Boredom

I learned today that the concept of boredom was first introduced by the Germans. I wonder if it was by someone who was reading Goethe. I get bored just thinking about him.

In defense of boredom, I have to say I am grateful for boredom for if not for boredom where would we be? Just think of all the great entertainment we’d be missing.. We’d be really bored.

Entertainment is the biggest industry in the world ... bigger than the defense or medical industries. So our need to be entertained far outweighs our paranoia of death. So when we are not defending against death and working out, we are looking for distractions to stop us from thinking about it. The more terrifying the world gets, the more we need to escape.

The word first appears in English literature in Dicken’s Bleak House. He refers to it a monster, "The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon Boredom..." So it is something that we battle with. He also refers to it as something we envy when others don’t have it, "...in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits." No wonder the house is so bleak! It is full of dragons and spirited maids.

No doubt ... I am quite bored at the moment. If not for MySpace, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia and the like, I know not what I’d do. I am grateful that people were bored enough to create them.