Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine? Ukraine was no threat to him or Russia. The risks of invasion were great and the cost, even for the rosiest scenario, was going to be high. Maybe Putin really believed Russia had legitimate security concerns. Or maybe he believed the nationalistic notion that Ukraine is an inherent part of Russia and never should have become a separate country.
Or maybe he was bored.
Putin had gathered all the reins of government in Russia to himself, winning all the power-plays and crushing all viable opposition. But, the problem with winning is what do you do after you've won. Attempting to resolve complicated internal economic and environmental issues is tedious and slow and successes are hard to come by. Rarely does tackling these problems result in glory, cheering crowds and the thrill of winning. But conquest can. Invading another country is anything but boring. Isn't it?
Ever since reading the book, Either/Or, by *Søren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian, I've kept boredom high on the list of drivers of human actions, both small and big. The book, published in 1843, is written from two perspectives. One is that of an irreverent hedonist who asserts boredom is not only the root of all evil but the great repulsive force that drives history:
People of experience maintain it's sensible to start from a principle. I grant them that and start with the principle that all men are boring ...
... We can trace this from the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, so Eve was created. From that time boredom entered the world and grew in exact proportion to the growth of the population. Adam was bored alone, then Adam and Eve were bored in union, then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored as a family, then the population increased and people were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of building a tower so high it reached the sky. The very idea is as boring as the tower was high, and a terrible proof of how boredom had gained the upper hand.
One doesn't have to ponder too long before seeing the potential corrosive effects of boredom. Marriage can get a little dull so an affair will add zing and drama to one's life. Driving safely can get boring, too, so speeding and running stoplights generates some excitement. (I would say impatience and boredom are closely linked.) Drug and alcohol abuse often are ways of staving off boredom (or at least that's how they start). It's clear people will go to great lengths and take significant risks just to avoid boredom.
Fortunately, folks in the technology and entertainment industries are keenly aware of the boredom problem. They are here to help (and rake in huge sums of money). With all the smartphones, devices, social media, computer games and endless streams of video content, we're closing in on the time when a person will never have to pass another moment being bored.
In fact, I'd say, with all the resources being devoted toward anti-boredom solutions, the effort may very well be the primary driver of human evolution. The pinnacle of this evolution will occur when we've transformed ourselves into pure entertainment absorption organisms. All the tedious tasks of existence will be handled by machines.
Actually, I'm not so optimistic. Boredom finds a way. Nothing is so interesting or so engaging that it doesn't get boring sooner or later (even the war in Ukraine).
The truth is, naturally, that boredom has its role. It's the flip-side of exciting and you can't have one without the other (kind of like life and death). Recent neurological research suggests boredom is good for brain function and people should get, at least periodically, a healthy dose of it.
Buddhists have known this for two thousand years or so. Buddhist meditation can be seen, in part, as a way of embracing boredom: Let's just sit still and be quiet for a while and do nothing. Buddhists don't have a monopoly on this wisdom; others have picked up on it, too. Meetings of Quakers, for example, are often nothing more than the group sitting silently for a time.
I typically watch an hour or two of television a day, but when the show is over, I turn it off in the hopes I'll move onto something more creative or worthwhile (like reading a book or writing one). However, when the the television goes off, I'm usually beset by a hollow feeling. It's a hollowness that wants to be filled with another episode or show. But this hollowness, or boredom, passes and I move on to something less exciting but ultimately more worthwhile (like simply thinking).
In Either/Or, the other perspective is that of a judge who believes, instead of endlessly pursuing excitement and diversion, one needs to embrace routine, calmness and stability (i.e., stuff that's boring) as a means of experiencing life in a way that's ultimately richer than the experience of the hedonist striver. I believe Kierkegaard himself lands somewhere in the middle, but he acknowledges that the middle ground can be hard to find.
Perhaps, paradoxically, boredom is not as boring as it seems.
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