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A Philosophy Of Boredom
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Book Synopsis A Philosophy of Boredom by : Lars Svendsen
Download or read book A Philosophy of Boredom written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Am account of boredom, something that we have all suffered from, yet actually know very little about.
Download or read book Boredom written by Peter Toohey and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first book to argue for the benefits of boredom, Peter Toohey dispels the myth that it's simply a childish emotion or an existential malaise like Jean-Paul Sartre's nausea. He shows how boredom is, in fact, one of our most common and constructive emotions and is an essential part of the human experience. This informative and entertaining investigation of boredom--what it is and what it isn't, its uses and its dangers--spans more than 3,000 years of history and takes readers through fascinating neurological and psychological theories of emotion, as well as recent scientific investigations, to illustrate its role in our lives. There are Australian aboriginals and bored Romans, Jeffrey Archer and caged cockatoos, Camus and the early Christians, Durer and Degas. Toohey also explores the important role that boredom plays in popular and highbrow culture and how over the centuries it has proven to be a stimulus for art and literature. Toohey shows that boredom is a universal emotion experienced by humans throughout history and he explains its place, and value, in today's world. "Boredom: A Lively History "is vital reading for anyone interested in what goes on when supposedly nothing happens.
Book Synopsis A Philosophy of Freedom by : Lars Svendsen
Download or read book A Philosophy of Freedom written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom of speech, religion, choice, will—humans have fought, and continue to fight, for all of these. But what is human freedom really? Taking a broad approach across metaphysics, politics, and ethics, Lars Svendsen explores this question in his engaging book, while also looking at the threats freedom faces today. Though our behaviors, thoughts, and actions are restricted by social and legal rules, deadlines, and burdens, Svendsen argues that the fundamental requirement for living a human life is the ability to be free. A Philosophy of Freedom questions how we can successfully create meaningful lives when we are estranged from the very concept of freedom. Svendsen tackles such issues as the nature of free agency and the possibility of freedom in a universe governed by natural laws. He concludes that the true definition of personal freedom is first and foremost the liberty to devote yourself to what really matters to you—to realize the true value of the life you are living. Drawing on the fascinating debates around the possibility of freedom and its limits within society, this comprehensive investigation provides an accessible and insightful overview that will appeal to academics and general readers alike.
Download or read book Wish I Were Here written by Mark Kingwell and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you bored of the endless scroll of your social media feed? Do you swipe left before considering the human being whose face you just summarily rejected? Do you skim articles on your screen in search of intellectual stimulation that never arrives? If so, this book is the philosophical lifeline you have been waiting for. Offering a timely meditation on the profound effects of constant immersion in technology, also known as the Interface, Wish I Were Here draws on philosophical analysis of boredom and happiness to examine the pressing issues of screen addiction and the lure of online outrage. Without moralizing, Mark Kingwell takes seriously the possibility that current conditions of life and connection are creating hollowed-out human selves, divorced from their own external world. While scrolling, swiping, and clicking suggest purposeful action, such as choosing and connecting with others, Kingwell argues that repeated flicks of the finger provide merely the shadow of meaning, by reducing us to scattered data fragments, Twitter feeds, Instagram posts, shopping preferences, and text trends captured by algorithms. Written in accessible language that references both classical philosophers and contemporary critics, Wish I Were Here turns to philosophy for a cure to the widespread unease that something is amiss in modern waking life.
Download or read book Out of My Skull written by James Danckert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one likes to be bored. Two leading psychologists explain what causes boredom and how to listen to what it is telling you, so you can live a more engaged life. We avoid boredom at all costs. It makes us feel restless and agitated. Desperate for something to do, we play games on our phones, retie our shoes, or even count ceiling tiles. And if we escape it this time, eventually it will strike again. But what if we listened to boredom instead of banishing it? Psychologists James Danckert and John Eastwood contend that boredom isn’t bad for us. It’s just that we do a bad job of heeding its guidance. When we’re bored, our minds are telling us that whatever we are doing isn’t working—we’re failing to satisfy our basic psychological need to be engaged and effective. Too many of us respond poorly. We become prone to accidents, risky activities, loneliness, and ennui, and we waste ever more time on technological distractions. But, Danckert and Eastwood argue, we can let boredom have the opposite effect, motivating the change we need. The latest research suggests that an adaptive approach to boredom will help us avoid its troubling effects and, through its reminder to become aware and involved, might lead us to live fuller lives. Out of My Skull combines scientific findings with everyday observations to explain an experience we’d like to ignore, but from which we have a lot to learn. Boredom evolved to help us. It’s time we gave it a chance.
Book Synopsis A Philosophy of Loneliness by : Lars Svendsen
Download or read book A Philosophy of Loneliness written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many of us it is the ultimate fear: to die alone. Loneliness is a difficult subject to address because it has such negative connotations in our intensely social world. But the truth is that wherever there are people, there is loneliness. You can be lonely sitting in the quiet of your home, in the still of an afternoon park, or even when surrounded by throngs of people on a busy street. One need only turn on the radio to hear a crooner telling us just how lonesome we can be. In this groundbreaking book, philosopher Lars Svendsen confronts loneliness head on, investigating both the negative and positive sides of this most human of emotions. Drawing on the latest research in philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences, A Philosophy of Loneliness explores the different kinds of loneliness and examines the psychological and social characteristics that dispose people to them. Svendsen looks at the importance of friendship and love, and he examines how loneliness can impact our quality of life and affect our physical and mental health. In a provocative move, he also argues that the main problem in our modern society is not that we have too much loneliness but rather too little solitude, and he looks to those moments when our loneliness can actually tell us profound things about ourselves and our place in the world. The result is a fascinating book about a complex and deeply meaningful part of our very being.
Download or read book Boredom written by Patricia Meyer Spacks and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a witty explanation of why boredom both haunts and motivates the literary imagination. Moving from Samuel Johnson to Donald Barthelme, from Jane Austen to Anita Brookner, Spacks shows us at last how we arrived in a postmodern world where boredom is the all-encompassing name we give our discontent. Her book, anything but boring, gives us new insight into the cultural usefulness—and deep interest—of boredom as a state of mind.
Book Synopsis Boredom Is in Your Mind by : Josefa Ros Velasco
Download or read book Boredom Is in Your Mind written by Josefa Ros Velasco and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-23 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique perspective on the topic of boredom, with chapters written by diverse representatives of various mental health disciplines and philosophical approaches. On one hand, studying boredom involves the mental processes of attention, memory, perception, creativity, or language use; on the other, boredom can be understood by taking into account many pathological conditions such as depression, stress, and anxiety. This book seeks to fill the knowledge gap in research by discussing boredom through an interdisciplinary dialogue, giving a comprehensive overview of the past and current literature within boredom studies, while discussing the neural bases and causes of boredom and its potential consequences and implications for individual and social well-being. Chapters explore the many facets of boredom, including: Understanding the cognitive-affective mechanisms underlying experiences of boredom Philosophical perspectives on boredom, self-consciousness, and narrative How boredom shapes both basic and complex human thoughts, feelings, and behavior Analyzing boredom within Freudian and Lacanian frameworks Boredom Is in Your Mind: A Shared Psychological-Philosophical Approach is a pioneering work that brings together threads of cross-disciplinary boredom research into one comprehensive resource. It is relevant for graduate students and researchers in myriad intersecting disciplines, among them cognitive psychology, cognitive neurosciences, and clinical psychology, as well as philosophy, logic, religion, and other areas of the humanities and social sciences.
Book Synopsis The Boredom Solution by : Linda Deal
Download or read book The Boredom Solution written by Linda Deal and published by PRUFROCK PRESS INC.. This book was released on 2005-06 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Educational title for gifted and advanced learners.
Download or read book Play Anything written by Ian Bogost and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How filling life with play-whether soccer or lawn mowing, counting sheep or tossing Angry Birds -- forges a new path for creativity and joy in our impatient age Life is boring: filled with meetings and traffic, errands and emails. Nothing we'd ever call fun. But what if we've gotten fun wrong? In Play Anything, visionary game designer and philosopher Ian Bogost shows how we can overcome our daily anxiety; transforming the boring, ordinary world around us into one of endless, playful possibilities. The key to this playful mindset lies in discovering the secret truth of fun and games. Play Anything, reveals that games appeal to us not because they are fun, but because they set limitations. Soccer wouldn't be soccer if it wasn't composed of two teams of eleven players using only their feet, heads, and torsos to get a ball into a goal; Tetris wouldn't be Tetris without falling pieces in characteristic shapes. Such rules seem needless, arbitrary, and difficult. Yet it is the limitations that make games enjoyable, just like it's the hard things in life that give it meaning. Play is what happens when we accept these limitations, narrow our focus, and, consequently, have fun. Which is also how to live a good life. Manipulating a soccer ball into a goal is no different than treating ordinary circumstances- like grocery shopping, lawn mowing, and making PowerPoints-as sources for meaning and joy. We can "play anything" by filling our days with attention and discipline, devotion and love for the world as it really is, beyond our desires and fears. Ranging from Internet culture to moral philosophy, ancient poetry to modern consumerism, Bogost shows us how today's chaotic world can only be tamed-and enjoyed-when we first impose boundaries on ourselves.
Download or read book Fashion written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2006-10-30 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fashion is at once a familiar yet mysteriously elite world that we all experience, whether we’re buying a new pair of jeans, reading Vogue, or watching the latest episode of Project Runway. Lars Svendsen dives into that world in Fashion, exploring the myths, ideas, and history that make up haute couture, the must-have trends over the centuries, and the very concept of fashion itself. Fashion opens with an exploration of all the possible meanings encompassed by the word “fashion,” as Svendsen probes its elusive place in art, politics, and history. Ultimately, however, he focuses on the most common use of the term: clothing. With his trademark dry wit, he deftly dismantles many of the axioms of the industry and its supporters. For example, he points out that some of the latest fashions shown on runways aren’t actually “fashionable” in any sense of the word, arguing that they’re more akin to modern art works, and he argues against the increasingly prevalent idea that plastic surgery and body modification are part of a new wave of consumerism. Svendsen draws upon the writings of thinkers from Adam Smith to Roland Barthes to analyze fashion as both a historical phenomenon and a philosophy of aesthetics. He also traces the connections between the concepts of fashion and modernity and ultimately considers the importance of evolving fashions to such fields as art, politics, and philosophy. Whether critiquing a relentless media culture that promotes perfect bodies or parsing the never-ending debate over the merits of conformity versus individual style, Lars Svendsen offers an engaging and intriguing analysis of fashion and the motivations behind its constant pursuit of the new.
Book Synopsis Critique of Bored Reason by : Dmitri Nikulin
Download or read book Critique of Bored Reason written by Dmitri Nikulin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of the core concepts of the Western philosophical tradition originate in antiquity. Yet boredom is strikingly absent from classical thought. In this philosophical study, Dmitri Nikulin explores the concept’s genealogy to argue that boredom is the mark of modernity. Nikulin contends that boredom is a specifically modern phenomenon. He provides a critical reconstruction of the concept of the modern subject as universal, rational, autonomous, and self-sufficient. Understanding itself in this way, this subject is at once the protagonist, playwright, director, and spectator of the staged drama of human existence. It is therefore inevitably monological, lonely, and alone, and can neither escape its own presence nor get rid of it. In other words, it is bored—and this boredom is the fundamental expression and symptom of the modern condition. Considering such thinkers as Descartes, Pascal, Kant, Kierkegaard, Kracauer, Heidegger, and Benjamin, Critique of Bored Reason places boredom on center stage in the philosophical critique of modernity. Nikulin also considers the alternative to the notion of the autonomous subject in the—nonbored and nonboring—dialogic and comic subject capable of shared existence with others.
Download or read book The Culture of Boredom written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culture of Boredom is a collection of essays by well-known specialists reflecting from philosophical, literary, and artistic perspectives. The goal is to clarify the background of boredom, and to explore its representation through forgotten cross-cutting narratives.
Book Synopsis A Philosophy of Fear by : Lars Svendsen
Download or read book A Philosophy of Fear written by Lars Svendsen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveillance cameras. Airport security lines. Barred store windows. We see manifestations of societal fears everyday, and daily news reports on the latest household danger or raised terror threat level continually stoke our sense of impending doom. In A Philosophy of Fear, Lars Svendsen now explores the underlying ideas and issues behind this powerful emotion, as he investigates how and why fear has insinuated itself into every aspect of modern life. Svendsen delves into science, politics, sociology, and literature to explore the nature of fear. He examines the biology behind the emotion, from the neuroscience underlying our “fight or flight” instinct to how fear induces us to take irrational actions in our attempts to minimize risk. The book then turns to the political and social realms, investigating the role of fear in the philosophies of Machiavelli and Hobbes, the rise of the modern “risk society,” and how fear has eroded social trust. Entertainment such as the television show “Fear Factor,” competition in extreme sports, and the political use of fear in the ongoing “War on Terror” all come under Svendsen’s probing gaze, as he investigates whether we can ever disentangle ourselves from the continual state of alarm that defines our age. Svendsen ultimately argues for the possibility of a brighter, less fearful future that is marked by a triumph of humanist optimism. An incisive and thought-provoking meditation, A Philosophy of Fear pulls back the curtain that shrouds dangers imagined and real, forcing us to confront our fears and why we hold to them.
Download or read book How to Be Bored written by Eva Hoffman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the latest installment of the acclaimed School of Life series, learn how to make peace with your down time—and even benefit from it. Lethargic inactivity can be debilitating and depressing, but in the modern world the pendulum has swung far in the other direction. We live in a hyperactive, over-stimulated age. Uninterrupted activity can seem exciting, but it can also leave us emotionally disorientated and mentally depleted. How can we recover a sense of balance and a richness in our lives? In How to Be Bored, Eva Hoffman argues for the need to cultivate curiosity and self-knowledge and to relish moments of unplugged idleness and non-virtual contact with others. Drawing on psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and a wide range of literature, she emphasizes the need to understand our own preferences and purposes and to replenish our inner resources. This book aims to make readers more vigorously engaged in their lives and to restore a sense of depth and meaning to their experiences.
Book Synopsis On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored by : Adam Phillips
Download or read book On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored written by Adam Phillips and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-15 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a style that is writerly and audacious, Adam Phillips takes up a variety of seemingly ordinary subjects underinvestigated by psychoanalysis--kissing, worrying, risk, solitude, composure, even farting as it relates to worrying. He argues that psychoanalysis began as a virtuoso improvisation within the science of medicine, but that virtuosity has given way to the dream of science that only the examined life is worth living. Phillips goes on to show how the drive to omniscience has been unfortunate both for psychoanalysis and for life. He reveals how much one's psychic health depends on establishing a realm of life that successfully resists examination.
Book Synopsis Practicing the Good by : Keti Chukrov
Download or read book Practicing the Good written by Keti Chukrov and published by EFLUX ARCHITECTURE. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosophical consideration of Soviet Socialism that reveals the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporary anticapitalist discourse and theory This book, a philosophical consideration of Soviet socialism, is not meant simply to revisit the communist past; its aim, rather, is to witness certain zones where capitalism's domination is resisted--the zones of countercapitalist critique, civil society agencies, and theoretical provisions of emancipation or progress--and to inquire to what extent those zones are in fact permeated by unconscious capitalism and thus unwittingly affirm the capitalist condition. By means of the philosophical and politico-economical consideration of Soviet socialism of the 1960 and 1970s, this book manages to reveal the hidden desire for capitalism in contemporaneous anticapitalist discourse and theory. The research is marked by a broad cross-disciplinary approach based on political economy, philosophy, art theory, and cultural theory that redefines old Cold War and Slavic studies' views of the post-Stalinist years, as well as challenges the interpretations of this period of historical socialism in Western Marxist thought.
