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2 results

  • 3 - Despair

  • Kevin Hood Gary, Valparaiso University, Indiana
  • Book:
    Why Boredom Matters
    Published online:
    21 July 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022, pp 47-65

  • Summary

    In this chapter, I begin by considering Poet A – Kierkegaard’s compelling pseudonym who embodies how we usually understand and respond to this mood state. Poet A’s account reveals three key facets of boredom: the incessant striving of our voracious ego, the onset of existential fatigue, and our ever-resilient attempts to fend off boredom, seeking both to maximize freedom and maintain control. I then turn to Kierkegaard’s analysis in Sickness unto Death, penned by the pseudonym Anti-Climacus. Rather than understanding boredom as a neutral mood state that comes and goes, Anti-Climacus diagnoses it as laced with forms of despair that easily overtake us. When we maneuver to escape this kind of boredom, we only become further mired in it. Anti-Climacus’ framework illuminates and brings conceptual depth and insight to the two dominant boredom responses I noted in the introduction, avoidance and resignation.

Why Boredom Matters
  • Education, Leisure, and the Quest for a Meaningful Life
  • Kevin Hood Gary
  • Published online:
    21 July 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022
  • Boredom is an enduring problem. In response, schools often do one or both of the following: first, they endorse what novelist Walker Percy describes as a 'boredom avoidance scheme,' adopting new initiative after new initiative in the hope that boredom can be outrun altogether, or second, they compel students to accept boring situations as an inevitable part of life. Both strategies avoid serious reflection on this universal and troubling state of mind. In this book, Gary argues that schools should educate students on how to engage with boredom productively. Rather than being conditioned to avoid or blame boredom on something or someone else, students need to be given tools for dealing with their boredom. These tools provide them with internal resources that equip them to find worthwhile activities and practices to transform boredom into a more productive state of mind. This book addresses the ways students might gain these skills.