A philosophy of boredom

There are two kinds of boredom, writes Lars Svendsen in A Philosphy of Boredom.  There is the kind of boredom you feel when sitting through a presentation at work which goes on for ever, without pause and without direction.  But there is also the more fundamental boredom which comes from the fact that few of us know how to live meaningful lives.  This is an existential boredom, unique to modern society.

We are all terrified of being bored.  Running away from boredom, we are always on the look-out for new thrills.  We invent extreme sports and extreme perversions, we do drugs and exotic religions; we think nothing of killing, in computer games or in real life.  If nothing else, we watch a lot of TV and have extra-marital affairs.  But before we know it we are bored again.  The next dose of the drug must be stronger and the kick it gives us must be harder.  Thus the restlessness of modern society; its transgressions; its cult of the new; its obsession with fashion; its superficiality and attention deficit disorder.

Orientalism fits here too.  The Oriental was another straw the Europeans grasped at.  The exotic was going to save us from ourselves, from rationality and ennui.