The Boredom Industry

This book will speak of boredom, but above all of what we do in order not to feel it. It will seek to understand how human beings have interpreted it, feared it, fought it and commercialised it; how an inevitable experience became a philosophical, religious, social, economic and political problem. Not in order to condemn pleasure, technology, sex, play or entertainment. A civilisation without entertainment would probably be even more unbearable than one that has made it compulsory. The question is not simply what we do. It is the function that action serves within us.