When the thought of “boredom” comes to mind, the immediate question is, “how to get rid of it?” It is encoded in our minds as a situation that needs to be avoided. Why do we avoid it? However, the trivial actions taken to escape boredom usually do nothing more than postpone it. In the end, you are left alone with your boredom again. Nietzsche says that even God succumbed to boredom. To overcome his own boredom, he had to create the toy called man; otherwise, how could he tolerate his own existence, power, and omnipotence? Even one of the first existentialist philosophers, Kierkegaard, notes that boredom caused Adam and Eve to commit their first sin.
However, the real issue is how we use boredom. For Aristotle, “leisure” is the boredom of the ignorant. Ordinary people only think about passing the time; anyone with any talent thinks about making use of it.
In this sense, we can liken boredom to the throes of a quest. To sustain this quest, one must endure its pain and host it within until the right time. Only in this way can boredom trigger the production process of the mind. Birth always comes with pain. Just like a pregnant woman who is about to give life to her child or the expansion of the soil that will sprout.
Let’s think about Newton. If Newton had been a busy person while sitting under the tree, he probably would have cursed and kicked the apple when it fell on his head. But we are lucky that Newton didn’t do that at that moment and thought about the apple that fell on his head. The result: the discovery of the universal law of gravitation, which changed the history of science.
The issue is not working or being active, but producing. Capitalism does not want the individual to produce because it has already been produced for them, and it is left to the individual to consume what has been produced. Capitalism has a lot of ideas and tools to alleviate boredom. It has thrown distractions at the person who does not know what to do with their boredom. However, these remedies for overcoming boredom only serve to maintain the status quo.
Today, technology is the most attractive tool to eliminate boredom and pass the time. But it does nothing more than postpone boredom. People are merely distracted by five or ten-second videos they swipe through on social media. As long as they do not realize their boredom and start asking questions. Capitalism never wants this because questioning is the precursor to production.
At its core, a person cannot find peace or happiness from external sources to alleviate boredom. A peaceful person is self-sufficient. Schopenhauer approaches this topic as follows: “A person endowed with mental powers, rich, lively, and important in the world of thought: to the extent that he can give himself to them, he is interested in valuable and interesting objects and within himself harbors the source of the noblest pleasures.”
A person is a lone warrior against boredom. This struggle is inherently destructive because you start asking questions. These questions lead a person to destroy certain things within themselves or their surroundings. There is a dialectic here. That destruction brings along a new construction. It is already not desired that we realize our boredom so that we do not destroy the system we are bored of and replace it with a new one. Hakan Günday explains this situation as follows: “Whoever covers up their boredom becomes a slave to it. A slave does not get bored because they do not even think their time belongs to them. If you are never bored, know that you have a master.” For this reason, there is a magnificent distraction industry that constantly encourages consumption. In this market, not being distracted by plastic topics and turning boredom into productivity is resistance.
So, the question here is: Which side will you be on, the producer or the consumer?
Schopenhauer says that in the solitude everyone returns to, what one has within themselves comes to light. A person who does not want to face themselves escapes from themselves by distracting themselves with others. Instead of thinking about how to make use of time, they worry about how to pass it. However, being able to be alone with oneself is the most valuable asset a person has. Let our boredom be, let us look at walls blankly instead of distracting ourselves with plastic topics. Let us realize our own will. Only then can we change or make changes.
Sources
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Yaşam Bilgeliği Üzerine Aforizmalar, Alfa Yayınları, 2020
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Böyle Buyurdu Zerdüşt, Say Yayınları, 2021
- Hakan Günday, Tuhaf Dergi, 2019
- Derviş Aydın Akkoç, Can Sıkıntısı, Birikim Yayınları, 2015