Boredom is a reminder that life has lots of inherent meanings and that the one we are currently using to frame our experience is not conductive to the development of our happiness.

Boredom is a reminder that life has lots of inherent meanings and that the one we are currently using to frame our experience is not conductive to the development of our happiness. — Perplexed

Agreed.

There are at least 5 different types of boredom:

1)Indifferent boredom, defined as being relaxed, withdrawn and indifferent

2)Calibrating boredom, defined as being uncertain and receptive to change/distraction

3)Searching boredom, defined as being restless and in active pursuit of change/distraction

4)Reactant boredom, defined as being motivated to leave a situation for specific alternatives

(2006, Thomas Goetz/Anne Frenzel)

5)Apathetic boredom, an especially unpleasant form that resembles learned helplessness or depression. It is associated with low arousal levels and high levels of aversion.

(2013 Thomas Goetz/Anne Frenzel)

Take a look at Soren Kiergaard's
THE ROTATION OF CROPS
A Venture in a Theory of Social Prudence

People with experience maintain that proceeding from a basic principle is supposed to be
very reasonable; I yield to them and proceed from the basic principle that all people are
boring. Or is there anyone who would be boring enough to contradict me in this regard?
This basic principle has to the highest degree the repelling force always required in the
negative, which is actually the principle of motion. It is not merely repelling but infinitely
repulsive, and whoever has the basic principle behind him must necessarily have infinite
momentum for making discoveries. If, then, my thesis is true, a person needs only to
ponder how corrupting boredom is for people, tempering his reflections more or less
according to his desire to diminish or increase his impetus, and if he wants to press the
speed of the motion to the highest point, almost with danger to the locomotive, he needs
only to say to himself: Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom,
which itself has such a calm and sedate nature, can have such a capacity to initiate
motion. The effect that boredom brings about is absolutely magical, but this effect is one
not of attraction but of repulsion.

Susan Sontag from her diaries takes a different view. (Brian Pickering goes into great detail about boredom)

Function of boredom. Good + bad

[Arthur] Schopenhauer the first imp[ortant] writer to talk about boredom (in his Essays) — ranks it with “pain” as one of the twin evils of life (pain for have-nots, boredom for haves— it’s a question of affluence).

People say “it’s boring” — as if that were a final standard of appeal, and no work of art had the right to bore us.

But most of the interesting art of our time is boring. Jasper Johns is boring. Beckett is boring, Robbe-Grillet is boring. Etc. Etc.

Maybe art has to be boring, now. (Which obviously doesn’t mean that boring art is necessarily good — obviously.)

We should not expect art to entertain or divert any more. At least, not high art.

Boredom is a function of attention. We are learning new modes of attention — say, favoring the ear more than the eye— but so long as we work within the old attention-frame we find X boring … e.g. listening for sense rather than sound (being too message-oriented). Possibly after repetition of the same single phrase or level of language or image for a long while — in a given written text or piece of music or film, if we become bored, we should ask if we are operating in the right frame of attention. Or — maybe we are operating in one right frame, where we should be operating in two simultaneously, thus halving the load on each (as sense and sound).

Welcome to TPF!

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

I'll speak to my own experience of boredom. For me, it's a matter of motivation. If I'm not doing anything, my mind will start searching for something new to do - reading, going for a walk, working, writing, going on TPF. Often, as I run through things in my mind, I don't want to do anything I can think of. More than that, I want not to do anything I can think of. So I sit there waiting, wanting something but not having anything to do. That waiting is actually interesting. Sometimes I learn things about myself. One thing I've learned is that doing something is a way of hiding from myself. Hiding from the emptiness that sometimes rears its head.

Here's a quote from Kafka I've used before on the forum and will use many times more:

“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

Sometimes the waiting, the not even waiting, will lead where you need to go.

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

I don't know what the purpose of boredom is; there is no purpose, it isn't associated with lucid cognition. Life has much meaning though sometimes it can be hard to find in human games (social constructs you have to believe in for them to exist). Without nature, biology and physics, perhaps there would be no meaning.

A lot of children complain of being bored, it seems it could be a symptom of immaturity or maybe of living an over structured lifestyle. It isn't a universal emotion, precisely not a universal emotion, actually: the universe isn't bored; be like the universe. Only some people get bored that need to figure out how to be alone in a dark room for as long as it takes to feel comfortable within themselves. It can help to talk to yourself in said dark room until you pinpoint your restlessness, examine it, stop rejecting it, cajole it into joining the part of you that isn't bored, etc. Or go out into nature and use your senses, learn from it...you'll understand what I mean when saying the universe isn't bored and to be like it. Make some field observations, maybe a painted turtle basking unmoving all day in the sun, or a leopard frog calmly poised eating bugs for hours, or a massive oak deeply rooted. It's mainly humans have a problem with boredom, it isn't natural. Hopefully when seeing that lower life forms can be more tempered and calm than humans, the phantom that is "boredom" is understood. Though admittedly, human animals remind me more of a termite mound or maybe bacterial culture (lowest life forms) in the helter-skelter cities. Maybe a termite gets bored when it has to hold still for any amount of time? I would rather be like a serene frog than a antsy termite, or a termitesy ant.

Is boredom an accurate reminder that life has no inherent meaning?

Boredom is the indicator that nature uses to advice your that you are not even trying to give meaning to your life.

Boredom is a symptom of laziness and lack of application. It's the result of living a consumerist life exclusively, instead of living with a balance of consumption and creative output. (Mania and obsession would be the opposite error, too much creativity and not enough cud chewing.)

The secret to happiness and the avoidance of boredom is not a mystery at all, and has always been well known:

1) pick something you're good at, out of the basket of things you're good at (any human being has a bunch of things they have some talent for, and although usually one talent stands out a bit above the rest you can potentially earn a living with any of them depending on circumstances);

2) choose goals that are just on the edge of your capability, so that you could either succeed or fail;

3) have measurable criteria for success or failure;

4) do the thing and succeed or fail.

5) Either way you'll be happy and not bored, although of course you'll be happier if you succeed. Also you'll develop skill in the thing, and the exercise of skill is in itself pleasurable.

Rinse and repeat.

The only known alternative is the Buddhist/Epicurean idea of ataraxia or nirvana, but that isn't really a method of pursuing happiness, rather a method of getting behind the entire mechanism of "the pursuit of happiness" to a state of inner tranquility.

It's possible to do both, since inner tranquility is attainable even in the midst of action and striving, as explained in, for example, Marcus Aurelius' writings. (This is related to the point about skill: the exercise of skill can induce a "flow state" which is a kind of mini, temporary version of nirvana.) But you need a good grounding in a fulfilled life to do both, whereas you can leap straight into nirvana without being someone of any great attainment.

That was beautiful! Thank you for sharing.

No boredom is just evidence of a lack of imagination.

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

Yes, boredom is a way of discovering the inherent lack behind the facade of there having somewhere to be, something to do, etc. I wrote this a while back: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/742/is-boredom-more-significant-than-other-emotions/p1

What is the purpose of boredom? Why is it such a universal emotion? — CuddlyHedgehog

Why do people (and other animals, for all we know) get headaches? Some reason? Some purpose? Headaches happen. Boredom happens. One does something about it, then moves on. Nattering on about boredom is... boring.

Boredom happens — Bitter Crank

That's the scientific explanation. Now for the spiritual explanation.

Life (duration) is memory of change. It is possible to sit immobile and observe change as one's duration extends however, if the change is nominal (e.g. staring at a wall), the creative force of life begins to note the lack of change (duration) and feels this change as boredom or a self-reflection that possibly one needs more change in life.

As such, boredom is a indicator that life is full of meaning and boredom is a reminder that one can bring more it it into one's life.

Boredom is a reminder that life has lots of inherent meanings and that the one we are currently using to frame our experience is not conductive to the development of our happiness. — Perplexed

So feeling is the meaning?

I would hope a feeling can be seen as a meaning.

Boredom, monotony, weariness and exhaustion connected with redundant experience would be, paradoxically, of the same species as the shock and trauma of dramatic novelty. Boredom is always a symptom of dislocation and incipient incoherence. As counterintuitive as it may seem, experience is only perceived as redundant to the extent that such `monotonous´ experience disturbs us by its resistance to intimate intelligibility.A situation only bores us
to the extent that its comfortable meaning has begun to fall away from us.

Boredom and monotony are symptoms not of the too-predictable, but of a previously mobile, fluidly self-transformative engagement beginning to become confused, and thus seemingly barren of novelty.

The `too same' and the `too other' are forms of the same experience; the near-senseless, the impoverishment, moment to moment, of the meaning of each new event. It is AS IF the rate of novelty has been decelerated during experiences of crisis. We know that we are no longer what we were in such states, but we cannot fathom who or what we, and our world, are now; we are gripped by a fog of inarticulation. While still representing transit, such a destitution or breakdown of sense SEEMS like an ongoing stasis, a dearth of sense.

So boredom presents a creative opportunity. It is telling us that we have already begun to move into new experiential territory, but we dont have the means to articulate it yet. All we sense(that is, all we can put into words) is the loss of the previous vibrancy of life,