We Are Living In A Boring World. And, Thus, Are Bored!

Boredom is a human survival mechanism which saves humans from being exhausted from focusing on too many unnecessary things.

17 min readMar 17, 2024

It’s been quite a while since the first time I realized I would never be able to experience the same excitement I once felt .

Everything suddenly became so boring in an indescribable way. The boredom might sometimes pop up right in the middle of the video game I was playing with my friend, making me just want to just toss the mouse away, and yet not playing games at all also feels boring as hell. High profile movies, million-time-viewed videos on YouTube would also only be able to keep my eyes on the screen for the first couple of minutes, before the ever-so-familiar feeling of boredom would then just barge in and overwhelm me even though the bustling images and sounds are still getting bombarded at you.

I could no longer bring myself to finish up the book I was in the middle of reading, because, in my memory, the developments had turned into a boring mess ever since the last time I decided to give it a permanent rain check and, not without a big sigh, moved on to the something else to do.

After a while, I eventually get fed up with getting bored by pretty much any and everything I do, and I thought it was probably the right time to sit down, give some serious thought, and do some serious research to find out precisely what was that feeling of boredom that had been seeping in and corroding my soul away, why diđ they exist, and why things just kept getting worse.

And I will now put it down, all of my research, in an attempt to revolt against this reign of boredom that I hate so much, in a piece of writing that (hopefully) won’t become completely too insufferably boring somewhere along the way, so that you all could make it to the end of these few thousands of words without getting bored to death at some point.

This article will try to muster out an explanation for the causes of boredom from the viewpoints of psychology and evolution, and will also tell you a truth that not many know, that is the boredom is seemingly something that only came into existence in recent history.

1. We will eventually get bored of anything and everything.

We will eventually get bored of anything and everything, if we live long enough and experience enough, or at least that’s how it goes, theoretically. Our universe has this “a-tiny-teensy-bit” negative tendency, that is, naturally, everything existing in it will eventually lead themselves to destruction. All planets, asteroids, stars, galaxies, nebulae, black holes, … as well as the universe itself, are all expected to develop to their final form someday. And the more popular scenario is that they’ll self-destroy. According to the laws of physics, most specifically entropy, everything in the universe follows an explicit law, and is fully devoted to the process of degradation, decomposition and disorientation.

We are living in that kind of cruel world, and of course are entirely not an exception to the said set-in-stone law. However, the self-destruction process of macroscopic objects is indeed too long in comparison with that of the more microscopic objects (that is us humans). Thus, we spend our life safely in long periods of peace which are contained within what’s probably a blink of an eye for the universe. Just like how the earth was a globe and had a convex surface, but humans were so tiny in comparison that they still ended up perceiving the lands they live in as a vast flat place.

However, the denizen of a system that propels toward self-destruction would of course not be able to escape the powerful influence of it. Therefore, our own minds, one way or another, also have the same tendency. Memories will fade, the habituation toward stimuli would gradually increase and everything will eventually become insipid after all is said and done. Nonetheless, it is exactly this seemingly negative process that provides the necessary incentive for changes in everything. And, in every moment, we are experiencing that process of changing, which is also known as ‘development’, or, as some would call it, “life”.

In our previous article about memory, we were introduced to the currently commonly accepted explanation that forgetting itself is the incentive and basis for memory [1] . In the same fashion, boredom, as my findings suggest, also serve as the incentives for us to continue our search for excitement by accessing or creating something else more entertaining.

First of all, let us take a better look into the concept of “habituation”, a fundamental concept which is completely comprehensible via the following story of the shepherd boy: a joke told for too many times will eventually become unfunny. This is a neurological mechanism that appears in almost any organism ranging from unicellular organisms to humans, and is considered a mechanism that allows us to learn passively without additional efforts [2] .

When we encounter something new, the body will give out stimulation signals and attract us toward them. But, after a while, these stimuli will be seen by our brain as “old” and could no longer generate stimulation. We call this lack of stimulation “habituation”. Good examples would be how we eventually stop feeling irritated around the wrist after a certain time of wearing a wrist watch, how we get fed up with a type of food after having it constantly for a long time, how we familiarize ourselves with the scenery of our newly bought homes after a while of living there, or how we eventually stop noticing the same loud noise after hearing it for two long.

This mechanism consists of 2 parts: the stimulation when encountering new things and the habituation against the old things. Both are actually some very clever designs, which are absolutely crucial for our survival.

First, being attracted to things that stand out from a familiar environment helps us immediately become cautious or attentive toward dangers and/or opportunities. For example, a noise broken out in the utter silence, a trembling bush, or a red apple amidst a lusty canopy… It allows us to spare more attention to things that stand out, leading to increased survivability when facing an enemy or during search for food.

But it is also a heavily calorie consuming process, which takes away what could be spent on other functions of the brain. You will notice that as we are heavily attracted by something, we also share less attention to everything else [3] . Thus, attention once has been switched on must then be switched off, especially toward harmless/inconsequential stimuli.

As a result, noticeable things which are ruled by the brain as harmless will quickly sink into the background, just like how the shepherd boy’s warnings eventually get ignored by the villagers as the wolves never showed up. This is a very clever strategy for survival, because as we stop getting stimulated by older stimuli, we also become more prone to constantly notice new things that come into the scenario. For example, the awe for someone who move to the city for the first time is much necessary, but eventually we have to familiarize ourselves with the hustle and bustle, so that our mind could regain its sensitivity and pay attention toward more important matters hidden within bustling background of the city, instead of constantly remaining in the state of being amazed.

So, it is exactly this clever mechanism that makes us constantly feel bored.

It’s necessary to know that emotions are one of the most important mechanisms in the control of behavior, for example, excitement will encourage us to something, while fear discourage us from doing something else [4] , our “becoming accustomed” and ceasing to notice stimuli were indeed due to the fact that we no longer feel interested in the stimuli. While no longer receiving any further emotional stimulations to those stimuli, we still have to mandatorily spare a certain amount of attention to them, and as a result, we feel bored. This is a natural reaction of our body that forces us to stop current tasks and switch to other tasks that are more “effective”.

A research showed that people have the tendency to let themselves get shocked by electricity just to stop feeling bored when they are locked in a room with nothing to do (except for a push button that caused them to get shocked). At least ⅔ of the male and ¼ of the female participants pushed the button to free themselves from the boredom that they’re suffering [5] . A few theories suggested that we feel bored because our body wants us to “do something” in a boring situation, because that lack of things to do is associated with loneliness (which by itself is a sign of danger), unfavorable environment or the lacking of development.

Imagine a world without boredom, where anything and everything can make anyone and everyone feel excited, that might turn out to be really boring. We will retain our excitement toward the sunshine, the flowers, rains, the moons, the pebbles on the road… so much that we don’t feel any need to create anything to free ourselves from boredom. Even the most commonly founded things can bring you the euphoria similar to that brought by cocaine, and that will quickly wear humans down as they can’t spare enough attention to the search for food.

A group of researchers had actually done some serious study over the above mentioned matter, and had done some experiments to see how the feelings were helpful to humans. The results were rather baffling: the people who get bored easily turned out to be the better creators, and boredom actually had great direct influence on creativity. So the group of researchers designed a string of boring tasks (such as making a phone directory, reading phone numbers aloud) along with one creative task. The more boring the main tasks were, the more creativity the participants exhibited during the optional creative task [6] .

From these results, the researchers concluded that the feeling of boredom was the incentive for us to be more creative and thus created the world as we know it today. In fact, isn’t it almost self-evident that our constant need to find new things stems from our loss of interest toward existing things?

The existentialist philosopher Nietzsche also once said this: Boredom is the motivation for us to reach glory [7] .

However, the impacts of boredom are not always that welcomed. In the context of our modern-day society, boredom might be more of an issue than a saving grace, and a more concerning one at that.

2. Identifying the causes of boredom and how to tackle them.

It turns out that boredom is actually quite a serious issue. Since ancient times our ancestors had it summarized in this proverb (or any other version of it in any other language elsewhere in the world): “the devil finds work for idle hands”. Or, as viewed by the sociologist Erich Fromm and various other thinkers from the Critical theory school of thought, boredom is a common psychological reaction against an industrial society, where people are forced to engage in activities that induce moral corruption. According to Fromm, boredom “was perhaps the pivotal reason for the hostility and vandalistic tendency that existed during this period”. From Fromm’s perspective, the search for thrills and novelty — a common characteristic of consumerism — was not a solution for boredom, but instead a means to distract us from the boredom, while that boredom still continues to exist without us being conscious of it [8] .

Indeed, boredom has shown a strong correlation with alcoholism, substance abuse, reckless driving and gambling… [9] . People seem to not hesitate to do anything that may free them from boredom. Another thing to keep in mind is, boredom is also the entryway for various psychological disorders such as apathy or depression [10] .

I believe 100% of the people who are reading this article probably already have experienced boredom at some point, or maybe even right now (because, god, this article is getting more boring as any second pass). This is quite understandable, as while it is hard to tell if joy comes easily or not, it is certain that there are more than many things that can cause us to feel bored [11] :

- Something too easy, or too difficult: what comes too easily gives no excitement, while what’s too hard cause us unable to feel related and thus unable to find interest.

- Meaningless and repetitive tasks that demand constant attention: standing in a queue, waiting for a flight, serving a prison sentence

- Genetics: Some do seem to have much more of a taste for novelty, entertainment and thrills than others. And thus it’s much easier for them to get bored.

- Short attention span: This might be one of the most common causes of boredom. Sometimes, even when we do understand that movie is amazing, we still get sidetracked and then eventually get bored.

- Lack of engagement: The unawareness of oneself (of one’s desires or expectation) also can generate boredom as no tasks can actually generate fulfillment.

- Lack capacity for self-entertainment: a boring person would also more than often find him/herself bored, because the outside world could never provide enough excitement for someone who always despite him/herself.

- Lack of autonomy: Boredom shares a direct correlation with the feeling of being trapped. As a result, prisoners and adolescents are more likely to get bored, as they are full of ideas and desires, and yet still get confined in a certain controlled boundary.

- Culture: boredom is a luxury only known to modern-day people. And as you are living in this modern-day world, it is inevitable that you will feel bored. And the world goes ‘round by causing and creating value from your boredom.

We are getting fed up with living these days and age. And that’s the most interesting part.

3. Our modern society is promoting the development of boring activity, while also inducing habituation against psychological stimuli.

The world in the past is a great mystery. With no videos, no photos, no documentaries… we can only imagine the world of a few hundred years ago from the records, drawings and other types of cultural relics — the remaining missing parts have to be filled with imagination and the preconceptions that may affect that imagination. While this may sound obvious, I still see many people living in the delusion that they can actually develop an ever-so-precise understanding about the Earth in the past just from watching some science fiction or pseudo-history movies.

The researchers, when turning their attention to the phenomenon of boredom, had look into older documentaries and had some rather shocking realization: “boredom” and other terms of similar meaning only emerged since the XVIII century [12] , coincident with the emergence of the 1st industrial revolution. In addition, the discussions about boredom, if existed, were only greatly limited within the community of existentialists and intellectuals around the late 19th and early 20th century — which was also the dawn of consumerism.

Was it just a coincidence, or was it something else?

In its first days of hitting its popularity in mass culture, the term ‘boredom’ were actually more frequently used among the aristocrats. In Russian, there were actually the term called “superfluous man” (лишний человек), which refers to individuals who were (potentially) highly capable, but were born at the wrong time. These people were often born into affluent, upper-crust families, and were characterized with the traits of: detesting social values, constantly feeling dissatisfied, interested in gambling, alcohol, substances, brawling, hooking up, etc.

Indeed, at the time, the commoners had more to worry about than boredom. Some theories also suggested that the people of the 18th century lived in a rather austere world which was filled with lots of labor-consuming activities that were just ever-so-barely enough to sustain their daily survival, and thus feeling bored was not even an option.

However, after the industrial revolution and the expansion of consumerism, the society started to generate overabundant wealth and create thousands of new occupations — many of which were either meaningless, or overly stressful and detrimental for the workers’ mental health.

In the industrial society, labor began to undergo specialization and got divided into smaller tasks which did not serve any particular purpose and were seemingly hard to justify with any reason why they had to be performed other than “that task pays”. For the readers who are still going to schools, if you think your life is pure misery because you have to take lesson that is impossible to understand and is not in any sense relatable to yourselves, then it might be useful to know that many and many others are also suffering from that same situation day by day, all seem ever so powerless to free themselves.

For example, jobs where people are paid to sit within a tiny square just to process paperwork and documents; or to take phone calls just to listen to complaints or promote some products (telesale); or to drive a car all day; or to stand still all day; or to sit still all day… As if that wasn’t enough, people also invented “the boring rooms”, to where they can exile the individuals who got on the bad side of the company, transferring them to positions with meaningless works so that those people would eventually get fed up and quit [13] .

Another thing to mention is, the industrial age requires industrial citizens, and therefore the children are also educated in a much “industrial” way, with clear and specific procedure. The kindergarten, which is also a rather recent invention (in fact almost at the same time as the industrial revolution), mostly serve the purpose of keeping the children safe while their parents spend their day on a boring work elsewhere [14] , the compulsory education system providing tons and tons of complicated and unrelated knowledge also got popularized around the world at around the same time — and the unrelatability of the knowledge to the learner, as previously mentioned, is one of the causes of boredom [15] .

In fact, even the conception that youth meaning to experience, to consume and have fun; that the youths must devote themselves to the society, tackle things that no one can, start up and make big money; adults must take care of their body, take beauty care, travel, let their children go to the most expensive schools there is… are all very recently introduced standards [16] . The global marketing mechanism did its work really well there, even when individual agencies by themselves seem rather harmless. We are trapped within lots and lots of predetermined and highly systematic formulas, and are obsessed with them as if they are some sort of Holy Bible — a guide to be good people, but does not guarantee accuracy.

The development of capitalism also led to a golden age of the entertainment industry, which substantially furthered the society’s capacity for consumption, while also served to keep people barely up-and-running within this cruel system. However, as entertainment is becoming excessive, it’s beginning to lose its effectiveness (or maybe even become counterproductive).

We are living in an era where entertainment has never been as readily as available. After an exhausting work day, left with no energy whatsoever to do anything that actually serves a purpose or requires effort, we are served on a silver platter tons and tons of entertainment products. YouTube, Netflix, Tik Tok, prnhub, idols, beauty, cuteness, humor… all the things in the world that may make us feel positive again can almost instantly be accessed just by using the screen in front of us.

But then, eventually, everything, like we mentioned in part 1, will become familiar to us, and we will eventually find them habitual. Social networks and the ubiquity of entertainment by themselves were shown to have a close correlation with the feelings of boredom, loneliness and depression by many researches [17] . But what’s really the worst is, they are causing us to become even harder to feel satisfaction, and thus experience boredom for longer and longer duration.

Even just with the most basic observational thinking, it’s still easy for us to realize the progressiveness in our demand for entertainment. A song, no matter how good it is, can still become boring to use after times after times of listening. The same is also true for idols, entertainment shows, stand-up comedy or even p0rns. We quickly become familiar with their motif, and quickly become unentertainable by the excessive amount of the same type of entertainment products even when we have never actually seen them yet (because, when it comes to motif, the seemingly vast and diverse pool of composed works easily be categorized into a few major types).

However, just to be extra certain, I looked through all the researches that I could and as a result came up with the realization that, indeed, we have gradually become more and more prone to look up p0rn movies on the more hardcore end ever since this industry came into existence [18] , we are having greater and greater growing demands for novel mass entertainment products [19] , and we are consuming more and more sugar (this, by the way, has a much closer correlation to boredom than you may think) [20] …

In one way or another, if we consider the excessive consumption of entertainment products and that of sugar as if it’s some type of addictive substances, then we perhaps might be the abusers. But perhaps nobody realized that they are addicted to or dependent on those things, simply because, well, as the said, “we use them every day, why don’t we see us addicted at all”? However, I can guarantee you that the irritability and frustration will kick in immediately once you get isolated from those just for a couple of days [21] . Would that then qualify as an addiction?

Well, perhaps it’s time for us to cease the talks about how this society is grading in this regard, and start discussing the solution. Apart from waiting until human technology to advance to a point where machines can take over the more boring, purposeless and unrelated works, what else can we do to curb the boredom, or to better deal with them when they actually resurge?

First of all, create some home-made diversity for yourself. While eating the same dish can fill us up quicker, having a combination of multiple different dishes within a meal helps us consume a larger total amount of food from all dishes [22] . Thus, keep some level of diversity of your life to make sure that you find each of the pastimes you have in it a little bit more exciting than they actually are.

Next, you can have some time-out and mix in some randomization here and there in order to combat the habituation. This is, overall, a good strategy to reduce boredom for someone else around you. Specifically, having a significant other messaging you ‘good night’ every single night may actually make you more irritated than pleased; however, if that someone stopped doing that for a couple of nights, he/she might as well keep you wonder, and there messaging you again in the next day may actually make you feel a lot more excited [23] . This is actually a technique for dishabituation coined by the discipline of psychology.

Last but not least, the most sustainable way to escape boredom, is to follow the laws of the universe that led to the creation of boredom: Always pursue advancement. Always strive to develop yourself toward being able to understand more interesting things, and thus free yourself from the distaste over the reality as well as of yourselves. If you feel done with dime novels, move on to classic works. If you’re fed up with self-help books and other tasteless books, go ahead and try philosophy. If you feel done with Monster Box, go find some other place where you can fine more exciting and meaningful contents, where you can seek further compassion and development.

Because we are not here to hold each other back and then together stuck in boredom.

Cuz that would be hella boring.

— — — — — — —

References:

[1] https://www.facebook.com/.../a.19620070.../2784180171862731/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation

[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../working-memory.../ / https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-selective-attention...

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137142/

[5] https://www.sciencemag.org/.../people-would-rather-be...

[6] http://nautil.us/issue/53/monsters/what-boredom-does-to-you

[7] https://books.google.com.vn/books?id=LOlPEWTT9FEC...

[8] https://web.archive.org/.../www.../data/pdf/1972c-e.pdf

[9] Steinberger et al., “The Antecedents, Experience, and Coping Strategies of Driver Boredom in Young Adult Males” (Journal of Safety Research, Dec. 2016)

Havermans et al., “Eating and Inflicting Pain Out of Boredom” (Appetite, Feb. 2015)

Biolcati et al., “ ‘I Cannot Stand the Boredom’ ” (Addictive Behaviors Reports, June 2016)

Miller et al., “Was Bob Seger Right?” (Leisure Sciences, Jan. 2014)

Mercer and Eastwood, “Is Boredom Associated With Problem Gambling Behaviour?” (International Gambling Studies, April 2010)

[10] https://www.scientificamerican.com/.../why-boredom-is.../

[11] https://www.psychologytoday.com/.../eight-reasons-why-we...

[12] https://www.etymonline.com/word/boredom

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banishment_room

[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preschool

[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education

[16]

- Young Culture: