Lockdown has created new forms of boredom – and not a

Lockdown has created new forms of boredom – and not all of them are bad | Coronavirus


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Rather than seeking distraction, let’s pay attention to people’s thoughts and feelings during this period of monotony
‘In Beckett’s Endgame, Clov asks: “Do you believe in the life to come?”’ Simon McBurney as Clov, left, and Mark Rylance (Hamm) in Endgame in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
‘In Beckett’s Endgame, Clov asks: “Do you believe in the life to come?”’ Simon McBurney as Clov, left, and Mark Rylance (Hamm) in Endgame in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian
Tue 9 Mar 2021 03.00 EST
Last modified on Tue 9 Mar 2021 13.08 EST
Boredom and ennui used to be counted among the deadly sins, either bundled together with sloth, or denounced separately. Boredom was considered a spiritual torpor that led to despair and nihilism: in Dante’s Inferno, “acedia” is a state of listlessness associated with “tristitia”, sadness, and offenders are plunged into fetid black mud that chokes them as they cry and sob. When I heard some young people in a refugee camp interviewed about their experiences in 2016, it wasn’t the harshness of the conditions or worries about their future that they dwelt on. It was the lack of something to do that made them most weary. Like Dante’s sufferers in the mud of hell, they were afflicted with boredom.

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