In this episode, we tackle boredom head-on. Danish philosopher Kierkegaard suggested the gods created humanity out of boredom, and the poet Charles Baudelaire foresaw its French version, ennui, one day swallowing the whole earth up in an immense yawn.
The word ‘boredom’ to describe a state we owe to Charles Dickens; in Bleak House in 1853, he referred to Lady Dedlock’s ‘chronic malady of boredom’ (perhaps the clue was in her name).
The description of being ‘bored’ or finding something ‘boring’ dates back to the century before that, but open the Old Testament and you’ll find something that sounds remarkably like acute boredom:
‘When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.’ [Ecclesiastes 2:11]
But when we’re bored, meaningless co-exists with a longing for meaning; it’s not mere apathy, which is a lack of interest coupled with a low motivation to do anything about it. Boredom is restless.
Psychologist Adam Phillips calls it
that state of suspended anticipation in which things are started and nothing begins, the mood of diffuse restlessness which contains that most absurd and paradoxical wish, the wish for a desire.
In other words, we want something from our world that it cannot immediately provide.
And that’s where psychology may come to the rescue: not to eliminate boredom – as you’ll hear, boredom is trying to tell us something that’s worth heeding – but to begin to work out what to make of its message, how to respond to it in a way that won’t just send us off to watch another box set, or eat another half-litre of ice cream, or often do both at once…
Out of my Skull is a new book on the psychology of boredom by James Danckert and John D. Eastwood. James, who’s my guest on this programme, is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo and a cognitive neuroscientist. James’s co-author John is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at York University and a clinical psychologist.
Listen to the podcast to find out how we know animals also experience boredom, how boredom correlates with ideological inclination, and how many people will willingly give themselves an electric shock to alleviate boredom…