Chairman of the bored…

As a species we like to think we are conquerors of our own niche; that we could, if it came to it, outsmart our own extinction. We are as happy smashing atoms as we are smashing our way through mountains. As satisfied with building ever higher buildings as we are when drilling for oil under the deepest seas. Faster, bigger, more efficient…it is the human way. There is nothing, surely, we can’t overcome with our unique combination of muscle and mind. Yet the truth is there are many things waiting to kill us off. Antibiotic resistant super-bugs, exhausted resources, over population, war – all waiting in the wings to do us in. And of this murderous fracas encircling our heads, which will strike the fatal bow? Well, recent research has led us to believe that it’ll be none of them. In the end, when the final days come it’ll be at the hand of something more subtle…something more internal. Such melodrama – can it really be warranted? Perhaps not, but indulge us for a just a moment more… Have you ever been bored? We mean really, properly out-of-your-mind bored. So bored that space-time seems to unwind and wrap itself around you, refusing release from the moment. You must have been…you are reading this column for starters. You are important people for goodness sake, GET BACK TO WORK. Don’t, obviously; but you take our point – boredom can sneak up and consume.  What has this to do with the end of us as a species? Well, potentially rather a lot. New research published in Science is, we think, terrifying in its implications. Professor Timothy Wilson, a psychologist from the University of Virginia, thinks that people are unhappy in their own company and many prefer a painful experience to their own thoughts. And he has evidence to back him up. Over the course of 11 studies Prof Wilson asked people to sit in a small room with blank walls "entertaining themselves with their own thoughts" for up to 15 minutes. He found study participants consistently demonstrated that they would rather have something to do than to have nothing other than their thoughts for even a fairly brief period of time. Nothing massively surprising here perhaps, but what if the ‘something to do’ included an electric shock? And not just your run of the mill mini-zap, no this was a shock so painful that when experienced, all participants said they would pay money not to experience it again. So here we have a situation where the volunteers knew how painful the shock was, admitted they would pay money not to have that shock again, yet when faced with 15mins alone happily zapped themselves silly. You can see our concern. Now, there has been criticism of the study, some of it scathing. Dr Chris Chambers, a senior research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology told the BBC: "The most interesting aspect to the study is that their research subjects preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than experience boredom. Perhaps the subjects simply did it to stay awake, and having now read the author's paper from beginning to end I can understand their plight." Ouch – that is some old school critique there Dr Chambers. Even so we are convinced this study has uncovered an innate tendency of humans. And so back to our end of days. How, exactly, will this finish us off?  Imagine if you will a world – and it isn’t so hard – where we have failed to replace fossil-fuel generated electricity. As replacement technology lags behind we begin to run out of power and we find ourselves unable to ­ push electrons around the ingenious circuits of our various electrical devices.  We will, of course, have long since lost the ability to communicate without the crutch of such devices and so we will be rather violently confronted with nothing but our own company. And we have perhaps seen what happens when you expose a species addicted to electronic devices to their own company. And the final cruelty? There will be no electric shock machine for us to ‘entertain’ ourselves with. We’ll be forced to seek out ever more dangerous distractions from ourselves – how long, we must ask, before they are fatal? Not long…faster, bigger, more efficient – it is the human way after all. And so how long then before we will literally die of boredom? Perhaps we are reading far too much into this, but the truth is we were sitting here with nothing to do and just got bored… and we mean really, properly out-of-our-minds bored.