Boredom

There are many reasons why people steal. Economic need is an obvious one; victim of fate’s cruel hand casting one a bitter lot of suffering and abject poverty. There’s only so much tinned tuna, one can stomach. There may also be some drug addiction to support, or peer pressure, or the novelty of doing something naughty. Go a step further and some men, or women, or indeed children try to rationalise the pinching of a pack of gummy bears, lipstick, or £2.5m in used £1 and £5 notes as not actually stealing.

This view actually has some intellectual heft behind it, as Socrates, the Will.I.am of ancient Greek philosophy and great architect of Western ethical thought, once suggested, as he idly folded out a crease of his crisp white robe, that no none knowingly commits an evil action, as evil can get sugar-coated in the mind and turned into a ‘good’. The thief, in short, is convinced that he has a right to the £2.5m. He needs it more than others. Bruce Reynolds, had clearly not read much Socrates, as he claimed that he did it because he wanted ‘excitement’. Ten-pin bowling and a two-for-one meal deal, seemingly, didn’t push his buttons. Other reasons to pinch the neighbour’s milk include anger, grief, depression, anxiety, power, low self-esteem, a sense of entitlement, greed, rebellion and boredom.

Now boredom is an interesting one; described as an empty emotional state, when an individual is left rudderless, disengaged, lazily munching on an oversized bag of Doritos as they channel surf the Sky box. Many scholars believe boredom to be a modern phenomenon, but then cavemen didn’t have much of an opportunity given the pressing need for supper and fire. Either way, it’s generally agreed to be an unpleasant stew to be in, whatever the reason, for when gripped in a fug of boredom, nothing is of any interest, nothing at all. Some people, those who get up early and pack in a 3-mile run before a bowl of bran flakes, push a line that boredom is a response found in those who have too much skill. Whatever the task, it’s too easy. The question to them, then, is: ‘are you really that positive or are your eyes just shiny from popping ibuprofen as a coping mechanism to life’s bitter struggle? Either way, boredom seems to boil down to problems of engagement.

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish thinker who thought a bit about boredom. He was also a poet, social critic and widely considered to be the first ‘existential philosopher’. He wrote essays, critical texts and filled notebooks full of his thoughts on morality, psychology, religion, metaphor and irony. He spent many hours in his study, mauling in his mind the challenge of living life as a single individual. Kierkegaard was not one to see a wet afternoon as a vast chasm of non-being. Either/or, his first published piece of work, wrestles with the age old question of ‘How should we live? He goes on to sketch out a theory of existence, framed by two life views. One, a loose hedonistic existence rich in art, seduction, live jazz and lazy afternoons on the pink gin reading out loud favourite passages from Jilly Cooper; the other a more sober, ethical life predicated on commitment, moral order and paying the gas man on time. In the book Kierkegaard suggests the way to avoid slumping into a state of forlorn ennui, is to constantly change what one is doing. Mix it up. Charades, followed by sardines, then sleeping lions. And lots, and lots of pink gin. Once imagines Kierkegaard would have been gold dust on a wet, August bank holiday weekend.

The man who really went to town on boredom, though, was the prolific German thinker, Martin Heidegger, who dedicated over a hundred pages to the subject in his meaty lecture series The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics; a course that comes across as liable to alienate all but the very earnest. Anyway to save you wading through the whole course, it seems Heidegger focused on the specific boredom associated with waiting at train stations. Without any stimulus, without a Greggs or Wetherspoons or book exchange heaving with Ken Follet, the individual is confronted with nothingness; an abyss, a dark hole into which they risk falling, unable to find any sort of meaning for their own existence. All dangerous stuff when the fast train to Portsmouth is due. Boredom is, suggested Heidegger, like a ‘muffling fog’ that leaves us all in a state of abject indifference. Blaise Pascal, the French physicist and mathematician, went a step further and suggested that ‘only an infinite and immutable object – that is, God himself – can fill this abyss’. Sober stuff.

Now it’s all very well to lean into some cold fizz and then run naked through the village to stave off boredom at home, but come Monday and the suffocating surrounds of the office close in around you, there lies a very different problem; a problem that is stickier than a sticky bun. Erich Fromm had a view. Fromm, who had fled the Nazi regime to settle in the US and carve out a distinguished career in social psychology, narrowed his eyes and called out industrial society as being the real crux of boredom. Basically problems begin to brew when people are shoved into doing jobs that are routine, repetitive; jobs that lack any sort of stimulation or satisfaction. Such jobs are best explained by a theory from our bearded friend, and Highgate resident, Karl Marx. A theory of alienation.

Marx had it in for capitalism, as we know, and sitting all hang dog in a stuffy office cubicle reading passive aggressive emails from co-workers – co-workers sitting so close as to be able to sniff the sharp bouquet of whatever shiny celebrity eau is used to mask the pervasive pong of professional desperation – sitting all day like that, is no good. No good at all. The alienation of the self will very shortly follow. Living will no longer mean anything. The worker will quickly start to come apart at the seams when deprived of the right to see themselves as an individual, and not some expendable, plastic lackey, kow-towing to the whims of the rosy-cheeked bourgeoisie. Fromm even suggested that clock-watching boredom is ‘perhaps the most important source of aggression and destructiveness today’. And he has a point. See any developing country which has high unemployment in young males, for details. Social stability is at stake. More so if there are not enough young females to pair up and go dancing with. Then it’s a proper powder keg.

Sadly if you are cut from the white linen of the bourgeoisie, and are reading all this with a sweaty back, it is not so straightforward as to book the staff an afternoon out paint balling, as any sort or thrill, or novelty, or corporate freebie – according to Fromm – offers nothing more than a distraction. The boredom continues unconsciously. With mutterings in the parlour, and the silver discolouring, what you might want to do is turn something like the games room into a banishment room into which you can put any pallid member of staff. The banishment room, or chasing out room, is a vice of those who voice the grubbier theories of employee management. The thinking being, the worker will become so bored they will resign, and therefore make it all a lot cheaper to prune the payroll. Some courts deem such behaviour illegal, and a means of constructive dismissal. Anyway, something to watch out for when the boss suggests you transfer to audit. Cling-film wrapped ham rolls, all round. The answer is, always, a flat: ‘no’.

So then, next time your find yourself at the roulette table, 2am, whisky sour in each hand as two lovelies in tight spandex play with your dice, check yourself: it might just be a case of existential boredom. Put your name down for an allotment and grow some veg.

Pure satisfaction on a plate.