151.
Boredom amuses only its critics. They struggle against their own lassitude to keep their indignation up to date. Theodor Adorno: “The teams of modern sport, whose interaction is so precisely regulated that no member has any doubt about his role, and which provide a reserve for every player, have their exact counterpart in the sexual teams of Juliette, which employ every moment usefully, neglect no human orifice, and carry out every function. Intensive, purposeful activity prevails in spirit in every branch of mass culture, while the inadequately initiated spectator cannot divine the difference in the combinations, or the meaning of variations, by the arbitrarily determined rules.” In gamespace, porno, like sport, now has its star pitchers and hitters, specialists for every position, and the inadequately initiated spectator once again cannot divine the difference in the combinations, or the meaning of variations, by the arbitrarily determined rules. But it is the same too with critical theory, which becomes formally indistinguishable from pornography, a mere subset of gamespace, a hypocritical theory, with different specialists, playing by different rules — equally worthy of de Sade.
awesome site design!
i really like how design and functionality reflect the meaning and nature of the book.
one thing (for amazing webmaster) about text on “book’s pages”: it looks nice in it’s size, but it’s hard to read on large monitor. i usually use browser option to increase pieces of text that i want to read without damaging my eyesight. doing it with “book pages” cuts the end of the chapter (css, overflow:hidden). i think, changing overflow to “auto” will add a little accessibility feature to the book.
–i.
Irena: somebody wrote a patch to fix this. There was some reason Jesse didn’t use it, but it escapes me.
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re: ‘all the same after all’ I would say: no: in Europe, where I live we’re ‘all the same’- in America, one is allowed to be a ‘star’ or ‘rich’ – ie: it’s okay. I’d say:..and because here we are all equal and all stars, after all – something more on this line. This is how the American, of which I am one, is seen in the world right now.
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A coincidence: just this morning I read this line, from Susan Sontag’s The Imagination of Disaster:
Ours is indeed an age of extremity. For we live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror.
Thanks for the quote — i might put that one in!
I cannot not intervene: only reading Schopenhauer’s viewpoint should not comfort us in that life of worry and toil, fearing every freed time as a potential gulf of boredom. Leisure or “schole” as the greek used to say (and which gave “school”) is what you win over your workday, it is one of the few meaningful moments, where you can practice philosophy, science, where you can meditate or share time with your loved ones.
Just because United States citizens do not have any spiritual life whatsoever, are depressively materialistic and collapse under their fat, does not mean that the whole world is following their example.
As the 3rd chapter makes clear (it is called ‘America’) this is a book about a certain world, not exactly coterminous with the United States, where leisure has ceased to exist. There is no longer any distinction between work and play. And hence though looks for a new persona, not the man of leisure, but the gamer.
… OK, i can finish this now i’ve put the Felix (aka Player 3) to bed…
In 034 i quote Benjamin to the effect that the idler disappears with the abolition of slave labor, and with it the possibilty of the leisure that might give rise to a certain philosophy. But the philosophy of labor (praxis) has also been foreclosed. Its goal was to free human agency from necessity. (In practical terms, to shorten the working day). Only in the age of the Blackberry, the very distinction between work and leisure disappears.
In place of leisure, perhaps then a philosophy of boredom, one of the fundamental ‘attunements’ in Heidegger, and perhaps, even more than anxiety, a way into thinking. If not quite in the way he intended.
Allright I will read further, and apologies for the sentence on United States citizens, it was purposedly and stupidly made to provoke, and not very intelligent! (I was in a terrible mood).
With your train of thought approach, you’ve got the reader looking forward…and yet it’s disturbing to see that Schopenhauer ‘writes’: if you’re interested in sounding more authentic than God, then: “…Schopenhauer wrote:”
There will always be a Schopenhauer, and hence he always ‘writes’.
“The reserve armies of the bored zombie earth, fiddling with their cellphones, checking their watches. Bordem is the meter of history.”
I love that you have a chapter on boredom. We can all relate to boredom.It is an interesting “out of the box” way of looking at the habits of our daily modern life.
Oh theres gotta be more to life than just holding on. Great peice of work !
Paul: yes, we can allrelate to boredom, but is boredom always the same thing?
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I think this gains impact and clarity by dividing to a new paragraph between ‘good?’ and ‘Boredom…’ Go for it.
“Boredom arises out of the absence of necessity, of a yes, a no, a straight line.” What I find interesting about this is how it relates to open-ended and sandbox style games (i.e. Morrowind, Sim City). The most common complaint I’ve noticed in player reviews are that they become ‘bored’ with these types of games because they lack a focus, or don’t make it entirely clear what the necessary triggers/conditions are to advance further in the game. “What displaces boredom is the capacity to act in a way that transforms a situation.” Linear structured games can engage the player more because there is always (in most cases) a clear path one must take, that will ‘transform’ the situation, advancing story — unlocking new stages/abilities/etc. Although this doesn’t mean that the player will never find himself bored at some point, it just may take longer.
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