Boredom and Terrorism

I've been thinking about boredom and terrorism - the way that terrorist acts both prey on and disrupt the everyday. This thinking leads to a construction of the everyday as something near sacred. It's the basic system we depend on when we open our eyes in the morning. We rely on things like water coming out of the tap and lights coming on when we flip on a switch. We trust in this standard of the ordinary - we come to expect its consistency - to the point which we take it for granted. This waking sleep became the perfect opportunity for a handful of men with destruction on their mind.
William Langewiesche, a journalist who has written extensively for the Atlantic Monthly, penned a three part piece on 9/11. The first opens with:

The dread that Americans felt during the weeks following the September 11 attacks stemmed less from the fear of death than from a collective loss of control - a sense of being dragged headlong into an apocalyptic future for which society seemed unprepared.

He goes on to describe what it was like the morning of September 11th at an air traffic control center in Massachusetts:

The routine held at Boston Center for eleven long minutes after the hijacking began. The weather was known to be bright, smooth, and dear. Air traffic was light. For the controller who had lost radio contact with American 11 there really wasn't much to do. The airplane tracked steadily westward across the radar screen. The controller assumed that its continuing silence amounted to a simple communication failure - a relatively common occurrence - and he tried to re-establish radio contact, but without undue concern.

As Susan said the other night that terrorism feeds on the everyday - "the little times [or things] you don't think are anything" as Warhol puts it. The 9/11 attacks went off nearly without a hitch because because the group of terrorists snuck in through the back door of the everyday. Muhammad Atta's routine airport check-in that Martin Amis describes is tellingly boring, "Oh, the misery of recurrence, like the hotel elevator doing its ancient curtsy on every floor, like the alien hair on the soap changing its shape through a succession alphabets, like the (necessary) monotonous gonging inside his head" (Courseware 239).
We become immune to these "alien" things once they become repetitive. Our instincts are dulled by monotony and we become passive participants dependant on the consistency of everydayness.

Langewiesche, William. AMERICAN GROUND: Unbuilding the World Trade Center. Atlantic Monthly, Sep2002, Vol. 290 Issue 2, p46, 28p

Heidiggerian Lunchbox

Heidegger hatched a troublesome notion:
That boredom's the undisnegation of motion
The empty lunchbox of hunger
Neither over nor under
A close cousin of time we should cease avoiding
Passing
Killing
However annoying
While he classified boredom
As a human condition
He fails to explain a beastly omission
Why aren't the animals equally affected?
Why aren't their minutes similarly rejected?
Perhaps it's because they can't contemplate death
And thusly move not towards their
Final
Breath

Bears, Babies, and Bananas

Here are the words of C.S. Lewis regarding nature written in 1958 (Reflections on the Psalms):

"You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and look back. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. . . . Come out, look back, and then you will see . . . this astonishing cataract of bears, babies, and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries, fleas, gases, tornadoes, and toads. How could you have ever thought this was the ultimate reality? . . . She is herself. Offer her neither worship nor contempt."

Lewis is described by some as a man who embraced the everyday. He would often cast his philosophic/theologic notions onto the backdrop of the ordinary. This is clearly evidenced in the following passage from Surprised by Joy wherein he praises the structure of a normal day:

[I]f I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a good cup of tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors [...] The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude, . . . [f]or eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. Of course not all books are suitable for mealtime reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table. What one wants is a gossipy, formless book which can be opened anywhere. . . . At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies . . . there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven.

I find this structure of a day somewhat comforting, hardly boring. Within this framework, Lewis created great works that no doubt will provide pleasure and stimulate thought for decades to come. Lewis felt that such a life was quite selfish as it is an inward existence focussed solely on the life subject. He contends, however, that selfishness, though less admirable than generousity, can lead to a rich life - one worth living. He once composed an epitaph for a Florence Nightengale type which read:

Erected by her sorrowing brothers
In memory of Martha Clay.
Here lies one who lived for others;
Now she has peace.
And so have they.

I can think of countless do-gooders who have turned my free-time into bothersome boredom with their well meaning desire to "help." I think C. S. Lewis was on to something here.

All information taken from this site page : "First Things: The Everyday C. S. Lewis"
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9808/meilaender.html

In Hospitable

On the weekend, a friend of mine was involved in a freak accident - while traveling at 80 km/hour, a giant Douglas Fir fell on his car (story here). I had seen him only three days before, fresh from a soccer game, shinpad-adorned. Now, as I travel through my day (giving large trees a wide berth), I can't stop thinking about how my friend's life has come to a screeching halt. I take my body for granted I realize, and although our bodies enable us to do so much they can also trap us in an inescapable abyss of boredom.
Unable to read a book, hold a phone, or even move, he must be bored to tears. Curious, I googled "boredom+hospital" and found a helpful site with tips on "keeping busy in the hospital." It suggests one take the time to "learn something new" such as yoga, magic, or beekeeping (I'd like to see my friend try that in traction!). In a list titled "more things to do, " one is encouraged to "look out a window," "take a shower," and "take a long shower." The lists on this site are increasingly boring in their redundancy. There is little for my friend to do but heal and wait for the morphine to kick in. As for me, for now I will appreciate my physical freedom in doing even the most forgettable tasks knowing there will come a day when I will again agree with the words of Shakespeare; "Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man." King John, Act 3 scene 4

Imaginary Homelife

The fire that provides comfort and warmth can also destroy: the homely becomes unhomely. This fire scars Maggie as "homely," as she bears the marks of the home and its destruction. Does this fire imply that feeling at home is delusional or impossible?
- S. Brook

My belief, based on Freudian theory, is that yes, feeling at home is a misconception. Freud employs the terminology "homely" and "unhomely" in his essay "The Uncanny," written in 1925. Respectively, these two terms (for Freud) are synonymous with the familiar and the uncanny. Freud relates that "the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar" (220). What is "old and long familiar" has a lot to do with the act of becoming a stranger to oneself. This othering of ourselves, Freud believes, goes hand in hand with the fear of death and "probably the 'immortal' soul was the first 'double' of the body." Freud goes on to explain that the 'double' emerges with our earliest ability to cultivate self-love, or "primary narcissism." We move beyond 'primary narcissism' when we age but instead of becoming a whole person, the original narcissism "can receive fresh meaning from the later stages of the ego's developement" (235). In other words, the self-love becomes self-observation - the way I see myself. I am at once myself and something else...something I'm not entirely 'at home' with. I will never regain the completeness I had before I was aware of myself. In extending this idea, I view the home as a place to replicate those comforts we embraced as children. I argue that, once we establish a home base we recognize it not through learning aboout it from scratch - as a foreigner - but because we fashion it into something we already recognize. However close we come to duplicating the "old and long familiar" within our homespace we will always fail thus the impossibility of ever being truly at home.
On a personal note, after an unsettling childhood experience, I gained an imaginary friend. I feel this was my primitive attempt to create a more homely atmospere in a place that had become frightening and unfamiliar. Curiously, her name was Canna.


Freud, S. "The Uncanny." The Standard Edition of the Complete Pychological Works of Sigmund Freud, V. 17. UK: Hogarth Press, 1955. 219 - 256.

So you think you're a Situationalist

I was thrilled to learn, from our last lecture, that my odd habits of mind were similar to those exercised by the likes of Debord and Lefevbre. Validation! For as long as I can remember I have toyed with perspective in transit from point A to point B. For instance, I often imagine myself a tourist in my own neighbourhood ("so, this is how the people here live"). Andy Warhol writes of travel in his collection of thoughts on time. He tries to recall a trip he took to Europe but remembers only a car ride to the ball remarking, "Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life" (180). What if we could make the mundane memorable? Find value in the vapid? Without question we would find our lives more meaningful. I believe one of the most worthwhile effects of travel results from what we do in other countries that is most like what we do in the normal day-to-day at home (having coffee in a cafe, taking a bus, walking). The re-experience of the mundane gives us a new appreciation of our own routine. With this traveler's view, we can re-experience our own city without the need of a passport by merely using our imaginations. When I'm feeling particularly bored with the world I try to picture what Vancouver might look like if the city was abandoned for 20 or 30 years. How would the buildings hold up? Would ivy begin to thrive and set about dragging everything down? Would the deer come back? Below is a photo taken in 1999 of Pripyat , a city in the Ukraine that became a ghost town after the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. It seems that, ever since human beings moved out, the city has experienced a "reinvasion of nature".

Sometimes the themes of my derives become a little too real. One morning, in early autumn, I was walking through downtown on my way to work. I had been reading Thomas Friedman's "From Beirut to Jerusalem"and was inspired to envision Vancouver as a city prone to terrorist attacks. The date was September 11, 2001, and little did I know...
What I get out of these journeys of mind(on less dramatic days) is a new sense of connection to my world. I tend to notice rather than expect, get more out of human interactions, and and feel more "present."

Boots or Hearts

In A Philosophy of Boredom, Lars Svendsen cites Karl Rosenkranz's notion that, in contrast to ugliness which he equates with boredom, "the beautiful allows us to forget time, because as something eternal and self-sufficient, it also transports us to eternity and thus fills us with bliss" (94). The same could be said of shoes. Sure, most of us, myself included, would be quick to defend our footwear as being practical, comfortable, and affordable but I argue that out of everything we clothe ourselves in, our shoes are most closely tied to our personal identity. When I worked in retail I was told that to spot a thief, I need only look at his feet. In India, the status of a person is conveyed by their shoes. When entering a home, people remove their shoes to impose a leveling of status. In the game of attraction, a man's "shoe size" gives a girl a hint, however untrue, to the size of his member. In literature, Cinderella and Estrogon find their identities linked closely to footwear. Seeking his true love, the charming prince uses a glass slipper to identify her though one would think facial recognition would have been simpler. In Waiting for Godot, Estragon's boots could be interpreted as a metaphor for his existence. The boots are confining, painful, and rank. When he finally manages to pry them off, Estragon searches around inside them and declares "Nothing [...] There's nothing to show" (4). His life is empty and meaningless.
The foot plods, paces, taps in impatience, and goes nowhere on treadmills. Could the repetition of our step be our most boring movement? Yet the feet can dance, are fetishized, and move at a speed that enables us to take in the world's minutiae. Perhaps we clothe our toes in pleasing styles to create the beauty that "allows us to forget time" and enhances our lackluster indenties. Though I hesitate when I recall the lyrics of Gord Downey: "Boots or hearts, oh when they start, they really fall apart."