Atheistic Pessimism

To the MAX.
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

Every moment of our life belongs to the present only for a moment; then it belongs for ever to the past. Every evening we are poorer by a day. We would perhaps grow frantic at the sight of this ebbing away of our short span of time were we not secretly conscious in the profoundest depths of our being that we share in the inexhaustible well of eternity, out of which we can for ever draw new life and renewed time.

You could, to be sure, base on considerations of this kind a theory that the greatest wisdom consists in enjoying the present and making this enjoyment the goal of life, because the present is all that is real and everything else merely imaginary.But you could just as well call this mode of life the greatest folly: for that which in a moment ceases to exist, which vanishes as completely as a dream, cannot be worth any serious effort.

...

That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. For if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, then would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfill and satisfy us. As things are, we take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something - in which case distance and difficulties make our goal look as if it would satisfy us (an illusion which fades when we reach it)- or when engaged ill purely intellectual activity, in which case we are really stepping out of life so as to regard it from outside, like spectators at a play. Even sensual pleasure itself consists in a continual striving and ceases as soon as its goal is reached. Whenever we are not involved in one or other of these things but directed back to existence itself we are overtaken by its worthlessness anti vanity and this is the sensation called boredom.

...

That the most perfect manifestation of the will to live represented by the human organism, with its incomparably ingenious and complicated machinery, must crumble to dust and its whole essence and all its striving be palpably given over at last to annihilation - this is nature's unambiguous declaration that all the striving of this will is essentially vain. If it were something possessing value in itself, something which ought unconditionally to exist, it would not have non-being as its goal.

Full text

Standstill

Hm, that was a pretty bad last post. That feeling is a prison. I've reached the point in my life where I really need some hobbies. I've realized that so many of my old interests involved other people in a group setting. Now that I have no automatic group, and B loves doing solitary activities, I desperately need to find a way to entertain myself. As a kid, I was a jack of all trades. If something looked interesting, I'd do some research, pay the money and pick it up. Applied mostly to instruments: piano, viola, guitar, bass, drums, mandolin, djembe. Most things didn't stick, but my appetite was voracious. Then sometime later after college I screeched to a complete halt. It was due to the frustration from not being really good at anything after all those years, and also a heed to the call to de-clutter. Clutter is bad stuff, that's what all the self-help blogs say. But I've gone way beyond, where I hesitate to buy non-food items because I've come to see things as bad. And I shoot down budding desires to try anything new, because I'll probably just grow tired of it later. That balance is a mystery to me. Having varied interests may just be something I have to accept about myself.

Bored 2 Death

This is exactly how I feel much of the time. And I don't know what to do about it. It's hard to do anything. But I don't have BPD. I can't ever decide what to do because everything seems like a waste of time, but then not doing anything is truly a waste of time. Which is what ends up happening. It's not that things aren't interesting, but they're ultimately not worth it. Existential boredom is the term coined in The Philosophy of Boredom. I even have to force myself to learn how to enjoy food again.

There's a new show in HBO called "Bored to Death" but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have much to do with the subject of boredom.

Work Today

Excerpt from Identity by Milan Kundera

I'd say that the quantity of boredom, if boredom is measurable, is much greater today than it was. Because the old occupations, at least most of them, were unthinkable without a passionate involvement: the peasants in love with their land; my grandfather, the magician of beautiful tables; shoemakers who knew every villager's feet by heart; the woodsmen; the gardeners; probably even the soldiers killed with passion back then. The meaning of life wasn't an issue; it was there with them, quite naturally, in their workshops, in their fields. Each occupation had created its own mentality, its own way of being. A doctor would think different from a peasant, a soldier would behave in a different way from a teacher. Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy towards our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

More Boredom Quotes

For musings.

Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering -- a hell of boredom.

VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables

Life is never boring but some people choose to be bored. The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way. Boredom is a choice; something you visit upon yourself, and it is another of those self-defeating items that you can eliminate from your life.

WAYNE W. DYER, Your Erroneous Zones

I am convinced that boredom is one of the greatest tortures. If I were to imagine Hell, it would be the place where you were continually bored.

ERICH FROMM, The Dogma of Christ

Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.

WALKER PERCY, Lost in the Cosmos

Boredom: 1 of the 2 curses of life

The Arts Pastor recently posted:

The playwright Samuel Beckett says we have only two options in this world: suffering or boredom. We get to choose which. As he puts it:

"The pendulum oscillates between these two terms:
Suffering—that opens a window on the real
and is the main condition of the artistic experience—
and Boredom."

Tortuous Boredom

Why are we still so bored in a culture of rampant consumption? This is what I'm afraid of for my kids, and what I'm struggling so hard against right now. Partly why I can't stand visiting sites like Ffffound or It's Nice That more than every once in a while.
Don't become vapid and useless. Non-stop exposure to entertainment and "things" can turn you into machine that ceases to think or feel.

"The culture industry's primary function becomes one of habituating workers to their fate: to routinely expect boredom and to see the oscillation in and out of states of boredom as the only kind of joy."

Article