Out of My Skull by James Danckert and John D Eastwood – the psychology of boredom

From social media addiction to the discovery of musical genius - is the alleviation of boredom what really drives the world?

According to the great proto-existentialist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, the life of a human or other beast swings like a pendulum back and forth between pain and boredom". Indeed, pain (or want) and boredom are the two main constituents of existence, and not only during the lockdown phase of a pandemic - a thought that might (or might not) afford some gloomy relief to many right now.

Schopenhauer was arguably the first western philosopher to take boredom seriously as one of the primary miseries of humankind, defining it lucidly as a tame longing without any particular object". Boredom was, moreover, more likely to afflict the more intelligent person, unfortunately for geniuses such as himself.