The "It's Your Own Fault If You're Bored" Argument and the Serenity Prayer

There’s a phrase, or maybe a concept, that I’m vaguely fond of: “Nothing in this world is boring.”

Say you go on a trip and the destination strikes you as boring. But if you start from the premise that “nothing in this world is boring,” then the boredom must come from a lack of knowledge or taste on your part. You simply can’t grasp the charm the place has always had. Perfectly reasonable, I think.

Or say someone claims “Shakespeare is boring.” Again, the first thing to doubt is that person’s knowledge and education. This seems reasonable enough too. Not that I’ve ever read him.

What I like about this concept is that it gives me the motivation to sharpen my knowledge and taste so I can enjoy the world more. When I find something boring, it’s usually because my vibes (or the level of some hormone in my brain) have tanked and I’m listless. But if I tell myself “there’s no way this is boring,” I feel like looking into the history of the place, or reading up on how people lived in Shakespeare’s day.

On the flip side, though, if handled badly, this way of thinking could turn into an extremely vicious kind of “it’s your own fault” argument.

For example, I think present-day Akihabara, smothered by concept cafes and trading card shops, is boring. Sure, part of the reason is obviously that I don’t understand concept cafe or trading card culture, but compared with the examples above, something about that feels off. And yet Akihabara is a town, which flatly contradicts what I just said about there being no such thing as a boring destination.

For a nastier example, if someone says “you find your job boring because you lack the ability,” that’s flat-out workplace harassment. I can’t say it’s completely wrong, but it feels like far too much of it is not right.

I need to sort these cases apart.

Blaming Yourself Isn’t Something to Force on Others#

The reason that last example is the odd one out is clear: it forces the “it’s your own fault” argument on someone else. If it were truly voluntary self-blame, like “my job is boring, so let me figure out how to make it fun,” I’d call that a constructive way of thinking.

But “truly voluntary” looks like a very difficult concept. If you’ve been pushed by social pressure into thinking that way, that’s no longer anything but yarigai sakushu (“exploitation through a sense of fulfillment,” the old “you’re doing what you love, so who needs a raise?” trick), and it can’t be called voluntary. It’s Fromm’s automaton conformity: mistaking society’s demands for your own will.

If so, then “Shakespeare is boring because you’re uncultured” could also be argued to be nothing more than internalizing the social demand to “get an education.” But that doesn’t feel right either. I need to sort this out further.

The Unchangeable World and Changeable Artifacts#

What if I judge by the nature of the object? What do towns and Shakespeare have that Akihabara and jobs lack (or vice versa)?

After a lot of thought, I came to feel that “whether there is an intent to manipulate the receiver” gives a pretty good dividing line.

A job is a contract that trades labor for money, so “think of your job as fun” is, in effect, a statement meant to push down the price of labor. The same goes for the concept cafes and card shops of Akihabara: “think of Akihabara as fun” means “spend your money at the concept cafes.”

A town’s history itself, on the other hand, has no intention of prompting me to do anything. When a town markets its history for revitalization, you could say it intends to make me like the town and spend money as a tourist, but the history itself can’t force anything on me.

Shakespeare may well have intended to get audiences to part with their money back when he wrote, but he surely didn’t write his plays to leave some Call to action for an East Asian guy centuries later.

In short, when I think “there’s no way this is boring,” whether anyone other than me stands to profit seems to be the criterion for whether the “it’s your own fault” argument turns vicious.

Come to think of it, that’s only natural. When I impose self-blame on myself, even if I lose as the object, I win as the subject. As long as my judgment is sound, there can’t be an imposition where the whole system loses more than it gains.

Art and Creative Work#

In the end, this argument might also lead to the “art vs. creative” question. At least in my own head, I define art as something you make for yourself, and creative work as something you make for someone else.

I admit that a vast amount of knowledge and taste goes into road signs and the latest smartphones, but I don’t consider them art. They have an intent to convey information to someone and, in a sense, to manipulate them. They are creative work, designed from the start to steer the emotions and actions of a target “someone.”

If you find creative work boring, I’d say it isn’t because you lack education. It’s an utterly sound self-defense signal: “my sensibility is rejecting being played by the maker’s intent.”

Art, on the other hand, has no intent to manipulate me. In exchange for not steering me, it also carries no obligation to entertain me.

So when art strikes us as “boring,” we should suspect “a lack of our own knowledge and taste.” Since the other side won’t meet us halfway, the only way to touch its richness is to raise our own resolution and reach out to it.

An Update#

The phrase “nothing in this world is boring” seems to need a small update. Maybe something like “nothing is boring in a world that hasn’t been tinted by someone’s intent.”

Finding creative work “boring” is, I think, a correct defensive reaction. You don’t have to force yourself to like it. But it would be a waste to stop there. Time is finite, so rather than ending with “I got dyed by something boring and wasted my time,” it’s far better if you can extract some interest from it.

What’s interesting is that even boring things usually become interesting once you look at them from one level up, the meta level. I don’t need to find Akihabara fun, but “why did Akihabara end up like this?” and “why do I find Akihabara boring?” are themselves interesting, and questions I think I should find interesting. (After all, nobody profits from my finding these questions interesting!)

While I’m in the game as a player, I run the risk of being manipulated and exploited by the other party’s intent. But the moment I step back and start observing “why is this game so boring?”, that space loses its power to manipulate me and turns into a merely interesting phenomenon, a sort of art, like “behavioral economics.”

The moment you take the meta view, the world should be cut loose from “someone’s intent” once again. If you still find the phenomenon boring in front of you, then one of these must be lacking: the height of your meta view, your knowledge, or your taste.

In short, perhaps it comes down to this: the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference. (Yes, that’s the Serenity Prayer, usually credited to Reinhold Niebuhr, hence the title.)

The world doesn’t care about me, and it doesn’t care about you. I don’t think that’s something to be sad about. If anything, it’s something to be glad about.

Summary#

The argument was getting scattered, so I had Professor Gemini (the AI) summarize it. The end! Peace restored!

I like the idea that “nothing is boring” (intellectual curiosity)
But blaming everything on it becomes a vicious “it’s your own fault” argument (doubt)
The dividing line is whether there is “someone’s intent (profit)” (discovery: art vs. creative)
Rejecting intent-laden things (creative work) as boring is legitimate self-defense (agreement)
But rejecting and stopping there wastes time (turning point)
With the meta view, you can convert it into a “phenomenon (art)” carrying no one’s intent, and enjoy it (resolution)
Conclusion: if you aren’t swallowed by someone’s intent (or if you take the meta view), nothing in this world is boring (the update)