A Cure for Existential Boredom
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Summary
Kevin Hood-Gary is a professor of education specializing in the philosophy of education. He argues that we need to add an element of leisure, as the ancient Greeks understood it, into our lives and how it requires embracing solitude, study, epiphanies, and love.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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It's one thing to be bored by having to wait in line or sit through a dry lecture.
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It's another thing to be bored with life itself.
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What can you do about this kind of existential boredom?
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My guest will share a remedy with us today on the show.
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His name is Kevin Hood-Gary, and he's a professor of education specializing in the philosophy
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We begin our conversation with the difference between situational and existential boredom
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and how the latter arises when we toggle solely between work and amusement.
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Kevin argues that we need to add an element of leisure, as the ancients understood it,
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We talk about what that looks like and how it requires embracing solitude, study, epiphanies,
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash existentialboredom.
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So you recently published a book called Why Boredom Matters, Education, Leisure, and the
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What led you to write a book about boredom and how to deal with it?
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So I actually wrote a paper, oh, about 10 years ago on boredom and contemplation, and
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a colleague of mine in an ed psychology class was actually teaching the paper and shared
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The students really, really were just taken up with it.
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And so he said, you should develop this further.
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And, you know, it's a topic that's been of interest to me for a long time for a lot of
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One, because it's just one of these enduring problems that human beings have had to contend
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And it's a problem that's linked to so many other problems.
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When we're bored, we consume too much, eat too much, drink too much, idle our time.
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Whenever I would share with friends or family I'm writing a book on boredom, the response
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I almost universally would receive was, wow, that sounds really interesting.
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Which I always found amusing given that boredom is defined as a state of disinterest.
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And I think the interest is that it's really an interest in human flourishing.
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And if we're living lives and we're finding ourselves bored, we're not flourishing.
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And so the kind of research and work that I do really is about what does it mean to flourish
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And what I also enjoy about it is it draws on so many other disciplines.
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There's been a lot of psychology in the last 20 years, but it needs more than just psychologists.
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So theologians, philosophers, great writers, Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger has this beautiful
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quote on boredom, which kind of echoes Pascal's, you know, the root of all evil is our inability
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So it just brings a lot of stuff together and really ultimately brings up questions about
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meaning and purpose, which I'm really fascinated with.
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Well, you talk about there's two types of boredom that we encounter in life.
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So actually Heidegger wrote some lectures and is credited with making this distinction between
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And situational, he describes being at a train station, just being stuck in a situation that
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And when we think about situational boredom, we usually think about it objectively.
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You know, I'm bored by this lecture or I'm bored by this book I'm reading, but it's also
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We're making an assessment about the situation.
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So what might be boring to one person could be engaging to another.
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And we can think about sort of certain conditions that many of us would find boring, but there
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are people who are, this great writer, David Fenmore described himself as unboreable, just
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an ability to sit with his thoughts and be engaged.
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It's both objective and subjective with situational.
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So there's two conditions for situational boredom.
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Like you're just in a situation where there's understimulation, right?
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Like waiting at the train station, waiting at the post office.
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But then the second condition is a feeling that you've lost your agency.
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Like your kids, whenever you hear your kids complain about being bored, this is the example
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of the loss of agency where your kid says, I'm bored.
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And then the parent usually responds, what are you talking about?
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You can go outside, you can do it, but they feel like there's nothing to do.
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I used to do technology fast weekends with my kids where I would say, all right, no screens.
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They just could not see any way their agency could remedy the situation.
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And so we experience situational boredom on a daily basis, but there's things we can do
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You can get out your smartphone, you can read, or you could talk to somebody, you could play
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a game with your kid while you're waiting for food at the restaurant.
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But the second type of boredom that you mentioned is more pernicious and difficult to deal with,
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So to be existentially bored, there's a great quote from Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
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He's talking about someone who finally gets what they want and they realize they don't really
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A simple example I think of is, you know, sometimes looking at Netflix, trying to find something
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to watch and you've got 5,000 titles, and there's just nothing of interest, which is
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kind of amazing given all the options to be engaged and interested.
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And so to be existentially bored is to suffer a more profound kind of boredom where the situational
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solutions, you know, going from one boring situation to an interesting situation really
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And it really is calling forth then, I need to rethink who I am, what I'm doing, what is
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The distinction, though, between existential boredom and clinical depression, which it's
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a close cousin of, but I think the difference is when we're existentially bored, there's
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still a hope that, you know, we desire for desires.
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There's still a hope that we're going to find it.
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You gave this great quote from, it was Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, kind of describing what
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It says, I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright white boxes and
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separating one box from another was sleep like a black shade.
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Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly
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snapped up and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad,
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Just the, yeah, you just feel like, oh man, it's just monotonous.
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Yeah, that is such a powerful and troubling quote.
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And, you know, to the extent that we fully identify with that quote, I think we're probably
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But to the extent that we identify with the quote and have, you know, some days that are
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like that, but thankfully are able to have resilience to move out of that, then I think
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And this existential boredom, this is the thing that humans have been grappling with for millennia.
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I mean, you, you highlight how theologians and religious thinkers have been trying to
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You think monks, Catholic monks, they called it a cedia.
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So I guess what I found, I don't know, unsatisfying in a lot of the contemporary writing on boredom
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is it's descriptive and I was wanting more normative guidance on how do we contend with this
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And so when you trace the lineage of this phenomena, you know, the monks in the fourth
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century of Agrius being one of the great writers talking about a cedia, he's talking about a
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thought that he calls or describes as one of the eight deadly thoughts that this is, this
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is morally hazardous territory when we're falling into a state of a cedia, which gets described
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as the noonday devil, which, you know, it's called the noonday devil because it happens
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upon us in broad daylight without our even realizing it.
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And so you go from this, this eight deadly thoughts, which actually then become the seven
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deadly sins with a cedia being folded in to the sin of sloth.
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I think there's a theoretical richness to a cedia that is really worth retrieving.
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But it goes from that to, oh, in the Renaissance, you know, the French word melancholy, which
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was an attempt to understand boredom, not as a spiritual malaise connected to our status
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vis-a-vis God, but really as a, as a medical or physiological phenomena.
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And so the science of that is obviously proven not to bear out, but there still is an attempt
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And then when you get to the word boredom in the, it's the 18th century, boredom is kind
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It's, it's, it's trying to resist becoming either too scientifically reductive or too connected
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And so I think it's really worthwhile to have all of these in conversation with each other
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because Evagrius was actually not just diagnosing, but prescribing directives for how to contend
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And I think that's one of the problems of modern life.
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You hear a lot of people talking about burnout, right?
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And the way they describe burnout, it's the same way that monks described a cedia back in
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And there's another idea besides burnout, there's rust out, right?
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It's where you don't feel like you've exhausted yourself, but you feel like you are understimulated
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and you're actually not calling upon all of your faculties to engage with life.
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Like, what do you think it is about modern life that makes us prone to be existentially
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I've heard burnout and I've heard burn in where I'm thinking about it in the
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context of teachers who don't burn out, leave the profession, but burn in.
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And they, you know, we've all had experience with teachers that are just not engaged.
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They probably shouldn't be teaching, but, you know, they need a job.
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So what is it about modern life that leads to burnout?
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You know, Aristotle talks about these two kind of spheres.
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There's work where we're on, we're engaged, we're trying to be professional and we're responsible.
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And we need a break, you know, we need, we need, we need to relax.
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And that leads to then this other sphere of life, which is amusement, you know, which
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is simply not working and just needing a reprieve from work.
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And I think that cycle plays off of each other in ways that are just not helpful because there's
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a whole nother way of being in the world, which I get into in the book where you're contending
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with boredom and you seek amusement to avoid boredom, but you miss what I described as these
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This is what Avagrius and some of the monks were talking about.
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There are ways of being in the world that aren't work, that aren't amusement, which can
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often be an escapist distraction, but rather leisure.
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And so I think not having leisure makes us prime to be, you know, to be burning out or
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We'll, we'll talk more about leisure because this was, I love this, this idea of reviving
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But before we do, let's talk about boredom a little bit more because you go in deep into
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the philosopher, one of my favorite philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard, where he explores, he really
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grappled with the source of our existential boredom.
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So what did Kierkegaard believe was the source of our existential boredom?
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You know, Kierkegaard's authorship, I wrote my dissertation on Kierkegaard.
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And he begins his first pseudonym, Poet A, is a person who's chronically bored with life.
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And actually it was one of the most popular books that he wrote that sold the most.
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And the judge is kind of like a parent telling an aimless bored child, you just need to grow
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I'm going to figure out ways to overcome boredom.
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And he has all these different boredom avoidance strategies, which, you know, are really kind
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But it's a later pseudonym, Anticlimicus, who reveals that the poet is actually very confused
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And so, you know, in looking at boredom, Kierkegaard doesn't just see, you know, something that's
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situational, he sees forms of despair that are taking hold.
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Kierkegaard has this really dense definition of the self, which I'm not going to read it
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But summarizing it, he says that the self is a combination of possibility and necessity.
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And in defining necessity, he means just the givens or determinants that keep us where we
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It was an eighth grade classroom, and the students were tasked with writing or copying
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a PowerPoint word for word for the entire period.
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And I remember turning to one of the students and I asked, you know, is this a typical day?
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And you could just see or feel the despair of necessity.
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They were not creating any chaos, which actually would have been creating another possibility.
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They were just resigned to this is all we can do.
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And there was one student, though, and this is where I connected to possibility, who was
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doing these wonderful doodles on her notebook, finding an artistic possibility in the midst
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of this situation that was, I think, very much characterized by despair of resignation.
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And so to be given to the despair of necessity is to sort of not see a possibility for things
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And that's the kind of boredom where the response is, just resign yourself to it.
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And, you know, I think that's resonant with Henry David Thoreau's, you know, people lead
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And I think he's talking about the despair of necessity.
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We just do not see or cannot imagine other possibilities for how to live our lives.
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Accepting the despair of necessity reminded me of Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus.
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So Sisyphus is pushing up that boulder for eternity and then it rolls back down and Camus
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But, you know, Sisyphus accepted the boredom or they accepted that as absurd.
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He just kind of derived some sort of weird pleasure from it.
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So you're stuck in necessity is the despair of possibility, which he defines simply as to
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And what he means by that is we tend to get caught up in a world of fantasy or possibilities.
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When we think about, you know, trolling through social media, we're basically looking at the
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lives of others or watching, you know, Netflix.
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We're just dwelling in the world of the possibilities for other people or other imagined people rather
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than what is possible for me, given the necessities I'm contending with.
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And it's in negotiating those two together where agency can emerge that is steering clear
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The difference for Kierkegaard is he doesn't think that we ever can do this on our own,
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We need something outside of us to help us navigate these two tendencies, these two poles.
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But I map these poles onto the two responses to boredom, one being resignation and the despair
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of possibility is when we encounter a boring situation, we just, we get out of it as fast
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I think we've all experienced the despair of necessity.
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So if you're in a job that's monotonous, the despair of necessity, but then the despair
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It's when you're getting on social media and you're flipping through Instagram thinking,
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wow, that would be great to have this life, but you don't do anything to about it.
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So it just stays in possibility and that can also lead to a weird type of boredom.
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Well, it's, I think the despair of possibility is simply boredom avoidance.
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So when scrolling through Facebook reels, I'm just sort of, it's a very pacifying activity
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where I'm kind of lulled and I'm, I'm steering clear of, of, of boredom, but there's also
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a certain despair quality to, at least I experienced that when I'm doing too much of that.
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It's like, I, I, I could be that, but I can't or whatever.
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Or even, even not, not even that I'm thinking of like, I was watching, uh, I was on Facebook
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It's just like, why am I so captivated by this?
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So you've got the, uh, the spare of possibilities where you're just living vicariously through
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looking at the possibilities other people are living, or it could even just be possibilities
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in your imagination, but then you just don't take any action on them.
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But then, you know what I, I think what you were talking about with the cars, looking at
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cash dash cam cars, Augustine talked about this and he called it a curiosity toss, right?
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Like humans have always had this tendency to try to relieve boredom by looking at any
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Like, even if it was like gruesome, like in his confessions, he talked about back then
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when he was, when he was living people looking at mangled corpses because it was just something
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It was some kind of stimulation and we do the same thing, but now, you know, we just look
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And that's essentially the news cycle, I think in many ways.
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So let's talk about how we can relieve this existential boredom.
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So existential boredom, it's like a mood and it's closely related to depression, but you're
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not depressed because you, when you're existentially bored, you still hold out hope that there is
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possibility that you will feel meaning and be engaged with life.
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So you mentioned Heidegger, he wrote a lot about boredom and he proposed a solution to existential
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So he talks about, you know, many of us are living inauthentic lives and we're responding
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to situational boredom and we're buying or getting the latest phone or we need to redo
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And so we're just sort of subsumed in the crowd and making decisions that are kind of on
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the surface level, just avoiding situational boredom.
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But there's a deeper existential boredom about meaning and purpose.
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And it really is, you know, he said we're living inauthentic lives.
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He characterizes it by chatter and curiosity in the sense that you mentioned, sort of a superficial
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chatter that's just aimless and bantering about sports, politics in a constant rotation.
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And a curiosity that is voyeuristic, that's just sort of aimlessly captivated by whatever's
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And this is where he's drawing from Kierkegaard.
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There really isn't an agency, a strong agency to think about, all right, who am I and how
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What possibilities are viable for me, given the necessities that I'm contending with, so
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that we actually are choosing and making the choices ourselves rather than just sort of
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And so that was the kind of authenticity that Heidegger was calling us to.
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Why don't you think Heidegger's idea of authenticity is adequate to remedy existential
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And so to be fair, I think the way Heidegger's idea has been picked up, I think Heidegger's
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And so I didn't want to go to war with Heidegger in my book.
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But Charles Taylor talks about the ideal of authenticity being a really compelling ideal, that I need to
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And I think what it does is it places on us the burden of originality, that I need to
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And it also then, I think, keeps us from thinking about the wisdom of a tradition, whether it be a
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religious tradition, or perhaps I'm the son of a carpenter, and I've got to be original, so I can't
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Your grandfather was a carpenter, and there's something to that work or the religious tradition
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And so I think with the burden of originality, it puts so much on the self for how to decide
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And I don't think that's the way, you know, we certainly aren't brought up that way.
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We're brought up in a variety of traditions, and then as we grow, we're learning to critically
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appraise those traditions, but also critically adopt those traditions.
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And so this is where I think Heidegger would agree.
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There's an authentic way of embracing tradition.
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I wrote a paper called The Originality of Clichés.
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And what I was getting at was that, you know, we think about a wisdom tradition, a Confucius
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There's sort of tried and true ways of living that I think are viable, compelling options.
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And I think the ideal of authenticity, at least the way it can be constructed, can keep
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those as seeming like viable options because you're being inauthentic.
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The way that authenticity is described today or the way it's put out there, it's being
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But it's funny, you know, you watch people on social media trying to be their authentic
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selves, but it ends up just looking like everyone else in the end, and it's superficial.
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And I think if you try to take this authenticity idea to escape existential boredom, it kind
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of, you create like a double bind for yourself.
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So not only are you having to grapple with existential boredom, which can be, it's like a mood that
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just makes you feel listless and just, you don't want to do anything, but then you have
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to overcome the burden of creating an authentic self, which can be such a big project that
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that can also be just debilitating and make you feel listless, like you don't even want
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And to Heidegger's credit, I mean, just the phenomenology of boredom that he lays out,
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he talks about situational boredom, but he talks about going to, he was going to some
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cocktail parties and situationally it was very engaging, but then he has a moment when
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he comes home later that night and he just, he just, it's almost like an epiphany.
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It's kind of like, if you read Salinger's Franny and Zoe, where she's at some gathering
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in an Ivy league college and she's just bored by it.
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And so I think there's actually something even prophetic about the boredom in those contexts
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that is calling forth something, but it doesn't need to be, I need to create an original
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I, I, maybe I need to explore a tradition and get some guidance on how to live better.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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So if authenticity is not a great way to alleviate existential boredom, another way we relieve
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existential boredom is through what we call in our modern world leisure.
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But you argue that what we think of as leisure in the modern world is actually amusement.
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And as you said, Aristotle talked about this, like what amusement is.
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And then what can we learn about modern amusements from David Foster Wallace's essay about taking
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I actually did just recently go on a cruise and take issue a bit with David's characterization,
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but my cruise was up the Alaskan passageway and the cruise that he was on, I think was
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In that essay, he's really taking a close look at when we're pursuing amusement and a
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cruise being kind of like a capstone amusement event where you've got everything, you've got
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gambling, drinking, pools, screens, just everything all together over an extended period of time.
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And he's kind of looking at himself and everyone around him, what is going on?
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And the way he characterizes amusement is he really describes it as a state of relaxation
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We don't have to make any decisions and we're totally pampered.
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And he says, you know, when was the last time when you were totally pampered and didn't have to
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make any decisions and all your needs were met?
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And he said it was when you were in utero, you know?
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And so the kind of the telos or the end of amusement is to be anesthetized, you know,
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And so he paints kind of an extreme picture, but I think there's something to that, that
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in amusement, and I mentioned looking at dash cam, there's just a, I don't have to do anything.
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Sometimes it gets called vegging out, which, you know, it's striking that we call it vegging
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out because when you think about someone as a vegetable, you know, their mental faculties
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And I found Wallace's account to be just a clear illustration of amusement.
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And so in thinking about leisure, Aristotle says, no, there's something different than
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Well, and it sounds like, I think Wallace made this point, is that pursuing amusement
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to relieve existential boredom can actually increase our existential boredom even more.
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Because as you said, you know, like the cruise is sort of the perfect example of amusement.
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But when that happens, you don't exercise your agency.
00:25:39.620
And so you just become this passive consumer and agency is what makes us feel alive.
00:25:46.040
But if you no longer have that, when you're being amused, you're just going to feel
00:25:54.040
I think the paradox of alleviating situational boredom, we are exacerbating existential boredom.
00:26:01.480
And so, yeah, you can do all these different things like Heidegger talking about.
00:26:04.120
You can go to the dinners and the cocktail parties and you can have a great night, you
00:26:09.260
But then when you're done, you go to lay in bed at night and you're thinking, boy, I'm so
00:26:19.600
So authenticity, probably not going to help us relieve existential boredom.
00:26:24.580
Amusement, and there's nothing wrong with amusement.
00:26:30.180
It's okay to get on social media, you know, for 15 minutes, take a break from work.
00:26:34.900
It's okay to watch a football game, whatever, but it's not going to relieve existential boredom.
00:26:48.220
Yeah, so, I mean, you're right, Aristotle, and thank you for that point about amusement
00:26:56.680
And he describes amusement as a medicine, meaning that, you know, we should take it in prescribed
00:27:02.760
And the concern is that life is work and amusement, and that's it.
00:27:07.140
And so leisure and thinking about leisure and going back to the way we respond to boredom
00:27:18.620
And also thinking with Aristotle, these mood states that come up, anger or fear, we can
00:27:26.360
And in a similar way with boredom, we tend to, you know, avoid, avoid, avoid, or we just
00:27:32.960
Leisure is this middle way where we're engaging with agency.
00:27:36.400
And so it's a different way of being in the world.
00:27:40.080
And the simplest way to describe it is when we are having experiences that are characterized
00:27:50.500
TSLA talked about we're distracted from distraction by distraction.
00:27:54.100
And so needing to push through the itch to be distracted.
00:27:57.940
So sustained attention and then appreciating the intrinsic value of something or an activity.
00:28:08.320
And so it's not the attention required of work where we're on and we're kind of, you
00:28:15.200
It's an in-between state, nor is it sort of the passive consumption of amusement.
00:28:21.540
And Aristotle said that the reason we work is so we can engage in leisure.
00:28:26.040
Like leisure is actually what we're here to do as humans, is engage in life in this leisurely
00:28:31.600
How did other subsequent thinkers after Aristotle add to this idea of leisure?
00:28:39.540
So leisure is the purpose of work and amusement.
00:28:43.000
He holds it as the ultimate telos of a human being, like when we're engaging in leisure.
00:28:51.280
And there's a bit of a rarefied elitism in Aristotle where it seems like it's, you know,
00:28:56.120
professors who are philosophers or astronomers.
00:29:02.960
I mean, basically saying is that when you are seeing the world and you're just in awe
00:29:11.000
But to be fair, that's not, you know, that's not unique to people who just study it.
00:29:17.500
Chesterton has a wonderful quote that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.
00:29:21.540
And so leisure, as it evolves post-Aristotle, especially in monastic context, they're looking
00:29:28.780
at more ordinary, mundane ways where we appreciate the intrinsic value of an activity.
00:29:38.120
But it could also be working in the garden where you're just present to it.
00:29:43.040
It's sustaining your attention and you're experiencing the intrinsic value of it.
00:29:47.200
And so Joseph Pieper talks about leisure as characterized by this receptive kind of attention,
00:29:52.680
not a grasping kind of attention, nor a passive kind of voyeuristic consumer kind of attention.
00:29:59.800
Yeah, I think people have experienced that leisure state of mind when they're on a walk
00:30:07.320
You're just walking and you're enjoying just walking.
00:30:10.360
And then as you're hiking in the woods, you just kind of receive things.
00:30:14.700
Like you're not actually looking for things in particular, but you start noticing things.
00:30:21.180
If you're doing a painting or working with your hands in your garage or even just playing
00:30:28.460
Sometimes you experience that when you're playing a sport.
00:30:30.560
You get in that flow state where you just kind of, you forget yourself.
00:30:34.720
But then in the process of forgetting yourself, you actually feel the most alive.
00:30:42.400
Unfortunately, with sports and music, they have become so competitive, needing to be in
00:30:48.920
the right travel soccer league, that kids really do miss the intrinsic value there is in
00:30:54.500
playing the game of soccer or football or tennis or playing violin.
00:30:58.720
And so all of these are kind of ordinary spaces where we can have leisure, but they can be kind
00:31:08.260
You can instrumentalize any of these leisurely activities.
00:31:11.380
Like you see this with people who start a YouTube channel about one of their passions, right?
00:31:18.800
And they're just doing it because they just enjoy it and they want to share it with other
00:31:21.780
But then it starts getting a lot of views and they're starting to make money from sharing.
00:31:26.940
And then instead of you doing it for the sake of just doing it for itself, you start doing
00:31:32.060
this stuff to develop a following and create a business.
00:31:35.560
And you no longer have a hobby or pastime anymore.
00:31:41.740
And so you're approaching it now as work rather than as leisure.
00:31:45.080
And so you're bringing a different kind of attention to it in some ways.
00:31:49.460
So you talk about some thinkers who add to this idea of leisure and what we can do to develop
00:31:55.260
One of them is Alistair McIntyre, and he introduced this idea of practices.
00:32:00.580
What are practices and how do they help us develop the virtue of leisure?
00:32:06.080
So McIntyre, certainly drawing on Aristotle, he makes the distinction between intrinsic
00:32:12.880
And so the intrinsic goods of playing a sport are just working with other players, just the
00:32:23.180
Whether you make money or get any kind of accolades is extrinsic to the actual game itself.
00:32:28.900
And I think it's a helpful distinction to think about intrinsic value and the intrinsic
00:32:35.780
McIntyre, though, is looking at complex practices.
00:32:38.680
He would consider chess a practice, the game of chess, or carpentry, basically complex social
00:32:44.900
activities that have evolved over time and have a certain degree of complexity.
00:32:49.100
I think there are other kinds of practices, though, that he wouldn't count in his list
00:32:54.440
But it's the key distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goods that I think is theoretically
00:33:00.140
When you talk about broadening the idea of practices to beyond these complex things, you talk about
00:33:16.840
They can seem very mundane, but they can become practices that can help you develop the leisurely
00:33:24.720
And that's Albert Borgman, a wonderful philosopher, studied Heidegger, a philosopher on technology,
00:33:33.140
But yeah, the word focal comes from the word hearth in the home, where the hearth, the fireplace
00:33:41.380
And it required a lot of practices, you know, the cutting wood, the tending the fire.
00:33:51.660
A friend of mine invited me to go birding a year or so ago for three hours.
00:33:56.200
And the paradox is, you know, I'm offering these as the way out of situational existential
00:34:05.360
And so to understand the intrinsic goods of these practices, we actually have to experience
00:34:13.780
So as an outsider looking in, I have to confess, when I was asked to go birding, I just thought,
00:34:18.620
oh, geez, I don't know if I want to go look at birds for three hours.
00:34:20.740
And that really is a reflection of my boredom proclivity.
00:34:25.180
I mean, I can have a propensity to be easily bored and have needed these kinds of focal
00:34:31.640
practices that, again, you know, direct and hold our attention to one thing over a prolonged
00:34:37.960
If you're a parent, you experience that with your kid when they're like, I'm bored.
00:34:43.020
You know, you tell them to engage in a focal practice.
00:34:48.780
And so what you have to end up doing is you have to just, you have to do it with them.
00:34:52.820
And you talk about this, like one of the things you have to do in order to develop this leisurely
00:34:56.460
outlook on life where you can see these mundane practices being meaningful is sometimes you
00:35:04.160
Like you need to have someone just show you, like you had your friend show you how birding
00:35:11.000
You might need to have a friend to show you, well, here's how cooking can be enjoyable.
00:35:15.720
Here's how building this chair in your workshop can be, even though it might seem boring.
00:35:20.680
It's actually, once you get into it, it's actually great.
00:35:24.960
And so you have to confer a certain degree of trust, which is what an apprentice does.
00:35:28.760
I trust that this person knows something and I'm just going to be receptive to going
00:35:33.540
through this practice and seeing what comes up.
00:35:36.780
I often find this, my son is in scouts and so I've been going on camping trips and camping
00:35:41.480
is a lot like that where it's a lot of work and you're kind of like, why are we doing this?
00:35:46.720
Why are we, you know, putting ourselves through this?
00:35:49.140
But to experience the intrinsic goods, you know, it's only by going through it and trusting
00:35:54.500
the process and the guidance of a, of a, of a master, if you will.
00:36:00.060
So if you're having that existential boredom and you want to inject some more meaning in
00:36:03.440
your life, but those things that you, that are proposed that can give you meaning, those
00:36:11.900
I'm going to take a leap of faith, a kick a guardian leap of faith and say, I'm going to
00:36:14.920
give it a trot and, and see, and, and do it like with all your heart.
00:36:20.900
There's sometimes you do that where you're kind of like, well, I'll try, but I'm really not
00:36:27.600
Well, I think about it, like in the context of, you know, coming home from work, it's
00:36:34.020
I want to watch something and I want to have a drink.
00:36:37.040
And so amusement is just so immediate and readily available.
00:36:41.460
I mean, it's just, you just, you know, push a button and you're getting amused.
00:36:45.340
A focal practice walking when it's 25 degrees outside is not sitting in a chair, drinking
00:36:53.540
And so the startup costs for a focal practice are much higher.
00:36:57.980
And Borgman talks about, there's like a moral threshold.
00:37:00.240
Like it takes more work to get dressed, to go outside, to walk for 45 minutes, but the
00:37:06.920
restorative impact of a walk versus watching a show.
00:37:11.080
And to be clear, we can do some show watching, but I think what happens is again, it's work
00:37:17.020
And so we miss the restorative, the restoration that can come through, I think these wonderful
00:37:22.800
forms of leisure, but they do require more at the outset, but the rewards are greater
00:37:32.180
So first thing, if you want to adapt that leisurely outlook, become an apprentice, trust
00:37:36.260
the process that maybe this thing can give you meaning.
00:37:39.440
You also have the role of solitude and study in a leisurely life.
00:37:44.540
So I, you know, years ago studied to be a Catholic priest and the second year was a monastic
00:37:53.180
And once a month we had to spend a day in solitude and I was 23 years old.
00:37:59.600
And that's a pretty unusual thing, I think, for a 23 year old to do.
00:38:05.220
And I was reading writers like Thomas Merton and Henry Nowen, just how distractible I was
00:38:10.540
and just how manipulated I realized I was by just a culture that is constantly trying to,
00:38:16.860
I think our economies are invested in us being bored so that we're buying things and
00:38:23.520
And so it really was through that time apart in solitude that I began to not just read about
00:38:32.640
And so going back to Heidegger, the chatter of modern life, I do think solitude is a valuable
00:38:40.680
And by solitude, meaning that you are completely unconnected.
00:38:43.700
You know, you're not in solitude with your phone because you're always ready to be distracted.
00:38:51.240
But again, back to the apprentice thing, I do think in living into these forms of leisure,
00:38:58.060
I mean, to say that I'm going to start doing these leisurely things solo, ex nihilo, is
00:39:03.880
kind of like that version of authenticity that puts too great a burden on you.
00:39:13.720
The distinction between study and curiosity that Augustine makes is curiosity is the voyeuristic,
00:39:19.440
rubbernecking kind of mind, you know, where we're just fascinated with the tragedies of
00:39:24.980
others or just the latest dash cam crash or whatever it is, where we're just kind of
00:39:33.340
The study is where we're protecting our attention and staying with one thing, making sure that
00:39:39.440
we set up a situation with some, even some guardrails to help us.
00:39:44.660
A simple example is, you know, I talk with my students about study versus curiosity.
00:39:49.360
You know, if you want to have a really good conversation with someone, you don't want to
00:39:51.800
go to Buffalo Wild Wings and have 50 TV screens around you.
00:40:01.840
And yeah, you can bring this approach to anything you do, whether it's writing a letter, washing
00:40:07.980
I had to, um, I'm replacing the basketball hoop in our driveway.
00:40:12.700
And so I had to take out the old one that's been there for since before we bought the house.
00:40:17.640
So I had to chisel it out with a jackhammer because it's like, it's embedded in the driveway.
00:40:23.160
And, you know, people say, oh, it's a boring thing, but I was very engaged.
00:40:26.660
It took several hours to do, but I was just constantly thinking like, well, how can I use
00:40:31.900
this jackhammer in a more, an efficient, effective way so I can get more chunks of concrete?
00:40:36.380
Like I was taking a studious approach to it and I, it looked like, uh, you know, just tedious
00:40:47.580
Um, uh, on the cover of the book is a painting by Vermeer, the milkmaid.
00:40:52.680
And what captivated me by it is it's a person who is just engaged in a, in a very receptive,
00:41:01.280
I can be so double-minded or multi-minded and trying to optimize and do three things at
00:41:07.540
And so there's a combination of work, work amusement, but leisure is this innate, you
00:41:13.580
know, really giving yourself space to attend to one thing carefully.
00:41:18.860
And then you're opening yourself up to, I like, I like this idea of leisure as being open,
00:41:31.720
Like you're just open to whatever new possibilities are there for you.
00:41:37.960
It's hard to describe, but I know what you're talking about.
00:41:39.860
You do a really good job describing in the book.
00:41:42.560
And that's peeper where he talks about that active, passive.
00:41:50.420
Thanks for, thanks for bringing that back to me.
00:41:57.660
Be an apprentice, trust the process, solitude, take an, uh, a studious approach to these leisurely
00:42:06.360
And then you talk about this idea of remembering epiphanies to cultivate leisure in our lives.
00:42:13.140
Well, I'm borrowing from James Joyce and, uh, in portrait of an artist as a young man,
00:42:18.840
you know, there's these moments where Stephen Daedalus falls in love with poetry, with literature,
00:42:29.440
And we can think about, you know, I have a student who's a math major and they have epiphanies where
00:42:34.780
they just really fall in love with the beauty of this language.
00:42:42.240
And having an epiphany, I think what we're experiencing is the intrinsic beauty of something.
00:42:46.820
And so it's really kind of this quintessential moment of beholding leisure, where you're
00:42:55.880
And so we can think about distinctive moments when we get into some kind of work or hobby,
00:43:03.100
And we can, you know, perhaps remember it was this moment, this moment of seeing.
00:43:07.000
And so remembering those, I think is a way to help kind of reawaken our love for something.
00:43:12.260
I'm thinking about it also in the context of teaching, where teaching can be work that drains
00:43:18.740
And teachers, they do need that time, that restorative time to remember their epiphanies.
00:43:23.380
So they bring that back into the classroom because they're trying to awaken those in students as
00:43:28.560
And if they've forgotten them, then it just becomes bureaucratic and loses its magic.
00:43:34.760
No, I've experienced the importance of remembering epiphanies and wanting to be more leisurely.
00:43:39.460
I experienced this whenever we host a dinner party at our house or sometimes get together
00:43:45.320
because it's like that, there's that threshold.
00:43:54.060
And then you have to clean up and you just think about it like, I don't want to do this.
00:43:58.680
And then afterwards you feel, man, that was great.
00:44:04.420
And so whenever I catch myself doing the, I don't want to have this party, I have to
00:44:09.680
remember, wait, no, wait, last time we did this, you had a great time.
00:44:13.480
Or you do that with your kids when your kids want to do something that's like, oh, it
00:44:20.180
It's like, no, last time I did, I felt great afterwards.
00:44:22.700
And so it'll help you give you that push over that threshold.
00:44:29.120
And I just had a dinner party a week ago and just lived that.
00:44:32.240
Yeah, so we've talked about these different things.
00:44:38.840
Maybe you do it with somebody else to help you get through that threshold, be engaged
00:44:43.480
with it, remember the times you enjoyed doing that activity.
00:44:46.700
But at the end you say the ground for leisure is love.
00:44:54.980
One, I was thinking about when I was visiting my grandmother in her last days and going to
00:44:59.220
the nursing home and nursing homes are bleak spaces.
00:45:04.540
You know, there's a TV on in every room and there's just a tedious, I don't know, despair
00:45:10.740
And I just remember feeling that when I was going to visit my grandmother.
00:45:14.520
But that mood state just really didn't have, it didn't matter.
00:45:19.240
You know, I mean, I loved my grandmother and I wanted to be with her.
00:45:22.760
And yet I was contending with boredom and it was my love for her that kind of overrode
00:45:29.420
So boredom is the state that we're going to have to contend with.
00:45:32.080
I do think love is a greater force for contending with that.
00:45:36.840
I was also thinking about it in the context of the movie Groundhog Day, where the protagonist
00:45:42.640
You know, he's stuck in the same day and it's repeating.
00:45:46.260
He's able to divert himself with all kinds of amusement, but that runs its course.
00:45:54.260
He enjoys reading poetry, he's creating music, but it's not until he begins to see the other
00:46:01.000
people in the town and actually have love for them that he really solves the riddle of
00:46:08.240
And so that's what I was thinking with there towards the end.
00:46:11.700
It's not as fully developed as I would like, but that's something for the next project that
00:46:17.480
Yeah, I think that's, you talk about Kierkegaard even said that life is repetition.
00:46:21.300
And the key is if you have this love for Kierkegaard to be like the love of God, like even that
00:46:29.940
It can actually be, it enlivens you, makes you feel like it's meaningful.
00:46:34.920
And your example of visiting your grandmother in the nursing home, that reminds me, I know
00:46:41.900
And one thing he does is he'll go and visit him and they'll watch this baseball game from
00:46:47.280
like the nineties over and over again, because it's something that his dad remembered and
00:46:54.500
And the experience is like really meaningful for this person because he gets to spend time
00:47:00.620
They're doing this thing over and over again, but because love is there, it feels leisurely.
00:47:08.520
I think about it also in the context of, you know, I've been married now for 20 years and
00:47:12.720
just the simple repetitions, you know, in, in, in married life where you're, you know,
00:47:17.140
checking in the end of the day or in the morning.
00:47:19.580
And, you know, to my bored 20 year old self, it looks like, wow, marriage looks like a
00:47:25.420
I'm like, no, actually this is part of the beautiful leisure and love of relationship
00:47:32.520
Well, Kevin, this has been a great conversation.
00:47:34.040
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:47:38.100
So the book is on Amazon also with Cambridge press and I do have a website.
00:47:42.920
I've been giving talks at some universities, which is kevinhoodgary.com.
00:47:47.580
And so, yeah, I've been going around giving some talks and doing some retreats and yeah,
00:47:53.780
I mean, there's a lot of work on boredom, but pairing it with leisure, I think is, is,
00:47:58.120
is not a new idea, but I think it's an idea that needs to be out there more.
00:48:07.540
Gary, he's the author of the book, why boredom matters.
00:48:11.520
Check out our show notes at aom.is slash existential boredom.
00:48:17.580
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:48:26.800
Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives,
00:48:30.520
as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything
00:48:34.560
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00:48:41.300
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00:48:44.740
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00:48:47.420
Until next time, I'm Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what