In defense of Boredom
“Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are.”
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek once observed that boredom should not be considered a vice, but a virtue. As he put it:
“Boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. (...) Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are.”
It’s a nice way to rethink the theme of boredom. Instead of considering it a bad thing (Sartre characterized it as a “leprosy of the soul”.), Žižek argues that boredom can actually be very freeing, because it forces you to stop and think about your situation.
Singer Sargent, man lying in bed (1905)
But of course there are different kinds of boredom. If you work a boring job (what David Graeber famously characterized as “bullshit jobs”), then being bored can be very stifling. Saul Bellow characterized this kind of boredom as “the shriek of unused capacities.”
One might even distinguish between “active” and “passive” boredom. Passive boredom is when you are engaged in pseudo-activities that you secretly know to be meaningless, including work you don’t like or distractions that get you hooked. But “active” or existential boredom is when you slow down and allow yourself to be bored.
In this sense, boredom can also be a luxury. When you first unplug from the attention economy, and get rid of all the dopamine-boosting distractions, you’ll probably feel a little bored at first. It’s your brain getting used to the lack of stimuli.
But this boredom can also create a moment of peace and quiet in which you begin to notice things again. And that’s when you can go back to the “nice” boring things like going for a walk or reading a book, and re-discover just how enriching such activities can be. It’s a gentle reminder that we all need to be a bit bored sometimes, and that with peace and calm we can re-learn to focus and create a deeper and more meaningful connection to the world around us.
In sum, it’s ok to be bored. Against the idea that boredom is a vice, we should rehabilitate boredom. And once you make a change, and allow yourself to be a bit bored, suddenly you will rediscover just how exciting and rich the world can really be. That’s when you realize that there’s so much to live for, so much to see, and so much to do. And what could be less boring than that?
Julian
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Hey Julian... I've never come across an instance where Nietzsche negatively spoke of boredome. In fact, in the instances that I've seen Nietzsche talking about it, he seems to regard very positively. Can you bring to light the instance where he spoke of boredome as the root of all evil?
Also, there's a beautiful analogy introduced by the contemporary philosopher Byung Chul Han. He says that boredom is to the mind what sleep is to the body :)
You don’t use the word, but it seems boredom is another word for ‘idleness’, which also gets a bad rap and defenders, too. Or would you distinguish between them?