ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author shows that someone who was so rarely bored and certainly never boring should choose to speak on this subject yet again. He deals with that "painful state of mind" as he called it, "Apathy, Boredom, and Miltown." He finds it to be not only an individual symptom but also an expression of cultural malaise. The author suggests that boredom is basically a state of mind that results from blocking thoughts and fantasies that would otherwise lead to recognition of conflict, frustration, or unhappiness. He discusses the many faces of boredom, including its "3 R's": routines, recipes, and rituals; the pursuit of trivial pleasures; the search for intensity and meaning; the drug-taker's search for oblivion, mindlessness, and death; and un-American boredom, the mutant hippie strain. Boredom is a painful state of mind which occurs in different forms and disguises throughout the world.