Re: USAGE: Words for "boredom"

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>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 :))) .
Actually, people in hunter-gatherer societies often have _more_ free time
than those in industrial or agricultural societies.

At a wild guess, boredom might require the combination of free time and the
idea that one ought to be productive all the time - something most likely to
be found in industrial societies. But I want more evidence that the concept
of boredom is unknown in pre-industrial societies before I quite believe
that.

                                                Andreas

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