Re: USAGE: Words for "boredom"

In a message dated 06/17/2002 04.51.24 AM, thorinn@DIKU.DK writes:

>> From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>>
>> Christopher B Wright scripsit:
>> > ennui*.
>> >
>> > *I don't actually know what this word means.
>>
>> "Boredom".  How it caught on in (some kinds of) English, when there is
>> a perfectly good native word with a transparent etymology, is quite
>> beyond me.
>
>Ennui is the word used by people who know more French than is good for
>them, and who feel that they're too good for boredom.
    LOL. But it is a word that seems to have a higher degree (pardon punning)
of usage (abusage) and specific meaning in "soft" sciences like sociology and
cultural studies.

In a message dated 06/17/2002 09.16.04 AM, Mike (m.poxon@VIRGIN.NET) writes:

>To me, ennui carries a sense of sitting around languishing, waiting for
>something to happen rather than simply being fed up not knowing what to
>do. Dull youths hanging around outside closed shops are supposedly bored,
>whereas ennui is suffered by people who are familiar with the word.
    My personal impression or semantic use of "ennui" is that it is a much
more depressing state of mind than mere boredom... likewise "angst" is worse
than mere sadness and/or depression. Ennui and angst always strikes me as
being more a deliberated worldview or philosophical state of mind or stance,
while boredom, sadness and depression are more impulsive, individual emotive
states or reactions.
    Anyone else have these kinds of degrees of semantic depths ;)  0_o??? (Of
course, I know English has this plethora of wordage... I am wondering if
others have similar semantic hierarchies or whatever...)

In a message dated 06/17/2002 05.29.24 AM, christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR
writes:

>En réponse à Clint Jackson Baker <litrex1@...>:
>
>> Siyo!
>> I read that no pre-industrial culture has a word for
>> boredom.  (I even used that as a point in my paper on
>> Kierkegaard.  There is a scene in "The Seducer's
>> Diary" in which I believe Kierkegaard is alluding to
>> the idea that the concept of boredom is something that
>> could only be born in an industrial culture.)
>
>In a way, that doesn't surprise me. In pre-industrial cultures, people
>tend to be busy from the moment they're up till the moment they go back to
sleep.
>Whether it is by hunting, cultivating, preparing the food, building shelter,
>making tools and/or weapons, repairing things, making love, raising the
>children, sitting with all other members of the tribe to decide of what
>to do next or listen to the words of the elders, etc... that makes little
time
>with nothing to do. Boredom appears only when you get moments with nothing to
>do. Boredom appears with free time, and free time only appears when comfort
>becomes enough that people can stop working without falling immediately in
sleep,
>and comfort appears with some level of industrialisation. It wouldn't
surprise
>me that boredom appeared at the same time as history, i.e. at the same time
>as writing :))) .
    Hmm, I recall reading *giggloctet* an essay titled something like
"Boredom and the Rise of the Leisure Time" or something like that...
    But I think generalizations like the above may be a little sweeping... I
have a feeling that boredom is part of the human condition. It may not be
called such or have the same exacting meaning in different cultures, but it
is definitely a state of psychological and mental inertia and stagnation of
some kind no matter what culture it may occur in.

    Way back when I was an "outlaw" skate-punk in Houston, Texas, I owned a
t-shirt that had "Boredom is malignant. Avoid Infection!" on it :)

    ::scampers off, singing, trying to recall the words Iggy Pop's "I am
Bored (Chairman of the Bored)" ::

Hanuman Zhang
---------------------  - - - - - - - - - -
    "We Chinese . . . are obsessed with the totality of things . . . That is
why we often fail in the specific and practical. We see cause and effect as
but two of several aspects of the paramount drive and purpose of life. Cause
and effect to us are really by-products of the ultimate purpose which causes
and effects all. Chance or what you call 'luck' is another manifestation of
the same thing, not just an accidental occurrence unrelated to the general
order of events, but also part of a fundamental law of whose workings you are
either painfully ignorant or arrogantly contemptuous. We, however, have
profound respect for it and are continually studying it and devising methods
for divining the nature of this law. We do it instinctively. You see, it is
precisely the togetherness of things in time, not their apparent
unrelatedness in the concrete world, which interests us Chinese." - Laurens
Van Der Post, _Flamingo Feather_