boredom

[___rag_doll]

"When we think of evil, we are likely to think of pain and death, but these are not the greatest evils. The greatest evil that can be inflicted upon anyone is unrelieved boredom, and the escape from it is therefore necessarily good, though only in a negative sense. It is good in the way in which an animal's not being caught in a trap, or a child's not being hit by a truck, is good. But negative though this good is, it is absolutely essential to have it, for the alternative, boredom, is such an unmitigated evil. It is not hard to see this if one looks closely at the picture of it. Thus suppose that you were told, by someone having the power to carry out this threat, that you were going to be strapped in a fixed position, that henceforth you would not be able to move any muscle, and that you would be sustained like this for years by a means of nourishment and the maintenance of other vital functions without your participation at all. And suppose that what you were thus condemned to look at the rest of your life was sheer nothingness--the blank sky, for instance, perhaps an illuminated expanse of white. There would, in short, be nothing for you ever to do again, nothing to claim your attention. Surely the most tormented sufferer in the terminal ward of a hospital, struggling against unbearable pain, is lucky in comparison to this. There is a rare affliction, in which the victim is likely to awaken and realize that he or she is unable to move a single muscle, not even to speak or otherwise convey his or her plight to anyone. Suppose one were to thus awaken and then, however painlessly, remain in that state for years! I have seen a man, very young and a few years ago faced withe very blessing and good fortune, who as the result of a sudden brain injury was left unable to move anything but his eyes. He languishes in a nursing home, amidst the sick and the old who have been sent there to die, but with this difference: that he, being still young, is condemned to quite a long life. What does he think of all day, week after week? Perhaps his overwhelming boredom has no deadened his power of thought, sot hat his mind is slowly becoming as helpless as the rest of him. Surely, one hopes so. For otherwise, no greater evil can be imagined."

-The Meaning of Human Existence
Richard Taylor