Boredom

In the many essays of Michel de Montaigne and Sir Francis Bacon and there is not one on boredom. As the online encyclopedia helpfully points out, this is because the word to describe this affective state had not been coined yet - it was Charles Dickens who like William Shakespeare who first used the word in his novel Bleak House (1853). That is not to say boredom did not exist before then! Of course people have been in that state for eons. But what exactly is it? Is it when we feel listless, tired and succumb to a feeling of redundancy? Perhaps then doing repetititive work like stamping invoices for seven hours a day might bring about that state? What then? A seventeen year old in an office with trays and trays of papers coming in from the offices below. The job is routine and boring. Then one enters that kingdom or domain of boredom. One can see that it is a close cousin to apathy. The loss of feeling and interest due to routine work. Could Dante have worked it into his La Divina Commedia? Where might it fit? Of course not in the Inferno - there it is too exciting. But probabably in the Purgatorio. There would be terrace called taedium. Who would populate this terrace. Well I suppose it would have to be all those higher civil servants and anyone who drafted senseless regulations which bring about boredom in the work place. They would be forced to forever go in circles without an end in sight, until they are allowed to go to the Inferno. While we recognise in ourselves the state of boredom in those all too common signs of yawning and fidgeting. What of animals? Do ants get bored? Probably not since they do not possess emotions. Many zoo animals do have emotions. You can see them moving aimlessly in motor activity we identity as belonging to caged animal syndrome - not too different from the human animal sat in front of a computer. All those behaviours of pacing up and down, self mutilation, aggression and so on, are the result of boredom (caged animal syndrome). Here it is the lack of capacity to be themselves. An animal that is genetically programmed to migrate thousands of miles, or to mate, when unable to do so, will be frustrated. Frustration turns into aggression, then after awhile the aggression settles into a state of repetition. This is not unlike the job of the office clerk. They start with the promise of a career. They can become a manager and own a luxury house. That is the promise. The realisation is years of the same, day in and day out. Of course this affective state can be tested by developmental changes. The mid-life crisis can have some quite bizarre consequences. The comic novel A History of Mr. Polly (1910) by H.G. Wells encapsulates the dire results. Those liberties taken by the dreamy Mr. Polly are not available to the lion that paces up and down in its cage. He has to spend his entire life in a very tiny compass though lions like many animals in the savannah range a considerable distance in search of food. They like their human equivalents should be given diversions other than training to present themselves to the zoo visitors. To pretend that they are wild is a cruel joke. All zoo animals should be given the opportunity to exercise, interact and mate. Boredom in humans is a state which will pass in most - in the zoo animal it is a liestyle.