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The West is bored to death - New Statesman

newstatesman.com · 2,227 words · saved by 3 readers

Suppose Schopenhauer is right that life boils down to a flight from either boredom or pain. Insofar as the vast material abundance of wealthy, industrialised society has had an analgesic effect (there is simply less physical pain than in the past, before fluoride and anaesthesia and sedentary lives), it would seem to have solved one problem only to amplify the other. In place of pain, we have ennui, the quintessential modern condition. It follows directly from overabundance: an endless stream of video “content” or chocolate cake or edibles or any other indulgence cannot deliver lasting satisfaction. Everything gets old eventually, leaving one to grope around for the next fix. For Schopenhauer, boredom is born of “intellectual dullness”, that “vacuity of soul” which leads so many “panting after excitement”, desperate to occupy their minds to kill the time. A lavishly wealthy man who lacks the mental endowments to stave off boredom would be “better off if poverty had given him something

Suppose Schopenhauer is right that life boils down to a flight from either boredom or pain . Insofar as the vast material abundance of wealthy, industrialised society has had an analgesic effect (there is simply less physical pain than in the past, before fluoride and anaesthesia and sedentary lives), it would seem to have solved one problem only to amplify the other. In place of pain, we have ennui, the quintessential modern condition. It follows directly from overabundance: an endless stream of video “content” or chocolate cake or edibles or any other indulgence cannot deliver lasting satisf

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