Category: Reflections

Unstructured Reflections on Boredom: A Blurry Definition of Boredom

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

In Part Two of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche writes: “The proverb, ‘The Hungarian is far too lazy to feel bored,’ gives food for thought. Only the highest and most active animals are capable of being bored. The boredom of God on the seventh day of Creation would be a subject for a great poet.”1 Nietzsche isn’t talking about simple boredom here, which Peter Toohey, who has written one of the most boring books on boredom, defines as “a social emotion of mild disgust produced by a temporarily unavoidable and predictable circumstance.”2 What Nietzsche is talking about is existential boredom, which Toohey cannot fathom.3 (Existential) (but also situational) boredom isn’t laziness, but an excess of energy yearning to be spent elsewhere. It crawls out of your spirit’s deepest and darkest cave when one kind of energy is exhausted and another kind begins to stir. It comes to inform you that something unwelcome is gnawing at your being, chomping on your vitality, eating your time. But only the truly blessed are blessed with the curse of boredom. To be bored by something means that the reciprocity between you and the object has been severed: you no longer have anything worthy to give it, it has nothing worthy to give you, and your attention to it is now forced rather than voluntary. (The bored man is the prisoner of the now that he needs to escape from. The present situation is unwanted, unpleasant, intolerable, et cetera. Note: The “present situation” can be a two-hour workshop and it can also be a whole lifetime.) Boredom is your spirit’s way of transcending the current situation. It is a striving toward a higher or more meaningful mode of being. It is not emptiness but unspent possibility, the tension between what is and what could be, potentialities activated (but pending), a body without organs… When boredom crawls out of your spirit’s cave, it does not know what it wants. All it knows is that it does not want what it has right now. Eventually, it finds a new direction (or an object it desires), and so it crawls towards it. Boredom is a transitional state. It is a movement or, rather, an initiator of movement… But note: Simply moving from one activity to another does not solve boredom. One can pay attention and still be bored. One can be entertained and still be bored. Entertainment is often merely a stimulation without inner engagement or meaning; therefore, not a solution to boredom, but an escape from it. The movement must be from the boring activity to a meaningful activity. “Boredom,” Lars Svendsen writes, “is not a question of work or freedom but of meaning.”4 Boredom, therefore, is a good thing, as Nietzsche implies, and it can be the fertile ground for something meaningful…

Notes and References

[1] Naturally, I do not mean to offend Hungarians. I do not even know where the stereotype comes from. I’m only quoting Nietzsche here. (Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2014.)

[2] Toohey, Peter. Boredom, A Lively History. Yale University Press, 2012.

[3] A quote from Peter Toohey’s Boredom: “Might not this existential form of boredom, this philosophical or even religious sickness, be best characterized as depression?”

[4] Svendsen, Lars. A Philosophy of Boredom. Reaktion Books, 2011.

Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, Lebanon

Unstructured Reflections on Love: Libido Transfer

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Libido transfer. — To a certain extent, when someone is totally in love, (the essence of) the loved one replaces the self of the lover. We come across this in Sigmund Freud’s An Outline of Psychoanalysis, where the libido of the lover is transferred onto the object, which is the beloved. For the sake of simplification, here, let us assume that the lover in our story is (as is so traditionally) a he, and the loved one is a she. When a man falls madly in love with a woman, something in him changes. His friends notice this first and say things like, “He’s become a different man,” or in sadder scenarios, “He’s not one of the boys anymore.” They don’t understand the transformation their friend is going through because they haven’t been struck by love yet themselves. According to the lover’s psyche, the beloved is no longer a separate individual; reversely, he no longer represents himself alone. The representations (or the qualities) of her self are merged with his, and his actions now represent the synthesis of his self and hers. Love makes him an extension of the person he loves. Then it goes further than that. It is not enough that their souls are entangled and have formed a Gordian Knot, but instead of prioritizing his needs and desires, he now starts prioritizing hers. (Symmetrically, if the relationship is a mutualistic symbiosis, she also becomes an extension of him — after becoming more like her, he sees her in the mirror, and vice versa.) At this point, when the man has become possessed by love, his self’s independence begins to diminish. The invisible love leash chokes him when the distance (as well as the time) between him and his beloved expands. He feels incomplete, even guilty, when separated from her. He gives up his freedom, changes his habits to match his partner’s, and sacrifices whatever he must to preserve the fetters of love. And it’s not only his behavior that changes; he starts to see things from his beloved’s lens. He interprets and experiences life differently by identifying with her needs, desires, wants, ideologies, beliefs, culture, traditions, and emotions. He says, “If she’s happy, I’m happy,” or (in jest), “Happy wife, happy life.” [A test: How do you know if you are the lover or the beloved in a certain set of circumstances? If the actions of the other aim to please you, then you are the beloved. If it’s the other way around, you are the lover.] [I must add a note here: Although the lover-beloved balance between two individuals in a relationship isn’t always in equilibrium, we must remember that love isn’t a one-way relationship. In a healthy romantic relationship, there ought to be scenarios in which you are the lover and scenarios in which you are the beloved, (unconsciously) switching roles with your partner as you go. You’ll need to take turns because you cannot be both the lover and the beloved simultaneously. You can play one role at a time.] The lover must be brave, ready to take big risks. He needs that Kierkegaardian leap of faith. He needs to close his eyes and jump. To love is a courageous act. One must be ready to do crazy things for love. He must surrender to it. Unlike popular belief, a healthy romantic relationship has nothing to do with the preservation of physical or mental health. A healthy romantic relationship is a spiritual relationship that may sometimes include sacrifices such as the surrender of mental or physical health. Nonetheless, the altruistic lover who lets go of his ego altogether is not a real lover; he is a symbiote with an ego mimicking the beloved’s ego. The altruistic lover is the beloved’s machine that generates recognition and satisfaction. The opposite of the altruistic lover, the narcissistic lover, is also not a real lover; he is a parasitic symbiote. He only loves lovers, not beloveds. Those who resist libido transfer suppress (and prevent the development of) true love. They are not ready for true love simply because they are not ready to sacrifice themselves on its altar. They will not be remembered as great lovers… It is no surprise that many individuals resist transferring libido to a loved one. (Their number, in fact, far exceeds those who truly love.) They fear potential heartbreak, they lack trust in people, and they don’t want to lose themselves and their freedom. (Withholding libido transfer is the safer option for those who want to keep the self unblemished.) But when these individuals simulate acts of love by repeating what they read in books and what they see in movies, they’re not loving, they’re only playing the role of the lover. They’re playing it safe and are not really invested in the relationship. They are only showing love but not genuinely loving. Unknowingly, they are pretending to love. They don’t know that those who want to remain who they are cannot love absolutely. When the time of sacrifice comes, they’ll ask, “Why would I live for someone else when I can live for myself?” They’ll ask, “Why would anyone want to lose their self, their Ich, their ego?” While some sacrifice themselves for love, they sacrifice love for themselves. What they don’t get is this: when you love, you don’t lose yourself; you become more than yourself.

Sunset Somewhere in Lebanon

Unstructured Reflections on Life: Normative Adversity

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Normative adversity. — There are certain challenges (and obstacles) in life that we are, from the day we are born, expected to face. In most cases, it’s only a matter of time until we do so. Common challenges like family disputes and conflicts with romantic partners, job loss and other workplace issues, academic challenges, stress, aging, and life transitions like getting married or becoming a parent — they are called “normative” adversities precisely because they are normal (and predictable). Even if one takes preventive measures, he is bound to undergo (most of) them eventually. [Note: An excessive amount of preventive measures to keep normative adversities at bay, such as a zero-risk lifestyle, will only keep the person from living a fulfilling life. It’s fine if one is careful, as long as he isn’t too careful.] Although many such “normal” challenges are consequential, they are not (and shouldn’t be) too much to bear (in normal conditions). Society expects us to deal with them without making a lot of noise. Nonetheless, at different times in our Sisyphean pursuit of happiness and security, the boulder we continuously roll to the top of the mountain (or occasionally carry on our shoulders) gets heavier and heavier and heavier. Splinters of anxiety, bits of worries, flecks of inconveniences, and failures pile up and congregate to eventually form a massive crisis. We burn out. We halt. We fall. We lose. We are tempted to give up and let go of what we’ve been trying to achieve for so long. We ask ourselves, “Will I survive this one, or is this the end of the road for me? Will I be able to overcome this awe-inspiring, terrifying obstacle? What am I trying to hold on to? What am I trying to prove? Is it really worth it?” We almost always almost give up but don’t. This is when we remember that what we’re facing, even though it’s overwhelming, isn’t anything that is outside of the normal. Millions of people have experienced in their own way what we are experiencing now in our own way. It is a part of life, of the way the world works. So, even though the challenges we’re grappling with may seem or even are crippling, they’re bearably crippling. As long as there’s something to hold on to, they are like quicksand we can pull ourselves out of. But there are no guarantees, of course. We can purchase all the insurance plans in the world (health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, travel insurance, life insurance, etc.) and take all the security measures in the world (bodyguards, CCTVs, alarm systems, etc.) and still feel insecure. Why? Because nothing can protect us from life’s uncertainties. There’s no certainty of the future for anyone, and misfortunes are keen to knock on our doors. However, if we listen to our human spirit, we will know that it is not afraid, it wants to put up a fight, it wants to carry on. And, here, we can already hear the incantation of Samuel Beckett’s words in our hearts. First, the quote from The Unnamable that says, “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” [Even when it’s impossible to go on, when all hope is lost and the future is uninviting, we have no other choice but to take a step into the next moment. We’ve always been sliding downhill on the arrow of time, from our past towards our future, haven’t we? There’s only one direction. And we can imagine that the arrow of time extends downwards, not upwards or horizontally, because the future is the force of gravity that’s pulling everything down…] Second, another Samuel Beckett quote. This one is from the story called Worstward Ho, and it says, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” And I hope that, to no one’s surprise, the answer is always to keep on trying. The answer is to own it, face our fears, turn challenges into meaningful experiences, and transform boring tasks into caves we can explore, seas we can dive into. Understanding the concept of normative adversity and accepting it — that most of the challenges we face are normal — is the (only real) way to cope with our day-to-day struggles. We have the same unique challenges as the rest of the world population, and we must deal with them our own way. “When you have done this,” Schopenhauer writes, “you will order your expectations of life according to the nature of things and no longer regard the calamities, sufferings, torments and miseries of life as something irregular and not to be expected but will find them entirely in order, well knowing that each of us is here being punished for his existence and each in his own particular way.” [Note: we shouldn’t take punishment as the sad fate of every man here. Disagreeable things are the seasonings of life. Whether we like it or not, we must be a little masochistic to be able to enjoy being human. They say, “No pain, no gain.” The destination may be paradise for everyone, but the journey is for the few, for those who are ready to get hurt while paving new paths — the risk-takers and adventurers.] So, briefly put, what are we saying here? When it comes to normative adversities, all we need to do is take responsibility, deal with them (calmly), and carry on.