Ripley:
Seems I've got a little more pep today-
Na—I can understand that. But, on a final note, I don't quite ever remember dreaming about boredom. I wonder if the self—that ancient mechanism of consciousness—knows how to illustrate boredom unconsciously?
Dreaming about squirting to Sciforums? Actually, no-
I don't see boredom as a physiological ailment—although physical symptoms will most likely manifest after the fact. But instead I see it as an intellectual malaise. Or, for the more savvy, a philosophical one. And contained within its void, a hidden secret challenge—a disappointed conscience—nagging to snap out of it… I think.
I've worked with animals.
Not the forum kind like the Gustav, but the kind that mothers take their children to ogle.
You pass an alligator's cage at 6 in the morning, say, and he'll be in the same position you saw him at 12 noon.
You'll pass him again hours later, and he's barely moved but an inch in 4 hours.
Some would describe this as suspension or a state of catatonia, but I've come to interpret this is as the complete inability to imagine what else it could be doing.
This is, perhaps, the meaning of boredom: the intense awareness of Ought.
It's a mark of intelligence, which is why higher mammals like canids, ravens, and magpies get bored and connive ways to escape while lower intelligences like an alligator's are completely ignorant of how things could otherwise be.
This would explain why alligators and fish never try to escape.
Boredom, therefore, is the ability to conceptualize Ought.
What'd you think, love? INPUT.
