“For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do
not want to do--this I keep on doing.” – Romans 7:19, NIV
My definition of boredom is twofold, binary sides of the
same coin: to not be interested in doing what we ought to do, and interested in
doing something other than what we ought to do.
You could well argue the latter is the necessary continuation of the
former, but I split the two because they both warrant separate examples.
You have a paper
due tomorrow morning. You don’t want to
do it. So you don’t. But you can’t think of anything else to do,
so you sit and stew for hours, scrounging your room, your phone, your Internet
for something to do instead. You still
fail, giving up and pouting lackadaisically like Shinji unwilling to pilot his
EVA unit. Let’s call this “escaping.”
You need to eat lunch before you can begin afternoon
work. Instead of finishing your meal
quickly, you plod along, watching another YouTube video, checking your e-mail
for the twentieth time, finding excuses to replace your more urgent
objective. You’ll get to it, just not
right now. Let’s call this “stalling.”
30-some entries into this accountability project, I’ve
done nothing but word my way out of doing work.
Because I’m bored. I’m not
passionate about anything anymore. I
immediately grow cynical when I’m the slightest bit excited about new projects
and prospects. I don’t see light at the
end of the tunnel; I begin in the light and see only a dark, endless tunnel
ahead, funneling my path into a restrictive, door-closing, narrow, specialized
route.
The lost opportunities, even when sacrificed for a nobler
goal, haunt me. The unrealized unnerves
me, stalls my action until I find a suitable escape. I want it all, but I’ll never get it.
I am wasting my time.
I am in the prime of my youth and I am squandering it on worry, needless
concern, and trivia. I’m doing exactly
what I planned to elude.
We’re all bored. We all
fall prey to it. It takes leadership from people who do not succumb to
boredom to inspire us to do what we ought to do. Then we have hope.
With hope, there’s a brighter light at the end of that long, narrow tunnel.
This response is incorporating the ideas of 'Tradition' as well.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's almost painfully cliche at this point (the following may explain why), the idea of technology's effect on society is a huge part of this in my mind. Nearly everyone's aware of it, but I think few people regularly stop and go "ooohhh sh*t, this is massive." Maybe I'm being melodramatic; in all likelihood the percentage of the population that is truly "productive" in the way that we are floundering around attempting to be is about the same as it's always been. However, it feels like right now we're SO disconnected, we have so many dumb, useless escapes at our fingertips. Are these a natural societal evolution made to sate a behavioral pattern that has always existed? Again, likely. I should look into cyberpunk a bit more, because I really want to see some takes on these questions that I'm hitting a kind of dead end with.
P.S. If you haven't watched it yet, Serial Experiments Lain explores this topic of social isolation due to technology brilliantly, and it did it in '97. Truly prophetic conceptualization of internet culture. It's up on Youtube (subbed) courtesy of Funimation, and only 13 episodes.
Will watch it, thanks.
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