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In a world suffused with mobile technology, we’re often warned that our impulse to distract ourselves at every moment — rather than simply sitting with boredom — is dangerous. In this line of criticism, boredom is positioned as a state that we’ve lost touch with in our always-online modern lives.
What benefits can boredom bring us? In the latest episode of the Build for Tomorrowpodcast, Jason Feifer dives into boredom’s complicated history to find some answers.
The origin of boredom
While the concept of boredom is relatively new — at least in name — the experience of boredom extends far deeper into human history. According to Susan Matt, a History professor at Weber State University and one of the authors of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid, the roots stretch back to Ancient Greece.
“So the ancient Greeks had a word ‘acedia,’ which meant listlessness, and early Christians applied it to monks, who went out into the desert, lived alone, and got struck with a melancholy that made them falter in their devotion to God,” Matt says.
This created a problematic situation for the monks — how could you get bored while doing something so ostensibly important as serving God?
“It became a sign of your lack of devotion to God and to your monastic vows,” Matt says.
This is how, according to Matt, boredom became a sin. It evolved over the centuries, migrating beyond the monastery by the 12th century.
“The ancient Greeks had a word ‘acedia’…early Christians applied it to monks, who went out into the desert…and got struck with a melancholy that made them falter in their devotion to God.”
“Now the average person could suffer from it as well if they weren’t super into doing their prayers,” Feifer says. “Around the same time, the French developed a similar word, ennui, which was not specific to religion. It just meant ‘a draining listlessness.'”
By the 18th century, ennui had been adopted into the English language. And in the burgeoning United States, ennui was regarded as a scourge.
“It could lead to drunkenness or drunkenness could cause it depending on who you consulted. It could lead to masturbation, or perhaps, masturbation could cause it,” Matt says. “So there’s this whole litany of Victorian sins that are linked to idleness and ennui. So that comes up in a lot of asylum reports and newspaper reports.”
“It was a very real boredom, but also a kind of guilt or shame for all their excess time, which made ennui a complex experience.”
Importantly, ennui, like acedia, was still predominantly a concern among the elite.
“Just like acedia in early Christianity was thought to only afflict monks, ennui in early America was thought to only afflict the wealthy,” Feifer says. “The working people, it was believed, had plenty to keep them busy, so ennui was what people felt when they had too much leisure and not enough to do. It was a very real boredom, but also a kind of guilt or shame for all their excess time, which made ennui a complex experience.”
Luke Fernandez, also a professor at Weber State University and the other author of Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid, explained that working people certainly experienced what we might call boredom, but they were more likely to use words like wearisome or dull. And they didn’t ascribe a moral function to it — it was just a product of their work.
“When you’re out there on your farm or on your homestead and trying to plow the land or harvest a crop, there’s a lot of tedium and monotony involved in that activity, but you don’t attach much import to that because you see so much virtue in the actual work you’re doing,” Fernandez says. “And so, people from the middle classes, the yeoman farmers, the people out in the homesteads, they felt tedium, they felt monotony, but they didn’t worry about it the way upper classes did.”
Rather than fighting the boredom or trying to atone for it, many working people simply accepted it as a reality of life — using the time to daydream or read. That is, until the Industrial Revolution.
Boredom changed because our relationship with work changed
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of work changed dramatically because of industrialization. And with this change came a change in the nature of what boredom was, who experienced it, and how.
“When industrialization increased in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it changed the way people thought about work. Beforehand, many Americans worked for themselves,” Feifer says. “Now, more people were working for others doing a single task in a factory over and over. And they found very little virtue in that.”
“If the overriding sentiment about work is that it generates boredom…that creates a problem for employers.”
It is under this backdrop that the word “boredom” finally takes centre stage.
“In the 18th century, the word ‘bore’ described a very dull person,” Feifer says. “And then in the mid-19th century, that evolved into the word ‘boredom,’ which was a state of mind. This became a useful word because of course, the word ennui was still associated with the wealthy, but anyone, no matter their job or status, could be bored.”
But if the overriding sentiment about work is that it generates boredom — rather than some intrinsic value — that creates a problem for employers. What value system can be used to keep enough people in the jobs for the enterprise to continue?
“This was a revolution in how many conceived of life’s meaning … Many came to believe that pleasure, happiness, excitement and novelty were their birthright.”
“When work sucks, then your off-the-clock time must compensate for it,” Feifer says. “Very quickly, the entertainment industry also stepped in to fill this void and this, workers were told, is your reward for a hard day’s work. You will be bored earning money so that you can spend that money in non-boring ways. And workers took the deal. I mean, not like they had much choice, but they did like all of this new leisure.”
This shift in work brought about a deeper shift in how we view our lives in general.
“This was a revolution in how many conceived of life’s meaning, it altered their expectations for what they were entitled to, rather than sadness and passive acceptance of routine drudgery. Many came to believe that pleasure, happiness, excitement and novelty were their birthright,” the authors write in Bored, Lonely, Angry, Stupid.
The need for distraction
Not surprisingly, this is also when we begin to see the seeds of our current concern about the role of sensory distraction and overstimulation in public discourse.
“The entertainment industry itself was now seen as the cause of boredom, or at least the trap that kept people from truly accessing their minds.”
“In the 1920s and early ’30s, there [was] a real discourse among psychologists, sociologists and other commentators who are wondering: is it good for humans to be exposed to movie theatres, to concerts, to radio’s blaring?” Matt says. “Is this too much sensory stimulation? Is it going to lead to sensory overload, is it going to lead to nervous people who demand ever more excitement in their lives?”
As time went on, these questions transformed into professional concerns and major topics of debate.
“That’s when doctors and intellectuals start saying, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t know if all this entertainment is very good for you people,'” Feifer says. “By the 1950s and ’60s, the narrative had shifted even further, the idea of boredom and the entertainment that helps people escape from boredom melded into one singular thing. The entertainment industry itself was now seen as the cause of boredom, or at least the trap that kept people from truly accessing their minds.” Continue reading
- Jesse Damiani is a senior writer at Freethink covering emerging technologies.
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