Photo by Jason Scragz
Historians and anthropologists who have studied boredom have often concluded that it is not a universal affliction, but is instead a problem that is largely confined to contemporary society. Perhaps this seems counter-intuitive: I mean, what could be more boring than hunting and (especially) gathering, the ecological adaptation that has been the means of support throughout most of the time humans have been on the planet? Every day you get up and look around your territory for stuff to eat, no TV, no internet, not even a book to read. We might expect that foraging groups would have an extensive vocabulary of boredom, but as far as I know that has never been reported in the anthropological literature.
In fact, it seems as though nobody in the English speaking world complained of boredom until the mid to late 18th century. Why might this be? No one knows for sure, but it is probably relevant that this is roughly the same time that modern novels started to appear. More broadly, the first stirrings of the contemporary culture of entertainment date from around this time, and as opportunities for entertainment proliferated, people began to compare their daily experience to the adventure and romance and glamour of the worlds they could experience through entertainment.
Today, we expect or at least hope for more or less continuous entertainment. Teachers and campaigning politicians need to be entertaining if they expect an audience, we expect our food to be full of stimulating tastes, we carry music with us wherever we go—obviously, this is a list that could go on and on. We live in a world where those who develop more entertaining options for anything are going to get rich, and as a result more and more of our experience is entertaining. Except when it isn’t. Think about it—the moments when you are bored are those when you are not being entertained. What do you do to address your boredom? Try to find something entertaining, of course.
What I’m saying is this: We live in a society that sets us up to be bored. Everyone who has something entertaining or stimulating to sell has an interest in our being bored, and an enormous amount of resources go into making sure that if we try to step back from the world of entertainment, we will be. In our society, the opposite of bored is entertained; and more to the point, if we aren’t entertained, we’re bored.
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Great post – thanks for this. The perspective lent (particularly the last paragraph) is appreciated. The implications of your last sentence resonates as far as our perceptions of what makes us feel bored. Bored only seems to come when there’s opportunity to reflect (and compare, as you state) on what to do next. When one is actually doing the activity there generally isn’t opportunity to feel/”realize” boredom (like the hunting/gathering before us).
I’m not sure if it’s metaphorical or not, but boredom is an uncomfortable feeling not unlike drug withdrawal, and it is very effective in prompting us to seek out another arousing fix.
Thanks for reading and commenting–I’ll check out your blog.
Interesting drug parallel – was reading a book recently which made the point that something like Heroin addiction is a recently-developed drug for our bodies to encounter, when considering the time line of their development. It makes sense that our bodies have not built up any defenses to it (i.e. its high addiction rate)– The late-period development of “boredom” that you point out seems to be similarly insidious (to our brain? our processes?) as it was not encountered in the eons ago, when, perhaps, some natural work-arounds could have otherwise developed.
PS – The book was Robert Wright’s “Non-Zero” – which, after clicking through your “Resources” area, would probably be right up your alley…
I’m not sure about the notion that heroin is inherently addictive (most people who use it, even regularly, never become addicted). But your general point is certainly worth pondering. It wouldn’t be the first time that we humans have invented technologies that outrun our primate capacities to absorb and deal with them. On addiction, check out Bruce Alexander’s wonderful book, The Globalization of Addiction. I’ll look into Wright’s book, which I hadn’t known about.
Boredom is a figment of no imagination.