Boredom-- Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Boredom is the root of all evil. Strange that boredom, in itself so staid and stolid, should have such power to set in motion. The influence it exerts is altogether magical, except that it is not the influence of attraction, but of repulsion.

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The history of this can be traced from the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en familie; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse.

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Long in philosophy, scholars had tried to define the fundamental idea of men, and the answer from the seducer is that—all men are bores. Kierkegaard is not trying to focus the readers on how bored/ boring we are; rather, he is expressing the absurdity this way. In most existentialists’ view, we came into the world de trop, and thus with the gift (allow me to name it this way) of time and space, most people don’t know how to act and thus are merely blindly set in motion by the repulsion of boredom to respond passively. But in the case of people living in the authentic aesthetic, this is not totally negative. No matter what the motivation is, an authentic lifestyle still holds its value. They may enjoy life regardless of the ethics (as a note, in an ethically-neutral way) and the ‘rotation method’ is one of the ‘skills’ to enjoy life suggested by the seducer.