• schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Some of Schopenhauer's best insights were his ideas about the centrality of boredom. Boredom sits at the heart of the human condition.

    If we were in a hand-to-mouth survival situation, that is all we would be consumed with...the means to putting food in our mouth, getting hydrated, and finding comfortable shelter from the elements.

    In an industrialized, complex network of production and consumption, this is all atomized into our little "work" and "leisure" pursuits. On the other side of the spectrum, waiting for us is boredom. Boredom lays bare that existence isn't anything BUT striving-after. We strive to survive and be comfortable. Then, if we do not have any entertainment pursuits to occupy our mental space, we may get existential. "Why are we doing this repetitive upkeep, maintenance, and thrashing about?" It becomes apparent about the malignantly useless (as another author has characterized it).

    A pretty face, a noble pursuit, a puzzle, an ounce of pleasure.. we all try to submerge in these entertainments to not face the existential boredom straight on. That would be too much to dwell in for too long. We design goals, and virtues and reasons, and entertainments, and standards to meet, and trying to contribute to "something". We cannot fall back on the default of existence- the boredom.

    So what is one to do? If suicide isn't a real option, there is only the perpetual cycle. The illusion is that it can be broken. Schopenhauer deigned freedom by asceticism. That was a nice consolation-hope to provide, but it's simply training the mind to live with the existential striving-after more easily. That is all- a mental technique. It is not a metaphysical escape hatch. We are stuck until we are not.
  • baker
    5.6k
    That's why people provoke others into wars, to relieve their own boredom.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    That's why people provoke others into wars, to relieve their own boredom.baker

    Putin? haha

    But in a more allegorical sense too, Schopenhauer had a good quote on our own need for "something" besides boredom. We are in a way, always at war with existence:

    If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature. — Schopenhauer
  • baker
    5.6k
    Putin? hahaschopenhauer1

    No, Biden.

    If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature. — Schopenhauer

    Indeed, often, people who claim to only want peace and prosperity don't think their desires through to their logical consequences.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Boredom sits at the heart of the human condition.schopenhauer1

    That certainly isn't true of me or most of the people I know. Again, you seem to be projecting your own feelings onto others.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    That certainly isn't true of me or most of the people I know. Again, you seem to be projecting your own feelings onto others.T Clark

    Why are you on here?
    I'm excavating the root of the reasons we give.. So give your intermediary reasons first.. I get it.
  • baker
    5.6k
    You need to keep yourself busy at all times because ...
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    You need to keep yourself busy at all times because ...baker

    I said I am never bored, not that I am always busy.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    Well normal human cognitive function is often impaired by severe mental conditions, or physical brain alterations like a lobotomy. I doubt those apply to you..so being you’re in the spectrum of average functioning human, I call bullshit.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Well normal human cognitive function is often impaired by severe mental conditions, or physical brain alterations like a lobotomy. I doubt those apply to you..so being you’re in the spectrum of average functioning human, I call bullshit.schopenhauer1

    It has always been clear that you and I have very different understandings of human motivation and behavior. You have always seemed unable to see that many, perhaps most, people find life interesting; worthwhile; and, often, enjoyable. The fact that you can't imagine living without boredom is a case in point.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    It has always been clear that you and I have very different understandings of human motivation and behavior. You have always seemed unable to see that many, perhaps most, people find life interesting; worthwhile; and, often, enjoyable. The fact that you can't imagine living without boredom is a case in point.T Clark

    You're ridiculous. I am not saying they are mutually exclusive. But look at the motivations for what motivates you beyond remedial things (survival, comfort, comforting others in times of need).. These are bandaids that we do, sidetracks of subsisting in life and with others, until we must face ourselves/existence faces us directly. Why do you keep yourself busy? Same as @baker's question.

    When you are not working to survive and be comfortable.. I presume you don't just sit.. Something motivates you.. even to sit.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    You're ridiculous.schopenhauer1

    I'm ridiculous because I disagree with you? Because I experience things differently than you do? I don't get it.

    Why do you keep yourself busy? Same as baker's question.schopenhauer1

    I don't keep myself busy. Beyond the required things I do - eating, sleeping, going to the doctor, etc., I do the things I do because I want to. Because I enjoy them, e.g. participating on the forum. It is not unusual for me to do nothing.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    I'm ridiculous because I disagree with you? Because I experience things differently than you do? I don't get it.T Clark

    Because you think you don't experience boredom, and that we have radically different ways of being in the world. I just call supreme bullshit, I'm sorry. And you don't seem severely autistic or cognitively an impacted human in some way to allow for that kind of evaluation.

    I do the things I do because I want to. Because I enjoy them, e.g. participating on the forum. It is not unusual for me to do nothing.T Clark

    Not doing nothing, doesn't mean you are not motivated by a sort of existential boredom. Why do you do things that you like to do rather than do nothing? I don't get it. Why not literally do nothing once you put food in pie hole, and you make sure you have enough money for heat if necessary and a roof over your head, and maintenance things like that. Why don't you just sit in a dark room somewhere and do nothing at all? You can turn yourself off, right? Because you don't get bored, right?
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    I'm ridiculous because I disagree with you? Because I experience things differently than you do? I don't get it.
    — T Clark

    Because you think you don't experience boredom, and that we have radically different ways of being in the world.
    schopenhauer1

    QED, or as Perry Mason used to say, "I rest my case, no further questions."
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    On what? An underline? Perry mason would indeed lose all his cases with no evidence.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    On what? An underline? Perry mason would indeed lose all his cases with no evidence.schopenhauer1

    We're not getting anywhere. I say something about myself and you don't believe it. Do you think I'm lying? Deluded? If so, there's nowhere to go from here.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    Im not sure cause you haven’t directly answered my last post. I do not believe you go through life without existential awareness at this point and think either you simply don’t really know what I’m asking or you don’t have a prefrontal cortex which by our discussion itself couldn’t be the case.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Im not sure cause you haven’t directly answered my last post. I do not believe you go through life without existential awareness at this point and think either you simply don’t really know what I’m asking or you don’t have a prefrontal cortex which by our discussion itself couldn’t be the case.schopenhauer1

    Again, if you won't accept my own statement about my own experience of my own self, there's nothing more for us to talk about.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    And you won’t answer my previous post. Why?
  • Aaron R
    218
    I think that you're right that boredom sits at the heart of the human condition. I'm less convinced that this is a pessimistic insight. Boredom drives us to seek pointless distraction. Boredom drives us to create meaning. You can look at it either way.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k

    I think Schopenhauer characterizes it best why it's actually a form of suffering:

    Life presents itself chiefly as a task—the task, I mean, of subsisting at all, gagner sa vie. If this is accomplished, life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won—of warding off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.

    Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to ​boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest—when in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious.
    — Schopenhauer

    I bolded his most important proof there. It is not "Oh, I had a good day, and another one there!" It's not about hedonic calculus. Even Schopenhauer's argument is least effective when he tries to tally up the woes and goods and weigh them. It is not to do with this outer drapery. Rather, it is about the necessary suffering of the condition itself; the life of a self-reflective animal. The stress itself of subsisting and the restless-lack (existential boredom) underlying it all.

    Thomas Ligotti had used a dark (but effective) turn of phrase for the feeling of existential boredom- MALIGNANTLY USELESS (always capitalized). You get glimpses of this feeling when not "caught up" in the task itself. It is akin to an emotional "broken tool" in Heideggerian terminology. It is the feeling of unease of the non-escape of the restless, "who cares, but I have to care and caught up in a task.. for survival, for maintenance, to occupy my mindspace.. but then, I don't want to do this, but I have no choice, and on, and on" reoccurring nature of living and subsisting itself.
  • Aaron R
    218
    If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing. — schopenhauer

    That’s a great quote.

    While I agree with Schopenhauer that boredom is a fundamental aspect of life, it seems to me that he is elevating it to the very essence of life itself. This is where I disagree. I see boredom as being on par with (and mutually dependent upon) at least two others aspects of life: “anxiety” and “flow”.

    Boredom, anxiety and flow are all related to the encounter (or lack thereof) with novelty. In essence, boredom is what occurs when you don’t have enough novelty in your life, whereas anxiety occurs when you get too much, and flow occurs when you get just the right amount. Looking at it through this lens, I’d say that both boredom and anxiety exist to push us toward flow. All three are constituent elements of a largely unconscious process that attempts (with variable success) to optimize our experience of meaning. In my view, this process is the fundamental form of life, and boredom is just one constituent element of it.

    So, I can’t agree with Schopenhauer when he says that the mere existence of boredom proves that life does not possess any positive intrinsic value. That would only be true if boredom were life’s most fundamental expression. But as I explained above, I don’t think that’s true. The fact that there is boredom (and anxiety) proves only that life’s intrinsic positive value is not guaranteed to us, but that it has to be “won”.
  • Janus
    16.2k
    All I can say is that if boredom lies at the root of your existence then your existence lacks a certain serenity and creative sensibility. You would be better served by trying to find that in yourself than navel gazing at your apparently chronic, self-obsessed dissatisfaction.
  • baker
    5.6k
    It's easy to underestimate boredom, and it's easy to fail to see that we do so many things just to relieve our boredom.


    All I can say is that if boredom lies at the root of your existence then your existence lacks a certain serenity and creative sensibility.Janus

    Shall we test you by placing you on a desert island, alone?
  • baker
    5.6k
    The fact that there is boredom (and anxiety) proves only that life’s intrinsic positive value is not guaranteed to us, but that it has to be “won”.Aaron R

    Won how?
  • baker
    5.6k
    You need to keep yourself busy at all times because ...
    — baker

    I said I am never bored, not that I am always busy.
    T Clark

    Watching television, fantasizing, and such are still under "keeping oneself busy".

    Or can you really sit quietly, doing nothing -- not even fantasizing -- for hours, while being fully awake and alert?
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    Shall we test you by placing you on a desert island, alone?baker
    @Janus

    Yep, second this. I love how we have gotten to the point in our competitive endeavors where people try to posture about their motivations never coming from boredom. As you said, at the heart of "getting caught up in X" is the boredom of WANTING to get caught up in X. It amazes me that people's wanting to "best" others goes as far as to try to deny, for the sake of argument, a crucial animal/human component of existence. I don't believe one iota of people who claim "I don't experience boredom" and further say shit like, "Cause I have a perfectly serene center.. I AM the BUDDHA!!". As stated, take away the little pursuits to get caught up in, and they'll be bored. Why the fuck are they arguing with me? They should be content in their existential repose, no?
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    Watching television, fantasizing, and such are still under "keeping oneself busy".baker

    I rarely watch television or movies, or listen to music. Fantasize? Worry maybe sometimes. I do read, fiction and non-fiction. I participate on the forum. I swim. I do my physical therapy exercises.

    I don't think you understand how this works, at least works for me. The motivation to do things comes from inside me. I picture a spring bubbling up from under the ground. Just because I do stuff doesn't mean I'm keeping myself busy. Sometimes nothing bubbles up, so I just pay attention and wait. It doesn't usually take long.

    I guess you and @schopenhauer1 lack imagination and empathy. You can't imagine other people experiencing things different from what you do. You don't seem to understand that others may feel differently.
  • schopenhauer1
    10.8k
    I do read, fiction and non-fiction. I participate on the forum. I swim. I do my physical therapy exercises.T Clark

    So he picks the wrong hobbies, and his main point is thus wrong? C'mon.

    I don't think you understand how this works, at least works for me. The motivation to do things comes from inside me. I picture a spring bubbling up from under the ground. Just because I do stuff doesn't mean I'm keeping myself busy. Sometimes nothing bubbles up, so I just pay attention and wait. It doesn't usually take long.T Clark

    Right, you are in stasis and have no thoughts until activated. No, not no empathy, just annoyance of the façade. You are in control of what you do, right? Or are you being controlled by the inner man inside you that activates and deactivates you? I'm really curious at how you are different than all other humanity.

    I guess you and schopenhauer1 lack imagination and empathy. You can't imagine other people experiencing things different from what you do. You don't seem to understand that others may feel differently.T Clark

    I just think we do feel the same thing, and you are lacking imagination and empathy to understand how what you are feeling is actually coinciding with what I'm describing but instead you become indignant at the words I am using to describe what amounts to the same thing.. Humans are not so far apart as you are attempting to say. We are different, but not different BEINGS. You can drop the, "We are just soo vaaastly different.. chasm of deeeep differences.". Anyways, if what you say about the division of incommensurable understanding of humans to other humans, than bye bye existential similarities of pessimism and hello pessimism of the alone.. Pick your poison, I guess.
  • T Clark
    13.7k
    instead you become indignant at the words I am using to describe what amounts to the same thingschopenhauer1

    I went back and checked all my posts in this thread. In not a single one did I express any indignation. You on the other hand...

    Let's leave it there.
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