Rage Spread Thin: Boredom and Aggression

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James Danckert discusses Paul Tillich's quote, "Boredom is rage spread thin," which suggests that boredom is a distressing and hostile experience that pervades all aspects of our lives.

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Institution: University of Waterloo

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James Danckert discusses Paul Tillich’s quote, “Boredom is rage spread thin,” which suggests that boredom is a distressing and hostile experience that pervades all aspects of our lives.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 26, 2024

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This video video discusses boredom, its moral implications, and how individuals respond to it. It highlights perceptions of boredom, asserting that it is often seen as a personal failure or a lack of engagement, with some suggesting that only "boring" people get bored. Boredom is characterized as a "desire for desires," a push to seek meaningful engagement.

The speaker notes a philosophical perspective by Andreas Alor, who argues that chronic boredom reflects a failure to live a flourishing life. This video video also indicates that while some people view boredom as a signal to engage in creative activities, it can also lead to maladaptive behaviors such as substance abuse and gambling.

The discussion touches on Bertrand Russell's views from his 1930 work, stating that people today may fear boredom more than previous generations, resulting in a constant chase for excitement. Russell believed this pursuit is not sustainable, suggesting a need to tolerate boredom instead. However, the speaker disagrees with this notion, advocating for a more active response to boredom by finding meaningful activities rather than merely enduring it.

Ultimately, the text posits that boredom is a single emotional state characterized by restlessness and a desire for engagement, emphasizing the importance of cultivating appropriate responses to it, rather than boredom itself being something to endure.

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Well, we certainly cast boredom in moral terms

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in a range of different ways.

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So we say often that only boring people get bored.

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So that's a moral judgment suggesting that it's up to you

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to fix your boredom.

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There's so many things in the world for us to do,

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for us to engage with.

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If you are bored, it's your fault.

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And on the other hand, some people like to events boredom

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as a sign of how much they've already done in life.

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You know, they're so bored with everything

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because they've already done all the cool things.

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And, and that too is at least a social signifier of, of

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how many things they've been able to achieve in their lives.

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And my colleague and friend, Andreas Alor, who's a,

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a philosopher at the University of Louisville,

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he suggests there's yet another moral component to boredom.

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And that is that when we're bored,

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we're not optimally living our a flourishing life.

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So morality, we typically think of

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as an interpersonal thing, how are my actions affecting you?

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But in andreas's terms, we can think about this

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as a moral conundrum for the self,

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that if we're bored a lot,

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then we're not living our best lives

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and we need to do something about that.

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So I do think that boredom has those kinds

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of moral components to it.

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Boredom, I think, is best characterized

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by a quote from Leo Tolstoy where he says, that

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is the desire for desires.

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So when we're bored, we want something to do.

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We want something to engage with.

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We just don't want whatever's currently in front of us

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or whatever's currently available to us.

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We have a desire for desires for something meaningful to do.

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So it's this in a functional sense,

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it's this call to action.

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Whatever you're doing right now, lacks meaning lacks purpose

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for you, and you need to find something better to engage

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with that will fulfill that need.

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You have to find meaning and to use your skills

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and talents in the most optimal way possible.

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So I think that's the best way to characterize boredom.

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It's an uncomfortable feeling.

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Nobody really likes being bored, and it's,

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but it's a, a push to act, a call to action,

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to find something that will eliminate

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that uncomfortable feeling of boredom

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and get you engaged in something that really matters to you.

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For the people who chronically experience boredom,

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I think they would say that boredom is intolerable.

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And there's an interesting kind

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of circular question to be had there.

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Maybe it's your discomfort with boredom

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that makes it difficult for you to deal with it.

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So then you experience it more

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and then it becomes difficult to deal with

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and you experience it more and it cycles on and on and on.

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So I don't think boredom is necessarily intolerable.

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I don't think that's a characteristic of boredom.

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I think we can find positive ways to respond to boredom.

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Um, people love to believe in the link

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between boredom and creativity.

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I don't think boredom will ever make you creative

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or necessarily spark your creative juices,

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but certainly when you're bored, you could turn

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to creative outlets

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and that would be a tolerable way of coping

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and dealing with your boredom.

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Um, and so for, for people who have that outlet,

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boredom is not intolerable.

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So I think it only really becomes intolerable difficult

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to live with for the people who are chronically bored.

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And those people tend

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to have chronic difficulties in responding well to boredom.

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So we know that boredom is associated with problems

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of drug and alcohol abuse.

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It's, associated with problem gambling.

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It's even associated with problems in how we interact

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with our phones and our social media so that we can get,

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sort of attached to these things in a,

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an addictive kind of way.

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And those are clearly not really, adaptive responses

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to being bored for those individuals.

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Boredom may well be intolerable, but it doesn't have to be.

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So people have talked, researchers have talked for a number

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of decades about whether or not there's one type of boredom

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or many is that, are there different kinds

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of ways in which people experience boredom?

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And I don't know that the research field has come down on

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one side or another,

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but I would suggest that the side I come down on is

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that there's only one boredom, one feeling state

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that is characterized as boredom,

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and that's that uncomfortable, restless, agitated,

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motivated state where you are not engaged,

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but you want to be engaged.

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What I think so, and I think that is very stable over time,

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the way in which people feel that kind

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of boredom is very true over the an individual's lifetime.

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Um, certainly a a across cultures and so on.

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So I think what people who want to believe

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that there's multiple types

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of boredom are really getting at is

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that there's multiple ways in which we can get bored.

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It's sort of like talking about happiness.

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There are any number

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of different ways in which you can become happy

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and interested and curious about the world

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and what makes you happy is not necessarily

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gonna be what makes me happy.

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The same goes for boredom.

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What makes me bored is not necessarily going

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to make you bored.

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And because there's that plethora of circumstances

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that can lead to boredom, I think

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that sometimes leads people to believe

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that there are different types, but for me, there are not.

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There's really one type of boredom.

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It functions to push us into action,

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and it is quite stable over time.

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When we think about people who are chronically bored,

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we call these people boredom prone.

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When we think about the boredom prone,

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that too is relatively stable over time.

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There was some research that came outta the pandemic

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that said that it was rising in individuals over time.

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But typically if you think about, not,

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if you don't think about ex extraordinary circumstances like

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the pandemic, how boredom prone you are now is fairly

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predictive of how boredom prone you'll be in the future.

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First need to outline some of the claims

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that Bertand Russell makes about boredom.

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And so this comes from his book published in 1930,

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the Conquest of Happiness.

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And he puts boredom, in opposition

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to excitement, I think.

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And so one of the first claims that, that,

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Russell will make is that we're not as bored now

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as our ancestors were,

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but we tend to be more afraid of boredom.

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And I dunno how he substantiates that claim.

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It's very, very hard to measure the amount of

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Boredom in a society from 2000 years ago

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or even two 20 years ago.

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So, and,

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and there is actually some suggestion from Elizabeth way

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Bright and a few others, that that suggest

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that boredom is on the rise.

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So maybe we are more bored and not just more afraid of it.

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And so Russell might have been wrong on that front,

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but as I say, I'm not sure how he substantiated that claim.

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It seemed to me to just be an

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intuition that he might've had.

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But then he puts boredom as, as, as in opposition,

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as I say, to excitement.

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And so it seems like his real claim is that we are driven

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to more and more exciting experiences.

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And in the process of doing so, we're kind

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of avoiding boredom, becoming afraid of it.

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And that perpetual seeking of excitement is not really a, a,

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a viable life because we can't be excited all the time.

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We can't be sensation seeking

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and thrill seeking all the time.

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That would start to look a little bit like mania, right?

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And so I think I agree with that,

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that a life lived in the constant pursuit of thrills

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and excitement and sensations is not going to be successful.

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It's not gonna work. So we do need to be able to sort

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of tolerate down times.

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Um, and the other thing that he seems to be suggesting is

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that it's partly a societal sort of challenge

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that we're afraid of boredom more in his terms, in that

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we are setting expectations for ourselves

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that things should be exciting.

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And remember, this book was published in 1930,

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so you can only imagine what Russell might think

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of our current times where there are

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so many things available to capture and grab our attention,

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and they do so, so successfully things on the internet,

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our smartphones, social media, these kinds of things

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that are full of bells

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and whistles that constantly grab our attention.

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He might say, see, there there is this

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constant demand on your attention that is unrealistic

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and not likely to, to lead to a, a well-engaged life.

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In that sense, I think I would agree with him

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that we can't just succumb to these kinds of,

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attention grabbing devices and attention grabbing things.

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This is sort of taken up again

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by a guy called Oren Clap in the eighties.

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He's a sociologist that wrote a book on information overload

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and boredom and clap said much the same sort of thing that

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we are inundated with information,

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but the challenge essentially is to make sense of

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that information, so to extract signal from the noise.

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And it's so in that sense too, both clap and,

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and Russell, I think I would agree with them that

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that is a challenge, that boredom signals

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that when we're struggling to make sense, we're struggling

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to, to extract signal from noise.

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That might be one of the things

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that leads us to being bored.

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And that challenge of finding signal

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amongst the noise might really be a lot more difficult now

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than it was when Russell was writing in the 1930s.

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The other thing that Russell sort of says in his book is

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that we should sort of cultivate a tolerance of boredom.

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We should, in some sense get used to it and, and embrace it.

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Um, even I'm not sure that he says quite

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that we should embrace it,

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but we should at least tolerate a little more.

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And I think I have a subtle disagreement with that.

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I don't know that there's any sense in tolerating boredom.

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Boredom as a signal is a, as I've said

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before, is a call to action.

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It wants you to move on to find something new to do.

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Now, if you succumb to the bells

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and whistles of social media

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and the internet, then yes,

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you might be falling into the problems

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that Russell was talking about.

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But if you consciously seek activities that are meaningful

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to you, then I, I would say you're responding well

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to the signal of boredom.

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And in that sense, you don't need to cultivate it,

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you just need to cultivate better responses to it.

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Um, in the same sort of sense that, that people have said

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that we should cultivate boredom

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because it will spark our creativity,

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I just disagree with the logic of that.

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I don't think you should ever embrace or cultivate boredom.

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I think you should embrace and

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cultivate responses to boredom.

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And so it's a subtle distinction between what Russell said

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and what I might sort of claim.

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But I think it's an important one

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because it's one that helps you establish your agency

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as a person who's choosing what you are doing in life.

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Um, and the other final thing I'd say about Russell is

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that I don't think excitement's the opposite of boredom.

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I don't think it's certainly the only opposite of boredom.

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Interest and curiosity can be opposites of boredom,

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and you don't need to be excited by those.

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You can just be curious. Relaxation can be an opposite

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of boredom and you're not excited while you're relaxing,

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but you might be engaged in a good book that you,

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you you're reading while you're on the beach.

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So there's lots of things that can be opposites of boredom.

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Anything that successfully engages our minds

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will be an opposite of boredom.

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So there's lots of things that I think that Russell said

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that was interesting about boredom.

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I just might quibble with some of the details.

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I don't have anything else to add about boredom

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and morality per se.

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I do think that there's a sense in which particularly

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teenagers might eVic that kind of bored look, that,

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you know, they're so bored with the

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world because they're above it.

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And that too is a poor response to boredom

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because they're not really listening to

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what it's telling them, and they're not really responding

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well to that push, that call to action.

Quick Answers

Boredom: A Moral and Creative Exploration

00:00:00 - Well, we certainly cast boredom in moral terms in a range of different ways. So we say often that only boring people get bored. So that's a moral judgment suggesting that it's up to you to fix your boredom. There's so many things in the world for us to do, for us to engage with. If you are bored, it's your fault. And on the other hand, some people like to events boredom as a sign of how much they've already done in life. You know, they're so bored with everything because they've already done all the cool things. And, and that too is at least a social signifier of, of
00:00:35 - And my colleague and friend, Andreas Alor, who's a, a philosopher at the University of Louisville, he suggests there's yet another moral component to boredom. And that is that when we're bored, we're not optimally living our a flourishing life. So morality, we typically think of as an interpersonal thing, how are my actions affecting you? But in andreas's terms, we can think about this as a moral conundrum for the self, that if we're bored a lot,
00:01:06 - and we need to do something about that. So I do think that boredom has those kinds of moral components to it. Boredom, I think, is best characterized by a quote from Leo Tolstoy where he says, that is the desire for desires. So when we're bored, we want something to do. We want something to engage with. We just don't want whatever's currently in front of us or whatever's currently available to us. We have a desire for desires for something meaningful to do. So it's this in a functional sense,
00:01:38 - Whatever you're doing right now, lacks meaning lacks purpose for you, and you need to find something better to engage with that will fulfill that need. You have to find meaning and to use your skills and talents in the most optimal way possible. So I think that's the best way to characterize boredom. It's an uncomfortable feeling. Nobody really likes being bored, and it's, but it's a, a push to act, a call to action, to find something that will eliminate that uncomfortable feeling of boredom and get you engaged in something that really matters to you.
00:02:11 - I think they would say that boredom is intolerable. And there's an interesting kind of circular question to be had there. Maybe it's your discomfort with boredom that makes it difficult for you to deal with it. So then you experience it more and then it becomes difficult to deal with and you experience it more and it cycles on and on and on. So I don't think boredom is necessarily intolerable. I don't think that's a characteristic of boredom. I think we can find positive ways to respond to boredom.
00:02:41 - between boredom and creativity. I don't think boredom will ever make you creative or necessarily spark your creative juices, but certainly when you're bored, you could turn to creative outlets and that would be a tolerable way of coping and dealing with your boredom. and so for, for people who have that outlet, boredom is not intolerable. So I think it only really becomes intolerable difficult to live with for the people who are chronically bored. And those people tend to have chronic difficulties in responding well to boredom.

Boredom: Causes, Consequences, and Perspectives

00:03:14 - of drug and alcohol abuse. It's, associated with problem gambling. It's even associated with problems in how we interact with our phones and our social media so that we can get, sort of attached to these things in a, an addictive kind of way. And those are clearly not really, adaptive responses to being bored for those individuals. Boredom may well be intolerable, but it doesn't have to be. So people have talked, researchers have talked for a number of decades about whether or not there's one type of boredom
00:03:46 - of ways in which people experience boredom? And I don't know that the research field has come down on one side or another, but I would suggest that the side I come down on is that there's only one boredom, one feeling state that is characterized as boredom, and that's that uncomfortable, restless, agitated, motivated state where you are not engaged, but you want to be engaged. What I think so, and I think that is very stable over time, the way in which people feel that kind of boredom is very true over the an individual's lifetime.
00:04:21 - So I think what people who want to believe that there's multiple types of boredom are really getting at is that there's multiple ways in which we can get bored. It's sort of like talking about happiness. There are any number of different ways in which you can become happy and interested and curious about the world and what makes you happy is not necessarily gonna be what makes me happy. The same goes for boredom. What makes me bored is not necessarily going to make you bored. And because there's that plethora of circumstances
00:04:52 - that sometimes leads people to believe that there are different types, but for me, there are not. There's really one type of boredom. It functions to push us into action, and it is quite stable over time. When we think about people who are chronically bored, we call these people boredom prone. When we think about the boredom prone, that too is relatively stable over time. There was some research that came outta the pandemic that said that it was rising in individuals over time. But typically if you think about, not, if you don't think about ex extraordinary circumstances like
00:05:25 - predictive of how boredom prone you'll be in the future. First need to outline some of the claims that Bertand Russell makes about boredom. And so this comes from his book published in 1930, the Conquest of Happiness. And he puts boredom, in opposition to excitement, I think. And so one of the first claims that, that, Russell will make is that we're not as bored now as our ancestors were, but we tend to be more afraid of boredom. And I dunno how he substantiates that claim.
00:05:56 - Boredom in a society from 2000 years ago or even two 20 years ago. So, and, and there is actually some suggestion from Elizabeth way Bright and a few others, that that suggest that boredom is on the rise. So maybe we are more bored and not just more afraid of it. And so Russell might have been wrong on that front, but as I say, I'm not sure how he substantiated that claim. It seemed to me to just be an intuition that he might've had. But then he puts boredom as, as, as in opposition,

Boredom: Embrace the Signal, Not the Fear

00:06:26 - And so it seems like his real claim is that we are driven to more and more exciting experiences. And in the process of doing so, we're kind of avoiding boredom, becoming afraid of it. And that perpetual seeking of excitement is not really a, a, a viable life because we can't be excited all the time. We can't be sensation seeking and thrill seeking all the time. That would start to look a little bit like mania, right? And so I think I agree with that, that a life lived in the constant pursuit of thrills
00:07:02 - It's not gonna work. So we do need to be able to sort of tolerate down times. and the other thing that he seems to be suggesting is that it's partly a societal sort of challenge that we're afraid of boredom more in his terms, in that we are setting expectations for ourselves that things should be exciting. And remember, this book was published in 1930, so you can only imagine what Russell might think of our current times where there are so many things available to capture and grab our attention,
00:07:35 - our smartphones, social media, these kinds of things that are full of bells and whistles that constantly grab our attention. He might say, see, there there is this constant demand on your attention that is unrealistic and not likely to, to lead to a, a well-engaged life. In that sense, I think I would agree with him that we can't just succumb to these kinds of, attention grabbing devices and attention grabbing things. This is sort of taken up again
00:08:05 - He's a sociologist that wrote a book on information overload and boredom and clap said much the same sort of thing that we are inundated with information, but the challenge essentially is to make sense of that information, so to extract signal from the noise. And it's so in that sense too, both clap and, and Russell, I think I would agree with them that that is a challenge, that boredom signals that when we're struggling to make sense, we're struggling to, to extract signal from noise.
00:08:35 - that leads us to being bored. And that challenge of finding signal amongst the noise might really be a lot more difficult now than it was when Russell was writing in the 1930s. The other thing that Russell sort of says in his book is that we should sort of cultivate a tolerance of boredom. We should, in some sense get used to it and, and embrace it. even I'm not sure that he says quite that we should embrace it, but we should at least tolerate a little more. And I think I have a subtle disagreement with that.
00:09:08 - Boredom as a signal is a, as I've said before, is a call to action. It wants you to move on to find something new to do. Now, if you succumb to the bells and whistles of social media and the internet, then yes, you might be falling into the problems that Russell was talking about. But if you consciously seek activities that are meaningful to you, then I, I would say you're responding well to the signal of boredom. And in that sense, you don't need to cultivate it,

Responding to Boredom: Choices Over Cultivation

00:09:38 - in the same sort of sense that, that people have said that we should cultivate boredom because it will spark our creativity, I just disagree with the logic of that. I don't think you should ever embrace or cultivate boredom. I think you should embrace and cultivate responses to boredom. And so it's a subtle distinction between what Russell said and what I might sort of claim. But I think it's an important one because it's one that helps you establish your agency as a person who's choosing what you are doing in life.
00:10:09 - that I don't think excitement's the opposite of boredom. I don't think it's certainly the only opposite of boredom. Interest and curiosity can be opposites of boredom, and you don't need to be excited by those. You can just be curious. Relaxation can be an opposite of boredom and you're not excited while you're relaxing, but you might be engaged in a good book that you, you you're reading while you're on the beach. So there's lots of things that can be opposites of boredom. Anything that successfully engages our minds will be an opposite of boredom.
00:11:04 - that was interesting about boredom. I just might quibble with some of the details. I don't have anything else to add about boredom and morality per se. I do think that there's a sense in which particularly teenagers might eVic that kind of bored look, that, you know, they're so bored with the world because they're above it. And that too is a poor response to boredom because they're not really listening to what it's telling them, and they're not really responding well to that push, that call to action.

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