Thursday, July 22, 2010

Our dread of idleness

Their (slightly edited) speculations are interesting to read:






  1. In A Philosophy of Boredom, Lars Svendsen argues on historical evidence that boredom is a part of modernism; it has only around for a few hundred years. The word didn't exist on old languages, for example, it isn't in ancient Greek literature.

    Boredom as a side effect of the modernist project of self-improvement raises an interesting question: What happened before? Admittedly, before the industrial revolution most people lived in conditions near malnourishment, so there was always the task of securing food supply, but even so, it seems likely that there was a lot of sitting around going on.

    This view roughly concurs with the biological maxim of not wasting energy. More correctly, the biological maxim is to not use energy without gain, so the apparently profligate energy expenditure of the stotting gazelle, or of humans engaging in dance or sport actually function as fitness indicators providing biologically important signals to predators and potential mates, respectively.

    What then is the modernism, biologically speaking? Perhaps, by some modernist trickery, all our activity has become sexual display to an internalised potential mate, so that we constantly interpret our activity through the eyes of that fictional other, seeking status in that imagined person's mind. And so, we cannot be still and happy.

  2. You offer some fascinating ideas!