By virtue of your votes, this is the topic for this Sunday's philosophy discussion in Santa Monica.
If any of you have any ideas you'd like to share, add them to this thread!
posted by:
ScreamBrian
Los Angeles
  • Re: BOREDOM: what is it, what does it mean?

    Fri, January 19, 2007 - 12:59 PM
    FYI, here's the "official" wording of Sunday's topic:

    BOREDOM: what's the nature and meaning of boredom? Is this just a psychological issue, or also a philosophical puzzle? Two philosophers have recently written books on this question, and there’s more to the issue than is at first obvious.
  • Re: BOREDOM: what is it, what does it mean?

    Fri, January 19, 2007 - 1:15 PM
    So, I found a few articles (book reviews, actually) on the topic. These may inspire your thoughts on the matter, whether you plan on coming to the gathering this Sunday or whether you just want to think about the topic and perhaps put some thoughts down in this thread.

    Unexpectedly, I had a tough time finding any decent articles or essays that said anything enlightening about the nature of Boredom-- or the related Ennui or Acedia (I did a search on Google, Wikipedia, and several on-line philosophy websites, encyclopedias, and magazines).

    I did, however, manage to dig up four short book reviews of three recent books by philosophers who try to explicate the meaning of Boredom-- and say something interesting about it (after all, few things are worse than a long, boring article about Boredom). I hope the following reviews will spark your interest in boredom, and perhaps improve or inspire your thinking on this non-standard philosophical and psychological topic. After skimming them, I recommend them in this order:

    1- “Looking at boredom, but making it interesting” www.philly.com/mld/inquir...5207020.htm
    2- “Boredom: The Literary History of a State of Mind” findarticles.com/p/article...i_20017509
    3- “Lars Svendsen. A Philosophy of Boredom” findarticles.com/p/article..._n16439701
    4- “You will not be bored reading this” www.timesonline.co.uk/article...,00.html

    Enjoy!
    • Re: BOREDOM: what is it, what does it mean?

      Fri, January 19, 2007 - 1:23 PM
      ...FYI, I came across this brief definition, put forth by one scholar. For what it's worth, “Boredom…is a restless, irritable feeling that the subject's current activity or situation holds no appeal, and that there is a need to get on with something interesting. Thus boredom emotionally registers an absence of meaning and leads the actor in question towards meaning”—from “Boredom and social meaning” by J. M. Barbalet, Sociology Department, Leicester University.
      • Re: BOREDOM: what is it, what does it mean?

        Sun, January 21, 2007 - 4:00 AM
        Thanks to Carol C for finding these quotes, aphorisms and maxims about Boredom from www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_boredom.html

        Aldous Huxley:
        Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

        Bert Leston Taylor:
        A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.

        Bette Midler:
        Cherish forever what makes you unique, ‘cuz you're really a yawn if it goes.

        Charlotte Whitton:
        Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.

        Ellen Parr:
        The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

        Eric Hoffer:
        When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.

        Fritz Redl:
        Boredom will always remain the greatest enemy of school disciplines. If we remember that children are bored, not only when they don't happen to be interested in the subject or when the teacher doesn't make it interesting, but also when certain working conditions are out of focus with their basic needs, then we can realize what a great contributor to discipline problems boredom really is. Research has shown that boredom is closely related to frustration and that the effect of too much frustration is invariably irritability, withdrawal, rebellious opposition or aggressive rejection of the whole show.
        From: When We Deal With Children

        George Bush:
        What's wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

        Leo Tolstoy:
        Boredom: the desire for desires.
        From: Anna Karenina

        Lin Yutang:
        Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination.

        Metallica:
        Boredom comes from a boring mind.

        Saul Steinberg:
        The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

        Sir Cecil Beaton:
        Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.

        Soren Kierkegaard:
        Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.

        Susan Sontag:
        Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.
        From: On Photography

        Virginia Woolf:
        Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

        Voltaire:
        All kinds are good except the kind that bores you.
        • This post was deleted by ScreamBrian