
A prisoner sitting in his cell with little to do, for years might well be bored a lot of the time, for example. Things are hardly going well for them.
A homeless person sitting in a closed shop doorway might well be bored, as well as hungry and cold.
It is when what had been a meaningfully enjoyable, contemplative, peaceful environment starts to seem meaningless or slightly confused. Boredom would be the first warning sign that things are no longer going on well, that one's apatheia is no longer blissful, that life has stopped gong smoothly even if on the surface it would appear that nothing has changed in a situation that had been enjoyable for us up till recently. Boredom would remind us that even the apparently most passive and unreflective state of just being actually involves an active and dynamic engagement in order to have it feel condident , blissful and in order for us. Boredom understood in this way is an incipient form of anxiety and unsureness. That makes boredom a creative affect in that it prompts us to reexamine the way we relate to a situation. It motivates us to try and recapture the sense of flow and movement that we lost. Whether we accomplish this slipping into flow via overt activity or though a quiet meditation, boredom would not itself be a function of how much stimulus we heap on ourselves but how effectively, meaningfully, enjoyably we can glide through our experiences.
Maybe the word youre looking for is flow, or meditative bliss, rather than boredom.
I believe that meditative bliss is the final telos of brute boredom. SO, to recreate the situation in a different light, then boredom is simply an artifact of a life in balance.
Huuurayy.
One the contrary. Boredom only attained a negative association with the rise of the ROmantics and such.
It's a battle against the different terms used to classify a "disease" or "ailment".
It seems to me though that you havent addressed this phenomenon that most people do mean by boredom, and that is the experieince of a disturbing loss of meaning.Thats the interesting feature of what most people think of as boredom, not meaningfully contemplative and peaceful experience.
Yes this would be my response but you already stated it. :up:
Profound boredom is akin to world-weariness. It’s like things are on repeat and no novelty gets rid of the feeling. I think it is a baseline emotional state. What the mind gets to without the goal-oriented attention, flow state feeling, or feeling of peace.
It's a feeling that doesn't want to consider the negative association with anaphor and boredom.
I'l call it a template for eudemonia.
Perhaps it's compared to something else when someone says ''I'm bored'' in a negative sense.
Boredom happens when we move from a higher level of stimulation to a lower level. The filters are still wide open, but in the low stimulation environment there is less data to process.
So the brain starts complaining, "Where is the data I'm expecting?? Give me the data!" We call this boredom.
We usually run from boredom by inputting more data from some other stimulation source. Another solution is to simply patiently wait for the data filters to adjust to the new less stimulating data environment.
Boredom is not really the problem, but our emotional reaction to it. If we look at boredom as being just a mechanical issue which will resolve itself in time, there can be less emotional reaction.