Today’s interviewee writes that life without boredom would be a nightmare. We get him in conversation below. Enjoy!
Hi, thank you for having me. My name is Andreas Elpidorou. I am a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Louisville. I specialize in the philosophical study of the human mind with a particular emphasis on emotions and with an even more specific emphasis on negative emotions and boredom.
How do you qualify or quantify boredom?
I think this is a fascinating question — trying to draw lines around a phenomenon in order to define it .
That said, there is a pretty well-established definition of boredom that defines it as a negative state, which signifies a dissatisfaction with our current activity and involves a desire for an alternative activity. Boredom thus tells us something. It tells us what we're doing right now isn't great for us. And it acts as a push for escape.
One of the lessons that I've learned along the way, and that is a rather important lesson, is that boredom is very different than apathy. It is not a completely apathetic state during which we have no desire to do anything. Rather, in boredom, there is a simmering feeling of dissatisfaction, sometimes even a flaming desire for change.
Do you view different types of boredom differently? Adolescent vs. midlife?
Let me say autobiographically, I used to experience boredom far more than I experience it now. Now I'm rarely bored, and when I am, it doesn't compare to my boredom in my late teens. When you're a teenager that’s a period of great (intense or frequent) boredom, and I think that is because of two main causes. One is that we don't really know yet what we want to be doing. We're still trying to discover our passions, our projects, our interests. The other cause is that we lack a clear sense of autonomy. And both of those, especially the constraints and lack of autonomy, have been experimentally verified as elicitors of boredom and can lead to increases in the intensity and frequency of the experience of boredom.
I wanted to ask about meaning actually, how do you see meaning and boredom interacting?
As mentioned earlier, one of the primary insights from the boredom literature is that it serves as a motivating force, and it is this feature that renders it distinct from apathy. Another old lesson, predating our current understanding of boredom as an activating state, is the close relationship between boredom and the perception of meaning. Personal testimonies, literature, and experimental findings consistently support the idea that boredom arises when we perceive our situation as lacking in meaning or as having insufficient meaning. This consistent finding raises an intriguing philosophical and empirical question, namely, how does this perception of meaninglessness interact with or trigger boredom? Oftentimes, boredom isn’t just a it's not merely a matter of not finding meaning in a situation; rather, we may find it meaningful but challenging to pay attention to it. As a result, we may experience it as boring.
Another important question to consider is whether there exists a causal link between the two phenomena. Experimental findings strongly support the notion that boredom is associated with a perception of meaninglessness in our current situation. Evidence also suggests that the more we perceive this lack of meaning, the more intensely we experience boredom. Having said that, boredom isn't merely a passive perception of meaninglessness; it is a form of crisis. We are dissatisfied with the absence of meaning and are prompted to actively seek ways to reintroduce a sense of meaningfulness into our lives.
Obviously the job market has changed significantly in the last 5 decades – I would guess that most people find less meaning in their jobs than they used to, but simultaneously feel more pressure to find meaning in the workforce. It’s the language of the gig economy. Freedom and meaning whether you’re an Uber driver or an influencer.
That's fascinating and I think it is worth spending a bit of time trying to unpack some of those ideas and notions. I haven't thought about it in terms of one's desire to be an influencer, but I wonder what one's motives are. I wonder—if we were to survey influencers would they find what they're doing meaningful or boring? That's an open question. And it's really complicated because I think there's a very strong social imperative to like our jobs, and not just to like them, but to see them as being significant. But the nature of the labor market has shifted and it is shifting in a way so that we have become, to use the old Marxian phrase, more alienated from what we're doing. I think in freelancing, people are enjoying or trying to reclaim some freedom that one lost in the contemporary market.
I'm sure there's people who think what they're doing is very meaningful, but I'm also sure there's a group that is financially successful and feels trapped and bored by whatever they created.
But beyond that, you mentioned monotony before, and the sameness of what people are wearing, how they are manipulating and changing their faces and bodies, what they are selling you – that ubiquity must be boring? Right?
I am more and more fascinated by this question. How does boredom manifest itself within the broader socio-political and economic systems that shape our lives? While there seems to be a pervasive element of boredom, my observation is that it's often muted or quickly alleviated, making it appear bearable. Our work, for instance, may be devoid of meaning and be boring, but it comes with breaks and benefits that provide some relief. Additionally, our consumerist culture and shared activities might lack individuality, yet they still offer a sense of significance and meaning, even if it's minimal, forced, or by design.
It's a somewhat radical notion, but it seems to me that the system thrives on keeping us somewhat bored while providing us with temporary escapes from that boredom. These escapes may come in the form of new gadgets, trendy apps, or vacations. In a way, this sustains the status quo without prompting us to challenge or change our perspectives significantly. So that might be <laughs> a more radical thought, but I think there is something to your observation: the system is boring us by design.
Yeah. Observing the very rich, because they’re celebrities now and so visible, is so weird – a successful teenager on TikTok is living an oddly similar life to literally the richest men in the world. They are at the same parties, the same restaurants, the same concerts and fashion shows, the same hotels, doing the same thing, striving for the same approval – and to me, there is nothing more boring. You have all the money in the world and you want to be photographed at Nobu. Okay.
I agree with you, but at the same time, I think it takes a certain kind of ability to see that and to distance yourself from the forces that surround us. Right. I think when you’re immersed in everyday life and you check your social media feed and your newsfeed, it's hard not to feel that what you are observing is cool. I think it takes a certain kind of confidence in what you have to say, “Oh, maybe this is kind of boring.”
Sure.
I guess I’m taking an opposite view of something I also read about in your work which is that poverty increases the frequency of boredom – which I would have thought would be opposite actually.
Yeah. That is partly why I really wanted to write that piece, because the intuitive assumption, and this comes from Schopenhauer and Kant, is that once you have luxury, and thus once you have met your material needs, boredom follows.
That goes back to your initial comment about different types of boredom. I think it feels very differently to be very rich and bored than to be poor and bored. And what opened my eyes was an ethnographic study by sociologist Bruce O’Neill that explored the affective experiences of unhomed population living in post-communist Romania. One of his main conclusions is that unhomed individuals experience profound boredom, despite the fact that they aren’t able to meet their material needs. They have to figure out where they are going to shower, they have to find food daily, etc. but still boredom is coming up over and over again in his conversations with them. That was one of the first really important moments for me that prompted me to think more seriously about the relationship between poverty and boredom.
What have you been working on lately?
There's this idea that goes way back in the history of philosophy and literature – it's not original with me and has been expressed in various different ways. Saul Bellow, for instance, expressed it concisely in his Adventures of Augie March when he states that boredom is the ‘shriek of unused capacities.’ He reiterates this claim in Humbolt's Gift. This is precisely what I'm trying to articulate.
From my perspective, boredom is a form of pain stemming from the underutilization or suboptimal engagement of our cognitive capacities. We yearn to connect with the world, make meaningful changes, imagine things, and engage in productive thinking. Yet we often find ourselves unable to do so. This realization leads to a type of cognitive pain. In my current work, I'm combining various arguments and ideas under this way of thinking about boredom, and I'm exploring the consequences of this approach.
Understanding boredom in this manner also sheds light on certain social issues, which I believe should be examined through the lens of boredom. Specifically, I believe boredom should be considered a public health concern, taken into account by city planners, lawmakers, and others in their decision-making. Furthermore, this perspective aligns well with contemporary approaches in cognitive neuroscience that view the brain as a predictive machine. The relationship between how we perceive cognitive engagement with our environment and how we take action to minimize discrepancies between desired and actual engagement becomes an intriguing aspect to explore.
Have you figured out who are the least bored people?
No <laughs.> It's hard to know, right?
The least boring person, I think, is somebody who has structured their life in such a way that when boredom arises or threatens to arise, they're able to turn to some meaningful or cognitively engaging activity. That can be cultivating one's talents, writing poetry, or playing an instrument. It can be many, many different things. I suppose then my answer is that the least bored person is someone who knows what boredom is and has thought carefully about the ways in which their lives can offer them avenues for cognitive engagement. That person is not me—at least not yet!