How dreadful boredom is — how dreadfully boring; the only thing I see is emptiness, the only thing I live on is emptiness, the only thing I move in is emptiness.
Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard is right — only that he lived in the 19th century. Lethargic activity can be debilitating and depressing; but for us, the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. We live in a hectic, hyperactive, over-stimulated age. Since the introduction of the internet and digital technologies, we have infinite quanta of information, visual imagery, personal communications and impersonal text available to us anywhere and at any time.
In the non-virtual realm, too, our world offers a constant supply of activity diversion and stimulation. In shops throbbing with crowds and bright lights, we can buy anything we can — or can’t — imagine. At every turn, we are presented with a mind-boggling quantity of entertainment, high and low: music festivals, art exhibitions.
The busyness of our lives is partly a response to these conditions, and to the demands of our complex, highly competitive societies. Most of us need to work hard in order to ensure a livelihood and basic comforts for ourselves and our families; and if we are to succeed, we are required to function at a high level of effectiveness and alertness. But our predilection for activity goes beyond meeting our basic or even comfortable needs. If we are middle-class, we are likely to work longer hours than we have to in order to fulfil the requirements of our jobs — or than we have put in since workers were forced into punishing labour during the Industrial Revolution.
Home life provides little relief: with perpetual access to the internet, maintaining one’s health through exercise or attending to home improvements, it can be so busy that some sociologists have called it ‘the third shift’. In a culture that constantly presents us with images of glamour and luxury, we are often caught up in the cult of The Best: we want the best homes, best children, best vacations, best professional gigs. We think nothing of flying for twelve hours to a career-advancing meeting or a conference, the perils of jetlag notwithstanding. We absord large quantities of culture, which may be all to the good; but too often, we consume culture in the spirit of — well, consumerism. We do things in order to have done them, or simply to fill time with activity. And of course we spend hours each day on our digital devices, whether we need to or not.
We have good reasons to be busy. But, if we fill our days with useful or useless tasks, it is because in our over-stimulated environments we have become addicted to activity — or what might be called hyperactivity — itself. The digital environment, with its endless supply of instant stimulation and gratification, ups the ante tremendously.
Hyperactivity is addictive partly because it can give us a sort of hedonic pleasure. It introduces a welcome sense of eventfulness and dynamism into our lives. Being in motion and on the go can seem both invigorating and gratifying. When we look through our friends’ most recent postings on Facebook, or post a witty sentence on Twitter, we feel a small hit of pleasure. When we move from one appointment to another, from a power breakfast to a planning meeting in the office, we feel a sort of excitement about ourselves and our lives. When we drive ourselves to exhaustion by pushing to the limit of our energies, we may temporarily experience the kind of euphoria that marathon runners describe as ‘runner’s high’.
However, after a while, incessant activity can leave us feeling depleted and oddly undernourished, as if the experiences we have been through have not taken root, or become part of ourselves. And, like any hedonic habit, it can lead to states of mind which are not pleasurable at all.
Digital addiction is the most recognised of hyperactive syndromes. In Korea amd China there are ‘detox camps’ for addicted adolescents who appear to suffer terrible withdrawal symptoms as theg attempt to stay unplugged. Elsewhere, there have been reports of virtual-world gamers dying from dehydration, as they are unable to leave their imaginary worlds for the ones in which their bodies exist.
Perhaps more worryingly, the consequences of hyperactivity — of trying to do too much at once — extend to a very concrete impact on the brain. We may feel, as we cook and text simultaneously, that pur minds are quick and agile; but actually, the brain eventually becomes less efficient as we indulge in this, or other forms of multitasking. This is because the brain uses extra energy in switching from one task to another, and eventually it slows down and goes into a kind of gridlock. In the long term, the fragmentation of attention, a breaking up of focus and mental continuity, can disrupt neural connections in the brain and eventually lead to a literally ‘shallower’ neurological structure. It makes us — on the psychological level of the brain, as well as of the mind — less capable of concentration and continuous thoughts.
Most of us don’t suffer from extreme disturbances such as Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder, but we may feel that hopping from one small gratification to another, or being dispersed among several tasks at once, means that our experiences are not only fragmented, but somehow temporary and thin. It leaves us anxious and dissatisfied.
This brings us to the question of how to make it better? And how to recover the richness of our inner as well as our external lives? For that, we don’t have to do anything more, but less. We have to recognise that we are putting our bodies and minds through tremendous stress, even though we don’t see it. This realisation is the first step. The next steps will become much easier once you a take a moment out of your busy schedule to pause and reflect. Can you afford a moment, though?
Reference books:
Kalampedia 