To Pass the Time – an Essay on the Effects of Boredom

2008-10-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

I’ve been recently observing a lot of individuals’ activities, which for a while was quite detrimental to my already waning faith in humanity. There seems to be no limit to human ignorance, and no end to their fruitless endeavors. I am, of course, not the first to notice this. So why am I writing about it now? I’ve recently had a sort of humbling epiphany – not a major one, but enough to put me back in my place. It’s been a long time since I’ve realized that the one I study is really myself.

The sorts of activities I’ve observed recently are varied. People who concern themselves only with romance, people who concern themselves only with politics, people who concern themselves only with religion – all of these to me are missing something. They refuse to have the foresight to know that all of their efforts in the end are meaningless.

I enjoy thinking I’m different because my tastes are more varied. I take interest in entertainment, in the arts, in technology, and in the pure sciences, but if I apply my cynicism to myself I find that all of these are also meaningless. Indeed, nothing of this world seems to hold any meaning. Few things seem to be timeless – to some extent the arts and sciences are, but to a further extent, it seems to me that the areas of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology are the only transcendental fields. And really, these are all just really concentrations of anthropology – the study of humanity. Which, I suppose, is what I do in my spare time. Humanity seems to me to be the only constant – I don’t believe our society has evolved, or devolved, in the past few centuries. I don’t believe that every time we have an Enlightenment or a Revolution that human beings become closer to perfect or closer to good.

The only things that can be observed to be timeless are the physical world itself, and human consciousness. Of these, only human consciousness can be proven – “Cognito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”) as the old postulate goes. The physical world can be observed, but our perception of it cannot be proven to be accurate. Therefore, the only true constant is human consciousness, and the study thereof is the only timeless field. However, this conclusion also means that the probability of any really new and unique thoughts at this point is extremely low.

I’m digressing. The question I asked myself when thinking about these things was, “Why do people bother worrying about things that don’t matter?” My eventual conclusion: boredom. It’s a suspicion I’ve had for a while, that people think their lives should play out like stories – with main conflicts, themes, interesting stuff like you see in the movies. The fact is that not that many interesting things just happen on their own, so people create conflicts in their own lives to entertain themselves. In creating situations that have meaning for them, they get as close as they can to feeling as if their lives have meaning.

The humbling part of this is that I’m the same way. I maintain the Asylum out of boredom and think on these sorts of things out of boredom. I also do other things because of it, and I can think of very few things that don’t bore me after a long enough time.

What makes a person more or less susceptible to boredom? Is it some innate attention span? Is it something biochemical? I cannot say. Biochemistry is certainly not a subject in which I am well versed. Furthermore, I usually base my suppositions off my mildly unfounded belief that normal human beings have no innate behavioral differences from one another. There is some evidence that suggests that I am wrong, but I don’t believe it to be conclusive. I also believe that there are some who would examine the data wanting to conclude that behavioral patterns are purely genetic. I disagree, but I cannot in this entry further speculate the causes of the differences in people’s susceptibility to boredom. At this point, I believe it is enough to conclude that boredom is a major factor in human motivation. The cause of boredom may or may not be the subject of a later entry.

The Sane Asylum - Psychological Division

To Pass the Time – an Essay on the Effects of Boredom