We define boredom as the pain a person feels when he’s doing nothing or something irrelevant, instead of something he wants to do but won’t, can’t, or doesn’t dare. Boredom is acute when he knows the other thing and inhibits his action, e.g., out of politeness, embarrassment, fear of punishment or shame. Boredom is chronic if he has repressed the thought of it and no longer is aware of it. A large part of stupidity is just the chronic boredom, for a person can’t learn, or be intelligent about, what he’s not interested in, when his repressed thoughts are elsewhere. (Another large part of stupidity is stubbornness, unconsciously saying, “I won’t. You can’t make me.”)
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pp. 71-72Paul Goodman
Martin Heidegger taught an entire course on boredom, calling it the “insidious creature [that] maintains monstrous essence in our [Being].” It’s been speculated that Heidegger signed up with the Nazis at least in part to cure himself of boredom.
Martin Heidegger
In the usual boredom, we desire nothing, we even lack the curiosity to weep; in the excess of boredom it is just the contrary, for this excess incites us to action, and weeping is an action.
Emil Cioran
Chronic boredom — compensated or uncompensated — constitutes one of the major psychopathological phenomena in contemporary technotronic society, although it is only recently that it has found some recognition.
Erich Fromm
Boredom was the plague of my childhood. While I was at the orphanage, the boredom came from being in a place I did not wish to be. I was bored. I was bored the entire four years I was there.
William Saroyan
I felt I could no longer take the roller-coaster of emotions of travel, its surges of exaltation, its troughs of despondency, it’s large stretches of boredom and inconvenience
Geoff Dyer
Goodman, Paul
Goodwin, Thomas
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