The word boring in the English language means one of two things:
1. Someone who bores other people
2. Someone who bores themselves
A person who bores other people is considered a normal person and will always blend into the crowd, and in turn, a person who bores themselves will be idolised by the general masses, a celebrity of sorts. So, what I propose is that people aren’t inherently good or evil, or that it’s their upbringing, but rather, it is our own boredom and the way that we and others perceive it, kill it or nurture it, that drives others — and ourselves — to dark or uplifting actions.
19th Century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was amidst this discussion, after the many technological impacts the industrial revolution had on modern Europe and other continents. He described boredom as an utter evil. He called this “Demonic Boredom”. He described it as rather than a lack of diversion, an emptiness of meaning. He says: “ the only thing I live on is emptiness, the only thing I move in is emptiness. I do not even suffer pain… Pain itself has lost its refreshment for me.” He calls this sort of boredom demonic, because of the havoc it wreaks on the human psyche. He says that all our meaning in life is wasted away when boredom comes into the picture. However, we can procrastinate from this hell of a mindset, through a quite simple realisation. A realisation of our own freedoms as humans. In this bored and meaningless mindset, we feel trapped in a free world. In a self-enclosed world, with a sense of spiritual isolation from the rest of the world. Yet when we break free of this mindset, we pull ourselves to our distractions. Such as work, school, or other distractions.
What if we stripped away these distractions? What would change in this person’s mindset? They find themselves stuck in a state of limbo, where on one side, lies their goodness, and their urge to conform to their good moral compass, reinstating their boredom, on the other, lies their freedom needed to quench their boredom, however impeding their moral compass. This is where evil stems from. It’s not necessarily from the action of being bored — no — it’s from our reaction our own boredom. However, we cannot cease to care about what our boredom, otherwise we’ll lose what fragile psyche we have. We should really find a medium where we seek to find a diversion, only when the boredom paralyses us emotionally.
Kierkegaard discussed a demonic aesthete in a more abstract fashion, William Golding — and Peter Brook in his film adaption — spoke of a more concrete spiritual isolation through the main characters of his story: Lord of the Flies. They put civilised English school boys on a deserted island and leave them to their own devices. The boys eventually turn to savagery over humility. Most discussions of the story often lead down the line of their evil within them all along, while I would like to take a step back from that and ask: Where does that evil even come from in the first place?
Ralph, who has taken a commanding role as chief of the school boys’ tribe, is a quite civilised, yet controlling leader. Many of the boys become bored of his “stupid” rules. During the movie they try to ignore it, finding other ways to amuse themselves. But when Ralph imposes his rules further, the boys turn to another boy — Jack — knowing full well that Ralph has all intentions to keep them alive and well for rescuers to come. The reason they find Jack’s new arising tribe so appealing, is its difference from the norm. Something new, something wicked.
They are turned off by Ralph’s rules through the boys’ boredom of them. Jack is more savage, promising food from his “hunter tribe”, however the boys soon realise that Jack and his tribemates are not just more savage to the animals on the island, but to the boys as well. Jack also de-humanises the boys shown in seemingly throwaway lines such as “My hunters”. Linking back to Kierkegaard’s points, the pain of losing someone in the story is trumped by the un-imaginable boredom the boys are feeling. Such as when Piggy is accidentally killed by a falling boulder, the few remaining boys in Ralphs tribe all mourn for quite a long time. However, this is contrasted by Jack’s tribe, returning to their hunt.
‘Pain itself has lost its refreshment’.
Another more concrete example of demonic boredom, is Stephen King’s novel: Misery. In the text, an author — Paul Sheldon — is almost fatally injured, but nursed back to health by a crazed fan by the name of Annie Wilkes. There are immediately dark overtones, with hints to her past life as a psycho nurse. She tortures the author — who has killed off her favourite character in the last book in his series — by making him burn his only copy of his new work: Fast Cars. (You can read a summary of the plot here.
It is hinted throughout the story about Paul’s endeavour to escape without killing Annie, but he eventually realises that he must otherwise he will be killed first. Many have analysed this story as a self-preservation story, but while that may be the case, there are tones of his boredom littered throughout the text. Over the course of the book, Paul becomes lost in his thoughts, and eventually through his severe boredom, his thoughts turn to violence. He loses his sense of moral compass and lashes out on Wilkes, given the horrible pain she put Paul through.
An article I read recently by Terry Eagleton, paints evil in stories — and its appeal — as a boredom of good. He explains Aristotle’s belief of good, not merely the opposite of evil, but as a fulfillment of your humanity. I explained before that evil is a loss of it. Many years ago, it was stories of goodness that trumped those of evil, such as in fables. However these stories slowly became boring to an originally thrilled audience, as stories of evil came into the mainstream.
When boredom kicks into sixth gear, our sense of humanity goes out the window. We slowly lose sight of all our ideals, virtues turn slowly into vices, as we see our effort to suppress this boredom affect nothing. So, as I alluded to before, it’s not a question of whether we are good or evil, it’s actually our boredom that sends us into a frenzy of trial and error to suppress it. Many of our ideas of evil can be linked back to this fact: Substance abuse usually leads into worse and worse drugs over time. Our therapeutic measures that we use to “cure” substance addiction, is usually made by replacement. One example of this is smoking, where when a person quits, they often replace it with less harmful substances before they go cold turkey. As a human species, we crave the anti-boredom as smokers crave nicotine.
