Boredom has a bad press in our hyperactive societies, which value productivity. However, since Antiquity, many thinkers have on the contrary sought to enhance and sublimate this complex state of mind.
The past few months have invited us to reflect on the virtues and drawbacks of forced inaction and the sense of monotony that comes with it. If it is tempting to escape it in different ways – television series, compulsive shopping… – it is possible to make an ally of it. Boredom, which only exists in sedentary humans and domestic animals, can certainly be harmful, for example in accommodation for dependent elderly people (Ehpad), in prison or at work.
But it can also be a formidable engine of invention and creativity, explains Doctor Patrick Lemoine, psychiatrist and doctor in neuroscience, in his essay In praise of boredom (Editions du Relié, 2021).
What is the origin of the word boredom?
Patrick Lemoine. This word would come from Latin odium. “Est mihi in odio” means “it bothers me”. But we also find the term inodium, which would be taken from the periphrasis “In odio esse”, which would mean “to be in hatred”.
With this complicated etymology, being bored would therefore amount to “being in hatred of oneself”. This is also the case for a certain number of people, especially adolescents, who cannot stand it and seek sensations through different addictions …
To speak of boredom is also to speak of time. This subject has fascinated me for a long time: I had already published To be bored, what happiness! (Armand Colin, 2007), about ten years ago. Then there was the confinement: a beautiful school of boredom for many people, and which I found for my part delicious. It took me back to my childhood, where I was very bored, especially when I was on vacation with my grandparents. It is a particular phenomenon, which gave me a feeling of nostalgia for these long endless hours of doing nothing.
“What if it was boredom that allowed humanity to become intelligent?” You ask yourself in this book. When did we start to get bored?
Boredom was secreted by civilization, from the moment when man became sedentary with livestock, agriculture … Among people close to nature, the concept of boredom does not exist. It was when man began to master time, fire, that he began to get bored. This would not have been the case if he had remained a hunter-gatherer.
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