Boredom s when
someone perceives one's environment as dull, tedious, and lacking
stimuli. There is an inherent anxiety in boredom; people will
expend considerable effort to prevent or remedy it, yet in many
circumstances it is accepted as an inevitable suffering to be
endured. A common way to escape boredom is through creative
thoughts or daydreaming.
The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House,
by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, although the expression to be
a bore had been used in the sense of "to be tiresome or dull" since
1768.
Time often seems to move more slowly to someone who experiences
boredom; this results from the way in which the human mind measures
the passage of time, combined with the infrequency of events
perceived as notable.
Causes
Boredom can be a symptom of clinical depression; some boredom is a
form of learned helplessness, a phenomenon closely related to
depression. Some philosophies of parenting propose that if children
are raised in an environment devoid of stimuli, and are not allowed
or encouraged to interact with their environment, they will fail to
develop the mental capacities to do so. These children are then
bored even when placed in an environment others would find
stimulating.
Boredom is often associated with adolescence, especially in
suburbs, small towns, and other isolated areas. A typical
teenager's complaint is that there is 'nothing to do'; this
statement can have a number of economic and social causes.
Some people hold the belief that having too much spare time causes
boredom; for example, parents might encourage their children to
fill their time with extracurricular activities or homework. Others
disagree, arguing that few environments are inherently 'boring',
and that boredom reflects a lack of imagination, initiative and
creativity.
Practical effects
Far from being a minor annoyance, boredom can have major negative
impacts on people. Perhaps more importantly, boredom is often a
symptom of deeper problems, such as depression, ineffective
teaching, or ineffective management in a workplace. This can also
be due to the fact that some people just communicate poorly.
Boredom in the workplace does more than just waste time. Studies in
behavioral finance have shown that stock traders can enter into
"overtrading" (buying or selling even without any objective reason
to do so) because they feel bored when they have nothing
"productive" to do. Boredom in the workplace also hurts people's
sense of self-worth, which can cause them to work less effectively
or even to not work at all.
Philosophy
Arthur Schopenhauer used the existence of boredom in an attempt to
prove the vanity of human existence, stating: "For if life, in the
desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in
itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such
thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfill and satisfy
us."
Boredom also plays a role in existentialist thought. Without
stimulus or focus, the individual is confronted with nothingness,
the meaninglessness of existence, and experiences existential
anxiety. Martin Heidegger states this idea nicely: "Profound
boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence
like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along
with it into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being
as a whole."
