the (re-)invention of boredom

I'm not actually bored, just writing about it

leisure anew

Boredom was only invented recently (Gogol, “Dead Souls”)

I watch my roommate or dad sometimes and feel I’m staring at a portrait of the bored man. they’re probably not entirely bored—I see amusement and laughter as they scroll through TikTok or YouTube and I hear the same video announce its beginning over and over and over again.

I need to be really careful about sounding judgmental here because I (generally) don’t think the worse of anyone who spends leisure time on social media or the endless sources of entertainment we have—they’re an easy source of stimulation.

but as many people have commented before, this stimulation finds ways to stray ever further from the banality of everyday life. why watch the line crawl forward at the grocery store when I could be doom-scrolling on Twitter?

I learned how to be bored pretty early, since my first exposure to Facebook was before the age of 10. before that (and probably for at least a little while after), excitement and interest could be found anywhere. my friend Ali and I would invent worlds from the auspices of a bedroom and act out stories we narrated out loud to each other. when I think back to those moments, I realize how incredible that childlike imagination was (if a bit cringey—I am so glad no videos exist of those moments).

this isn’t to say I was never bored. my shopping timer was quite short, and when it expired I’d bother the hell out of my mom until we finally left Macy’s. but I didn’t have a smartphone, worlds I could escape to anytime. there was no magic box to provide me with everything, everywhere, all at once.

leisure turned from quietly reading a book or play-acting to enjoying every notification that popped up on my phone. this was more a phantom enjoyment—an “enjoyment” that filled the lack of an actual world outside for me to explore. I have a distinct memory of a man complimenting me for reading a book instead of being on my phone at a coffee shop.

that feels a little sad.

I think the way we understand and respond to idleness and leisure is fascinating. we have so much choice in what to do during those moments when there is nothing to do. we can “be productive” and read a book or watch lectures, wait in lines for ice cream or food or movies or shops or ice cream (guess which line you’ll find me in), make awkward small talk with our roommates, etc.

yet in an ever-growing expanse of choice, many of us always manage to make our way to one destination: boredom.

crop rotation

Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom, which itself has such a calm and sedate nature, can have such a capacity to initiate motion. The effect that boredom brings about is absolutely magical, but this effect is one not of attraction but of repulsion. (Kierkegaard, “The Rotation of Crops” from Either/Or)

there’s nothing particularly novel about idle time. in fact, according to various historical accounts I’m far too lazy to cite, boredom reflected high social standing. it was the privilege of the elites of ye olde England.

there’s a way to read this above passage as a statement against modern productivity culture. in certain echelons of American society in particular, people can’t sit around for very long without feeling a fire under their asses. there’s a need to do. not to do anything in particular, but to be doing something.

this is nice and kitschy, but too boring for a reading of Kierkegaard (seriously? you thought Kierkegaard was sitting around thinking about the productivity culture of a group of people as boring and insipid as us?)

crop rotation, as laid out in Either/Or, is the aesthete’s method for doing away with boredom. one does not change the soil but the method of cultivation and kind of crops. translated to english, crop rotation refers to varying one’s methods of amusement, warding off boredom with methodological change. one might think this looks like: one goes to Paris when one wearies of London, eats this instead of that, etc.

our aesthete, A, entreats creativity in changing the method of cultivation. perhaps one cannot retire to Paris. to A, all change, all methods for combatting boredom, involve the principles of remembering and forgetting: that is, the interpretation of one’s own life and experiences. the same set of experiences can be transformed if one chooses to view them in a poetic light, forgetting anything unpleasant.

but the desire for forgetful remembering, to live for the sake of interest, demands a certain discipline from the aesthete: one must allow moments and interesting affairs to draw out, never pursuing them to completion. the aesthete may enjoy friendship, marriage, vocation—but must not pursue these to their fullest or become trapped in relationships lest their obligations restrict him from the interesting.

meaning and meaninglessness

The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. Adam was bored because he was alone; therefore Eve was created. Since that moment, boredom entered the world and grew in quantity in exact proportion to the growth of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored en famille. After that, the population of the world increased and the nations were bored en masse. To amuse themselves, they hit upon the notion of building a tower so high that it would reach the sky. This notion is just as boring as the tower was high and is a terrible demonstration of how boredom had gained the upper hand. Then they were dispersed around the world, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored. And what consequences this boredom had: humankind stood tall and fell far, first through Eve, then from the Babylonian tower. (Kierkegaard, “The Rotation of Crops” from Either/Or)

the aesthete holds the “interesting” as the highest value. indeed, I wonder if the pursuit of “interestingness” as such is what manages to nudge us into the boredom’s prickly embrace.

I’ve unfortunately seen more than zero readings of Crop Rotation that seem to take it at face value. the Either, in which the crop rotation method is presented, is the half of Kierkegaard’s work that lays out the life philosophy of the aesthete. but the aesthete is merely counterpoint: the Or follows him and presents the ethical stage of the novel.

to Kierkegaard, the aesthete and his maximization of interest, even the pursuit of the intellectual in service of enjoyment, is meaningless. the aesthete will eventually realize the limitation of his approach to life and descend into despair, into anxiety. in response, the aesthete may make a “leap” into the second phase: the ethical. in the Or, Judge Vilhelm tries to convince the aesthete A of the value of the ethical stage of life and that the ethical person can enjoy aesthetic values as well.

there are religious and secular ways to read Kierkegaard’s novel, but an important upshot is a choice between two ways of life: the aesthetic and the ethical. there are no standards or guidelines for how to choose, but there is no not choosing. furthermore, with no “objective” guidelines for how to choose, each way of life is self-justifying by way of its own logic. the aesthete is evil to the person who sees a difference between good and evil in the first place.

the grocery store

we’ve strayed away from our original point about spending our time bored or not being bored, choosing whether to stare out the window or dive into the welcoming screens in front of us.

but in each moment that we choose to do or not do, we act into existence maxims by which we choose to live in each moment. the decision to watch exploitative content welcomes a world in which morally heinous acts will continue to be performed. the choice to do something “better” with one’s time or to do nothing at all carries a judgement with it as well.

to an extent, I’m starting to view the smallest actions I make, the “automatic” impulses I have in moments of idleness with moral weight. even the articulation impulse and its suggestion of immediacy are reminiscent of A’s approach to life: the crop rotation presents us with a refined immediacy, through which A engineers his life for maximum aesthetic enjoyment. my declarations of boredom smell of desire and discontent, of a need to do or experience something. those declarations we make are themselves a choice, an orientation towards the nothing in which we often find ourselves engaged.

this isn’t to advocate for sitting around and working out the implications of every small thing we decide to do with our time or what our boredom means. but we are making choices, and a surprising number of them, in the interstitial moments. we may not be paying attention every second, but we sure are choosing.

word quesadilla

I've been upside down
I don't wanna be the right way round
Can't find paradise on the ground

(vintage Oh Wonder)