Action and

danger is exciting but this

is a fake gun and the process

of enlarging a hole, like the barrel of a gun, is called

boring. Boring. Boring a hole

is a slow process requiring repetitive movements from a tool that goes in

circles,

which may be why things that are slow and repetitive and don't appear to be going

anywhere

came to be described with the same word. They're boring. But why do we get

bored and why does it matter? Evidence of being

temporarily uninterested in anything happening - boredom -

has been found as far back as ancient Pompeii.

Boredom is a feeling we don't like. It's

uncomfortable but it's trivial, right? I mean, boredom happens to all of us but

now

we have Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and texting and Candy Crush

to keep ourselves occupied. So, really,

who cares? Well, here's the thing.

Physical pain, heartbreak and nausea are also

uncomfortable but they're caused by dangerous

serious toxic things, whereas boredom

occurs when you are merely disinterested in the outside world

and the inner world of your thoughts, when you are

alone with just yourself. So,

does the existence of boredom mean that when it really comes down to it life

itself existing isn't really enough?

Arthur Schopenhauer said that "if life possessed

in itself a positive value in real content,

there would be no such thing as boredom. Mere existence would fulfil

and satisfied us." But apparently it doesn't

because boredom exists. Is something wrong

with being, or is something

awesome about us? Nearly 200 hundred years ago Giacomo Leopardi wrote in a

letter to his father

"boredom is the most sublime of all human emotions because

it expresses the fact that the human spirit, in a certain sense,

is greater than the entire universe. Boredom

is an expression of a profound despair and not finding anything that can

satisfy the souls'

boundless needs." So, while superficially boredom might seem trivial or

childish, embarrassing, almost rude to admit to feeling,

one thing's for sure - boredom isn't

boring. When bored, your brain activity

only drops about 5% and magnetic resonance images of people's brains

while they were bored actually showed greater activity in regions responsible

for

recalling autobiographical memory, conceiving

the thoughts and feelings of others and conjuring hypothetical events -

imagining. Jennifer Schuessler wrote about this

in her appropriately titled essay "Our boredom,

Ourselves." She points out that in line with neurological

evidence, boredom historically has been "an important source

of creativity, well-being and our very sense self."

It's an imposed state that leaves us

to think about ourselves, notice things we may have overlooked and get "ancy" enough

to take productive

actions we might have otherwise put off, like

cleaning, writing or challenging the mind with puzzles

and games.

As a pressure to move, boredom

may have driven us to accomplish much of what we have achieved.

But how do you measure

boredom? The boredom proneness scale,

'BPS', assess an individual's propensity for getting

bored, in a sense their ease of being attentive. Average

scores range between 81 and 117.

We can take scores on the BPS and correlate

them with other things. For instance, people who know themselves well

can easily label their feelings, have high levels of self-awareness,

tend to have a lower propensity score feeling bored.

But when it comes to feeling boredom frequently,

the culprit may be one's own physiology.

Individuals with fewer dopamine receptors in the brain

tend to need more excitement to stay stimulated,

meaning chronic boredom may be a symptom

of the way your body is. A symptom that if

left unchecked can become something worse

Anna Gosline lists depression,

anxiety, drug addiction, alcoholism, hostility,

poor social skills, bad grades and low work performance.

In fact, the National Center on drug abuse and addiction has reported that the

top three

risk factors for teenage substance abuse

are too much stress, too much spending money

and too much boredom. The Beth Israel Medical Center in New York

reports that addicts reported levels of boredom

are the only reliable indicator of whether or not they will stay clean.

Our brains need stimulation

in order to be healthy, not so much that they're overwhelmed but a perfect

balance

unique to each individual, under which they can perform

optimally, with energized focus, what psychologists call

flow. Too little stimulation and our brains will act out,

hoping to find some somewhere to prevent something worse

from happening. Our brains have thaasophobia,

the fear of boredom. Peter Toohey's "Boredom: A Lively History"

quotes Norman Doidge's findings that "nothing

speeds brain atrophy more being

immobilized in the same environment: the monotony

undermines our dopamine and attentional systems crucial for maintaining

brain plasticity." Variety

and stimulation encourage neurogenesis, new brain cells

and can extend the lives of cells that already exist in certain regions

of the brain. In order to avoid a lack of stimulation,

our brains will even try to make up their own stimulations -

hallucinations. Hallucinations can be induced

in almost anyone's brain, if there isn't enough stimulation

around. For instance, the ganzfeld effect.

When exposed to random noise and unchanging monochromatic field,

the brain freaks out and starts generating hallucinations.

The effect can also be induced with ping pong balls hemispheres

over the eyes and a radio tuned to static.

Extended sensory deprivation in a special chamber

that eliminates site, sound, smell, taste and tactile sensations

by floating the body in a special fluid to reduce the sensation of weight

can also cause hallucinations as well

as anxiety. When denied proper stimulation,

the brain goes through phases that begin with boredom

and if left unchecked can become worse.

It's a phenomenon well-documented in animals confined to cages

for long periods of time, and, in a horrific case,

a human child named Genie. Born

in 1957 in Arcadia, California,

Genie became one of the most famous cases of abnormal

child psychology. Her father was abusive to her and her family

and delusional. He hated the outside world and sought to isolate his family

from it

as best he could. He confined Genie

to a room with only two blacked-out windows for the first

thirteen years of her life. He often tied her to a toilet chair

and never fed her solid food. When authorities finally found her,

in 1970, she had not acquired a language

and had the mental age of an 18-month-old child.

Genie was extensively studied and became a staple

of psychology courses, a rare example of an impossible

experiment. What if a human child was

isolated from human contact, social behaviors

and human language. A feral child, not raised by the proverbial

wolves, but instead

right in the middle of suburbia. Genie

is still alive today, her identity anonymous,

as a ward of the state of California. Extended

under stimulation isn't just a punishment inflicted by delusional

caretakers,

it's also a punishment inflicted on criminals,

especially in the form a solitary confinement.

In the Bureau of Prisons, the record for most

time spent denied social contact is held

and still being set by Thomas Silverstein.

Considered extremely dangerous, Silverstein has been kept in solitude

since 1983. He has barely seen a single

other human for the last 29 years.

Stories like those are intense

and are far beyond everyday occasional boredom,

simple boredom. What you feel when waiting

at an airport or listening to an unengaging lecture

is not a disorder, it's not a moodm

it's an emotion. Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions is a great way to

visualize this.

The wheel is based on 8 basic emotions extended

in order of intensity. Boredom is positioned as a

light version of disgust. Emotions

are not superfluous. Normal amounts of them have a purpose.

Creatures who feel emotions are often compelled to do

and not do more complicated things than merely

eating, drinking, sleeping and procreating, like

building friendships, apologizing, loving unconditionally and

planning and building for the future. Disgust

is an emotion we don't like. It keeps us from doing things. Its purpose

is most likely a warning, an alarm triggered by things that appear rancid,

spoiled or toxic, that could poison us or make us sick.

Like a good friend, disgust pushes us away from such things. It guides us

in a healthy direction. Likewise, boredom

protects us. Monotonous speakers,

mind-numbing tasks and overloaded sameness,

those things aren't dirty or poisonous, they're just not

stimulating enough. Boredom compels us to new things,

fresh stimulation and when it can't be overcome

a propensity to boredom is a sign of a healthy mind.

It's advantageous. Creatures who felt it wound up

doing more, flourished more, which led to more creatures like themselves,

boredness feelers. So the next time you're

a little bored, be proud.

Thank your ancestors, you are participating in a life

improving drive, like hunger or thirst

that pushes us toward new and better things.

Give yourself time away from the usual distractions

to get bored. It will be

boring, but boring is literally how

holes get made and perfected. Not all holes are useful but some

become people's to some pretty cool stuff.

And as always,

thanks for watching.