Boredom and Stress as Enemies of Happiness

In the middle of the 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer identified hardship and boredom as the most important enemies of human happiness in his aphorisms "The wisdom of life". Even many years after Schopenhauer it seems undisputed that hardship inevitably leads to different kinds of pain and can therefore currently be described as the main enemy of human happiness. However, the connection between abundance and suffering has “post Schopenhauer” become more complex. No one denies boredom that comes from having too much time on your hands. However, empirical studies show that in addition to the group with time wealth there is also a large group with time distress. So abundance not only gives birth to boredom caused by time affluence, but also to stress caused by time scarcity. This seems paradoxical at first.

Schopenhauer identifies pain and boredom as enemies of human happiness. Thus he describes need and abundance as the cause of suffering. Hardship is the reality for the vast majority of human beings even more than 160 years after Schopenhauer. Thus between 691 and 783 million people face hunger (2022), 2 billion people lack safe drinking water (2020), 3.6 billion people lack safe sanitation (2020), 2 billion people live in conflict areas (2022) and 3.3 billion people are highly vulnerable to climate change (2022), just to name some examples. For the minority who live in abundance however, the situation seems to have become more complex: In addition to boredom, we are increasingly faced with stress. The analysis of boredom and stress shows that in both cases we are dealing with complex phenomena that manifest themselves in different forms. While the intermittent boredom and stress have probably existed since time immemorial, existential boredom and its counterpart, the existential stress, is probably a phenomenon of modernity. The state of existential boredom and stress can be explained by Schopenhauer with the interplay of representation and will. We also have an explanation of how boredom arises. However, it is initially unclear how the existential stress can arise under the condition of abundance. Since the affluent society is accompanied by a significant increase in the volume of leisure time, this initially seems paradoxical.

The analysis of the changes “post Schopenhauer” shows us that we are dealing with a significant acceleration of society. This implies an immense increase in both possible and effectively pursued motives. Incorporating this change into the Schopenhauerian construct brings us to the ultimate explanation of the existential stress. With the explosion of possibilities, the basic mechanism that keeps throwing people back into existential boredom is confronted with different conditions. In today's affluent societies, the alleged motives are no longer vague and uncertain, but tend to be generally available. However, since many of these motives behave similarly to the effects of painkillers, the individual system can suddenly shift from existential boredom to existential stress, because painkillers typically lose their effectiveness over time, require a higher dose and often lead to addictive behavior patterns. All of this leads to the situation, in which the motives attributed to the will multiply and are increasingly pursued compulsively, which is accompanied by stress. A look at the reality of an affluent society confirms this picture in an impressive way: The change has brought about a very wide range of dependencies and addictions, which according to the statistics are affecting the vast majority of humans in some form: Obesity created by hedonistic overeating, work addiction or workaholism, shopping addiction, internet addiction, alcohol addiction and/or nicotine addiction, to name some very prominent examples with typically two or one digit percentages of people affected.

Although the construct of will and representation is reductionist in some aspects, it can be used excellently not only for the metaphysical explanation of the world, but also for the explanation of existential boredom and stress. With the thesis of need and abundance as the cause of human suffering, Schopenhauer is still spot on long time after his death. In the area of abundance, the existential boredom has been joined by the existential stress, but this is not an incompleteness of its construct, on the contrary. Both the state of existential stress and its origins can be explained with his systematic.

But there is even more: The relevant considerations were implicitly and explicitly contained in his thoughts. It is particularly important to note that the existential stress is not a phenomenon that is independent of existential boredom. On the contrary: The existential stress arises precisely from existential boredom and can therefore be traced back to the same cause, abundance. As Schopenhauer diagnosed, abundance gives birth to existential boredom. This constantly drives us to prescribe new motives to the will, which leads to a continuous acceleration of society by increasing the satiety level and addictive behavior.

The price of acceleration is the existential stress. And so man goes from the rain to the eaves. The reason, ceteribus paribus (there is abundance), is that the restless search for new motives is tantamount to fighting symptoms. The medication (pretextual motives) leads to an alleviation of pain (boredom), but results in side effects and thus new pain (stress). So even after Schopenhauer we have the same causes of human suffering: Need and abundance. In the meantime, the existential boredom diagnosed by Schopenhauer has given rise to a second suffering, the existential stress.

Thereby the circle of thought can be completed based on the following two considerations:

• The fear of death and the associated loss of meaning is often seen as the cause of social acceleration. Fear drives us to fight for survival in a situation of scarcity (motives). All that remains in abundance is fear (will) without motives, which seems to drive us to acceleration.
• From a psychological perspective, the state of existential boredom can lead to stress and the state of stress can lead to existential boredom. One state can also suddenly lead to something superficially opposite.

Abundance brings with it a loss of meaning, which initially manifests itself as boredom. The search for new meaning through acceleration does not bring us the desired result, but rather a lack of time. Abundance, in particular, gives rise to a loss of meaning, which, depending on the circumstances, is associated with the symptoms of existential boredom or stress, or even leaves us wavering between both of them.

Extracts, translated from Bruno Steiger: Die Zeit als Feind des menschlichen Glücks, Bern, Switzerland

References

Primary literature

• Arthur Schopenhauer: Kleinere Schriften, Sämtliche Werke, Band III, 1986, Suhrkamp, Stuttgart, 1986
• Arthur Schopenhauer: Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, Insel, Frankfurt am Main,1976
• Arthur Schopenhauer: Welt und Mensch, Reclam, Stuttgart, 2005
• Arthur Schopenhauer: Über das Mitleid, dtv, München, 2005

Secondary literature

• Lars Svendsen: Kleine Philosophie der Langeweile, Insel, Frankfurt am Main, 2002
• Friedhelm Dechner: Besuch vom Mittagsdämon, Zu Klampen Verlag, Lüneburg, 2000
• Zenta Maurina: Die Langeweile und der gehetzte Mensch, Maximilian Dietrich Verlag, Memmingen, 1965
• Harald Winrich: Knappe Zeit – Kunst und Ökonomie des befristeten Lebens, C.H.Beck, München, 2005
• Wilber, Ken: Halbzeit der Evolution, Fischer, Frankfurt, 1996