Re: USAGE: Words for "boredom"

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 :))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.