Sixteen months ago, I embarked upon a series of posts on the subject of Eudaimonia. That is the Aristotlean idea of a "good spirit" and what Aristotle thoiugh was the highest end of human existence. Element I - Truth, can be found here:
https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2022/09/horse-3062-eudaimonia-element-i-truth.html
While it is good and proper to explore the best of humanity, the truth is that we simply do not live in a kosmos which it is even possible to live like this all the time. You do not have to believe the tenants of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindusim, Buddhism, Taoism, Baha'i or even concepts which are not religious like economics, politics, behavioural science, et cetera, to realised that humanity is either selfish, broken, flawed, or just plain nasty and cruel. Some writers and philosophers such as Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, or Friedrich Nietzsche, seem to think that selfishness is actually either rational and/or necessary in the kosmos.
I do not think that von Mises, Rand, or Nietzsche, provide anything useful in actually dealing with the problems of the human condition, nor do I think that selfishness is a thing which is good for the kosmos. However there are elements within the kosmos which are Not Great™ which are still worth interrogating to see if there is any useful telos to them. Also as before, I am going to name my terms; since I think that that is a useful starting place.
To this end, I shall borrow Plato's term συναισθημα, or synaisthima, meaning emotion. In Plato's "The Symposium", which has the framing device of what I think is a lot of drinky-drunky people chatting semi-rubbish and making speeches at a banquet. A synaisthima is a mental activity resulting from diverse simultaneous physical stimuli. It is the effect of stimulating the senses through an outside agent (that is not of something like stomach ache) of a person.
However people live far more interior lives than just chatting rubbish at the war table. Real people who live in a busted kosmos have to live with things that are Not Great™ which come from inside. To that end, I like the word κακός, kakos; which means "bad" or "evil".
Put them together and you get...
κακόσυναισθημα - Kakosynaisthima, from:
κακός - kakos, meaning bad or evil
συναισθημα - synaisthima, meaning emotion
Speaking as someone who works in an accountancy firm and as someone who has read a lot of economics, my view of the kosmos is very much viewed through the lens of trying to find the value of things. Value is one of those concepts which seems intuitively obvious but upon even the barest of inspections, vanishes below the surface of the ocean like a proverbial sea monster. I think that the best method of approaching a description of what Value is, is to think about that other economic concept of Opportunity Cost; which is what you have forgone in order to get this current thing. Herein lies the atomic basis of practically all of economics. Even a dollarpound is just the token system which acts as a set of counters which measures Opportunity Cost in discrete units.
However, when it comes to the nebulous problem of trying to work out the value of things that can not be bought or sold, our sea monster once again disappears. Opportunity Cost is handy because it tackles the problem of what one would have given up in order to get something but of itself it doesn't describe that almost subatomic problem of human nature; that is, that humans are semi-rational electro-mechanical meatbags, with some thinking muscles, and some kind of spirit/software which drives them. As semi-rational electro-mechanical meatbags, humans have some basic needs in order to remain alive, and beyond that a range of wants which can be unlimited.
I think that this point that we can take it as moot that religion, psychology, economics, politics, and even theatre, have in various ways described the irrational part of a human being, which is that part of the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos. It is only a very small leap to go from "I", to "I need", and "I want". "I want" itself, is actually itself one of the drivers which ultimately arrives at the Opportunity Cost of something. Yes, "I want" is probably not much more than a sophisticated version of "yummy, yummy, yummy" versus "not yummy" and so I probably can leave that part of the equation alone, but what of the other side?
Once again I return to the problem of Value. Is there any Value in the things that are "not yummy" of the kosmos? Moreover, do they have anything to teach us? What happens if those wants can not be fulfilled? A semi-rational electro-mechanical meatbag can yell and kick and scream about it but that's not exactly productive.
Synaisthima - Element I - Boredom.
The fact that you are reading this on a computer of some sort and the fact that I am writing this on a computer of some sort, is evidence of the fact that we live a long way in the future. I think that it's really difficult to forget the world that my great-grandparents were born into in 1874, looks very little like world of today but very similar to the world of the same period in the other direction, in 1724. In that 150 years, the arrival of mass literacy, radio, television, and the internet, has meant that the very thing of Boredom itself, can be scraped away at an instant. Perhaps one of the objects of the plan to put the world in your hand, was to try and banish Boredom to the pages, and then digital archives, and then deleted.
Certainly the killer of Boredom is Distraction. Distraction is lovely. Distraction is a "yummy, yummy, yummy" sweetie. The "I want" here can be more than adequately sated by instantly gratifying the "I want" of entertainment. There is so much Distraction available to us, that Boredom as a thing may as well be functionally eliminated. Boredom is one of the very few things which previously thought unsatisfiable, can now be sated. The "not yummy" of Boredom can be pacified.
If Boredom is therefore a temporary state which can be made to go away reasonably easily now, then what is the "not yummy" going on here? That part of the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos, as part of the spirit/software has that "I want" for constant input that it likes. Boredom usually arrives when that input doesn't currently meet the irrational part of a human being; which may include tedium, a current sense of emptiness while anticipating something else, repetition of task, repetition of thought, or being pushed to do the "not yummy" thing.
Perhaps the most classic example of someone appearing to be bored, is the child who without having any specific thing to do is spooked at that same prospect. The complaint about being bored in this case is not so much an inability to invent their own pastime but a semi-weaponised demand for someone else to provide that gratification of the "I want" of entertainment.
There is likely an overlap of the same kinds of people who appear to be bored without having any specific thing to do and those people who when tasked with a thing to do, shirk at the sudden responsibility. The child who objects to having to do sums at school, the apprentice who would rather not change that gas fitting, and the person in the office now tasked with doing that grunt work, would all rather be doing something else "yummy" and not the "not yummy" thing in front of them.
I should at this point make the distinction between boredom and ennui, as well as boredom and that quiet stillness which happens in a place when people can transcend the here and how and float off into the liminal kosmos of daydreaming. I have heard this space called "the Nothing Box"; which comes about with the suggestion that men in particular with think about something in discrete boxes, open that box and think about nothing else. "The Nothing Box" is a box which actually contains nothing in particular and when visited, is different to a place of boredom in that opening the nothing box is actually a place of rest, recovery, and a place which one is free to roam around inside of.
What is actually inside the nothing box? There is space; vast amounts of space. If you leave that child without having any specific thing to do, and allow them to be bored without giving them that gratification of the "I want" of entertainment, then they are forced to invent their own. A mind that has been left with space and time to do nothing other than invent its own silent and invisible space in the kosmos, will eventually be forced to pull the nothing box off of the shelf and start to pull things out of it. I have heard it said that of a cigar box guitar, which is a guitar built of the lowest quality of technology and usually very badly made, that the box actually contains many many songs and that the player just has to pull them out. If you leave a mind without having any specific thing to do in the world, then it will be forced to eventually imagine and create a world for itself.
I can not speak for anyone else but I possess a mind which just constantly wants to play with everything. I can not speak for anyone else but I find the idea of meditation intellectually interesting but actually pointless in action for me. If you leave me by myself with nothing but blank cloth to work with, then I will be goofing off in a world of my own invention. I think that I would be one of the few people mentioned in nineteenth and twentieth century texts, who were placed into solitary confinement as a punishment, who come out the other side having suffered almost nothing as a result. I think of the story of the lady who went into an underground cave with no contact with the outside world save for a text terminal upon which she could let some scientists know that she was okay; and what happened for her while she had no outside stimuli, was a kind of slowing down of time and weirdly a negation of boredom as she invented a cast of characters.
Likewise, when I get to the railway station in the mornings, I typically have about seven minutes before the train arrives. At my end of the train station platform, I see the same cast of characters every day. Bruce is the mechanic who works at Mazda in Parramatta, who has a wife and two kids and cars that are laid up in his backyard; which he will get around to 'eventually'. Beatrice is the short lady with the Saturn Hat who has three cats and who produces prize-winning tulips. Xi is the student who is studying to become a doctor; not because he wants to but because he is trying to make his parents happy. Julia works in an office which she hates and is counting down the days when she can triumphantly quit and walk out which will embarass her boss. I have no idea what the actual names of these people are, apart from the mechanic who works at a Mazda dealership, I have no idea what they actually do. However within those seven minutes I have been left to run around inside of, I have created a world. Indeed the answer to that classic question posed to prose writers, song writers, comedy writers et cetera, of where they get their ideas from, actually has a simple answer. Ideas come from inside the nothing box.
For many people, the act of meditation is quite rewarding. I have heard of many stories where through the art of meditation, people achieve states of heightened peace and comfort. Perhaps this is just a lack of understanding on my part and maybe it does take deliberate action on the part of people to find their own Nothing Box, to find that place of rest and recovery. However all of this looks like semantics of sorts. Meditation involves a deliberate removal of stimuli in order to achieve a desired state. The person involved in the process of meditation is still actively engaged in something. Boredom is not a state which people necessarily try to cultivate.
With nothing but the passage of time to play with, and with the constraints of no material to work with, Boredom is the vast infinite canvas upon which a mind without having any specific thing to do, will eventually paint upon. It is interesting that in the twenty-first century, when people can scrape away Boredom at an instant, that people will readily choose to do so. The desire to fill up available space with the "yummy, yummy, yummy" sweetie of Distraction is likely so attractive for people because when people are left to themselves, they have no material to work with, and that prospect might very well be terrifying.
Left with nothing else, the only person inside my internal monologue, left inside the life of my interior, is me; and I can't get myself to go away. I can understand that that could very well be terrifying for someone who left in that situation, turns their own metaphorical knives inwards. With no outside targets, a mind with no material to work with and which is bent on hurting itself, can be both a prison and an torture device. There is a very good reason why prisons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used solitary confinement as a punishment. That is effectively a metaphorical extra gaol, within extra gaol, within a gaol.
I think that this is what people find to utterly terrifying. Boredom is essentially a call of the void, with the infinite horror of a space in time which unless filled with internal play, meditation, an appreciation for the kosmos, religion, or distraction, is an inescapable solitary confinement inside one's self. At some point, people have to come face to face with themselves. Perhaps the most stark reason why people do not like being vulnerable in front of other people is that you might not like me, and this is all I have; however when that is turned inwards, what then? If boredom as a thing is "not yummy", has a purpose, then it seems to me that it is a space for the self to decide if it likes itself, to play games with itself, to open the nothing box, to find that place of rest and comfort, to find one's place in the kosmos, and to stare full face into infinite horror of the void.
If being bored means wanting to be engaged when you can’t, which is an uncomfortable feeling, then what do we do about it? This is what I can not answer for you. The problem with boredom is that while it tells us something is wrong, it does not tell us what to do about it. Ultimately the bad thing about boredom, as with everything else in this short series is that nobody can help us to navigate through it and finding useful, productive, healthy, sensible ways through boredom is still up to us.
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