I would like to get some thoughts and opinions on the significance of the state of boredom in our all too human lives. It is hard for me to clearly identify these somewhat vauge thoughts I am trying to convey right now, so I will try to get to the meat of it and I hope some of you can follow the line of reasoning I am getting at without being too confused as to my thesis.
Thesis: My basic thesis (which of course can easily be debated but should still be considered) is that boredom plays a central role in the human psyche. No other cognitive state is more powerful in terms of revealing certain ineffable truths than that of boredom. The ineffable truth is just that, ineffable, so cannot easily be summed up, but immediately words such as "dread", "angst", and "existential void" come to mind. The feeling of everything being envoloped in the existential void, I will use the much used word "nihilism".
(Sidenote: Certainly, I am not the only person to come up with this revelation, nor shall I be the last. I am aware of Heidegger's very thorough analysis of the significance of boredom as well, and rather than drawing inspiration from him, my line of thought can be considered paralleled with some of his and of course with much less analysis than this giant in the philosophy world. Though I may be way off target in my analysis, I will try to incorporate the parallel realizations of Heiddeger into my own independent explanations).
Support and elaboration:
Boredom is the most powerful way to get to the heart of the matter of existence (that is to say being enveloped in existential dread). However, there is a less effective route to this understanding by contemplating or concentrating on a very narrow line of thought. I will explain that below, which I will call the "weak path". Then, I will explain the "stronger route" to existential dread, which is that of boredom.
Weak path to existential dread (looking at ourselves as if we were merely apes or dustmites rather): Looking at the world from a scientific standpoint, that is to say, pretending we can downplay the subjective (inner life) of our existence and just look at the world as if it can be seen from an objective vantage point, humans are certainly specs of nothing compared to the universe itself. To be even more nihilistic, and some may say more cynical, we can consider ourselves merely "apes-with-conceptual-cognition" that go about our day to day lives in our species' niche of living. If one contemplates long enough on this idea that humans are merely apes, a certain "objectification" of what it means to be human may occur and we may see ourselves for what we truly are. No longer does the significance of our thoughts and actions seem to have any consequence, as it is merely man-ape being himself, a highly sociable ape that uses conceptual thoughts and language to survive and thrive, nothing more. H.P. Lovecraft, the horror writer tries to convey this path to dread to his readers in his stories. His overall theme is called "cosmicism" where humans are insignificant beings.. we may as well be dust mites that if obliterated, would not matter of any consequence to the universe in general.
The argument above is a weaker path to dread. The reason for this is because, though one may come to feelings of dread from this line of thought, it is very narrow as one must specifically must "think" ourselves into existential despair by "contemplating" these nihilistic ideas of our insignificance.
Strong path to existential dread (boredom, the final frontier):
Whereas the weak argument is a very conceptually driven way to get to feelings of dread and despair, and is also predicated on being in a scientific, western culture, the emotional state of deep ennui and boredom, is available to any human in any culture. The weaker argument assumes we can look at ourselves objectively, and see ourselves from the outside, as if there were no subjective "inner life". Heiddegger may have had an analogous term for this which was that of being "Present-at-hand". Of course, this is not the case that we can see ourselves objectively. We are always viewing things from our subjective "I" self. Our stream of conscious inner world. Heidegger might have referred to this as "Ready-at-hand". This subjective world is the world of daily life that we all live in. Referring back to Heidegger, it seems our inner world can be seen as what we focus our attention on. In our day to day lives, we focus our attention on certain things to get things "done" or to entertain ourselves. The hunger-gatherer may focus on hunting the buffalo, or learning a tribal dance, the Westerner may focus on playing poker, or reading the newspaper. When our attention goes smoothly, we are very much "of the appearance of things" that everything is "all right" in our world. However, when our attention is not focused on a specific task, or is not consumed with something to take its mind off existence itself, boredom comes seeping in. The feeling of boredom may be analogous to Heiddger's idea of "broken tool". No longer does the world seem to run smoothly as it did in when our minds were focused or attentive to some task. Now the world itself seems to lack significance. The void of nothingness stares in our face and forces us to flee. The feeling of existential dread is that all consuming feeling that at the heart of the world there is nothingness, at the end of the day there is blankness. When we are focusing our attention we stay at the surface of things. Life makes sense.. things seem logical. Boredom breaks this barrier and shows it for what it is really. We cannot describe what the world is because there are no words. As stated before, it is ineffable. We can only describe the feeling, and that is one of existential dread.
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