Lars Svendsen Quotes

For Heidegger, boredom is a privileged fundamental mood because it leads us directly into the very problem complex of being and time.

Self-identity is inextricably bound up with the identity of the surroundings.

A utopia cannot, by definition, include boredom, but the ‘utopia’ we are living in is boring.

Traditions have been replaced by lifestyles.

One mood can be replaced by another, but it is impossible to leave attunement altogether. However, profound boredom brings us as close to a state of un-attunement as we can come.

Animals can be understimulated, but hardly bored.

Traditions brings continuity to one’s existence, but this sort of continuity is precisely what has been increasingly lost throughout modernity.

In order to live a meaningful life, humans need answers, i.e., a certain understanding of basic existential questions. These ‘answers’ do not have to be made completely explicit, as a lack of words does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but one has to able to place oneself in the world and build a relatively stable identity. The founding of such an identity is only possible if one can tell a relatively coherent story about who one has been and who one intends to be.

Anthropocentrism gave rise to boredom, and when anthropomorphism was replaced by technocentrism, boredom became even more profound.

The difference between imaginary and real object creates a continuos desire

Heidegger’s concept for the kind of being we ourselves are is Dasein. Literally it means ‘being-there’.We are the sort of beings who are there, in the world. What characterizes Dasein is that its existence is a concern for it in its existence.

Da bi nešto moglo da dobije visoku vrednost, najvažnije je da to drugi ljudi ne poseduju.

We spontaneously relate to ourselves and the world by means of the technical object.

To become mature is to accept that life cannot remain in the enchanted realm of childhood, that life to a certain extent is boring, but at the same time to realize that this does not make life unliveable.

Man is a world-forming being, a being that actively constitutes his own world, but when everything is always already fully coded, the active constituting of the world is made superfluous, and we lose friction in relation to the world.We Romantics need a meaning that we ourselves realize – and the person who is preoccupied with self-realization inevitably has a meaning problem. This is no one collective meaning in life any more, a meaning that it is up to the individual to participate in. Nor is it that easy to find an own meaning in life, either. The meaning that most people embrace is self-realization as such, but it is not obvious what type of self is to be realized, nor what should possibly result from it. The person who is certain as regards himself will not ask the question as to who he is. Only a problematic self feels the need for realization.

What we are experiencing is experiential poverty. Such poverty may not only be about a lack of experiences, where nothing is happening. An abundance of activities can also create a feeling of experiential poverty. And this last point is interesting. Things just get to be too much. the problem, according to Lars Fr. H. Svendsen, is that we carry on seeking "increasingly more powerful experiences" instead of pausing to breathe deeply, shut out the world and use the time to experience ourselves. The idea that boredom can be avoided by constantly pursuing something new, being available around the clock, sending messages and clicking further, watching something you haven't yet seen, is naive. The more you try to avoid boredom, the more bored you become. Routine is like that too... Busying oneself becomes a goal in and of itself, instead of allowing that same restlessness to lead you somewhere further.

And Pascal underlined that it is not a good thing to have all one’s needs satisfied.

the ‘strange melancholy which often haunts the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of their abundance.

Diversion might seem to be preferable to the misery of life, because it can create an illusion of happiness – at least for a while.

the person who advocates work as a cure for boredom is confusing a temporary removal of the symptoms with curing a disease.

your life’s most important lesson … that you are completely insignificant.

Only those who can truly give themselves a burden are free.

Folk bør ha rett til å fremsette feilaktige eller avskyelige påstander, men man er da også i sin fulle rett til å hevde at det de sier er feilaktig og avskyelig.

Live a lie, dance forever.

Boredom always contains a critical element, because it expresses the idea that either a given situation or existence as a whole is deeply unsatisfying.

There is always a price to pay for love, and loneliness is part of that price.

Love may seem to be enough when one does not possess it, but when one has, it will always be insufficient.

Time collapses, implodes, into a vast, empty present.

God had a more powerful meaning-providing force than Coca-Cola and Elvis, and no matter how beautiful Marilyn Monroe was, she was hardly in the same league as the Christ’s Mother.

Samo odstupanje postalo je deo ujednačenosti. Svi danas moraju biti "nešto posebno", a da se ne ističu na bilo koji način. Odstupanje je dosadno. Kada je individualizam lagodnost, i konformizam postaje individualističan.

Diary of a Country Priest: So I said to myself that people are consumed by boredom. Naturally, one has to ponder for a while to realise this – one does not see it immediately. It is a like some sort of dust. One comes and goes without seeing it, one breathes it in, one eats it, one drinks it, and it is so fine that it doesn’t even scrunch between one’s teeth. But if one stops up for a moment, it settles like a blanket over the face and hands. One has to constantly shake this ash-rain off one. That is why people are so restless.7 It

At the same time, boredom is inhuman because it robs human life of meaning, or possibly it is an expression of the fact that such a meaning is absent.

The work seemed to me to be completely meaningless, and I completed it almost like an automaton.

By completely ignoring the emotions, including boredom, the emotions were to be made to cease, hopefully to be replaced by a profound peace of mind, something close to the ataraxia of antiquity

I think that once you see emotions from a certain angle, you can never think of them as real again. That’s what more or less has happened to me’,

As mentioned, boredom is not a question of work or freedom but of meaning.

this loss of meaning reduces human life to something analogous to an existence that is purely animal.

Dasein is bored because life lacks a purpose and a meaning – and the task of boredom is to draw our attention to precisely this.

We seek to be occupied because it liberates us from the emptiness of boredom.

فقط با ترک جمع و رفتن به دنبال خلوت تنهایى است که فرد مى تواند «آن خویشتن والاترش» را کشف کند. طبق نظر نیچه تعامل با دیگران فقط گهگدار مى تواند خوب و مفید باشد، اما آن هم باز به شرطى که پس از آن بتواند آسوده خاطر به آغوش خلوت خویش بازگردد. آن خلوت گزینِ نیچه هر شخص دیگرى را، حتى اگر یک دوست باشد، مانعى بر سرِ راهِ گفتگویش با خویشتنِ خویش مى یابد: «براى فرد خلوت گزیده دوست هم همیشه یک شخص سوم است: شخص سوم چوب پنبه اى است که مانع از این مى شود که گفتگوى دونفره به اعماق برود.»

It is only by leaving the crowd and seeking solitude that a person can discover his "higher self". According to Nietzsche, interaction with others can be good and useful only occasionally, but that too on the condition that after that he can return to his solitude. Nietzsche's recluse sees any other person, even if he is a friend, as an obstacle to his conversation with himself: "For a reclusive person, a friend is always a third person: the third person is cotton wool that prevents this. May the two-person conversation go deep.

Ensomheten har store konsekvenser for mange menneskers livskvalitet, og også for deres fysiske og mentale helse. Dessuten er den vanskelig å snakke om fordi den er så skambelagt.

C.S Lewis skriver: "Så snart vi er fullt bevisste, oppdager vi ensomheten. Vi behøver andre fysisk, følelsesmessig, intellektuelt; vi behøver dem hvis vi skal begripe noe som helst, til og med oss selv.

Du kan i grunnen ikke bli et menneske helt alene. Det er din tilknytning til andre og de erfaringene du gjør med dem, som overhodet gjør deg menneskelig.

På seg selv kjenner man slett ikke andre, og ofte ikke engang seg selv.

Det finnes også en institusjonalisert alenehet hvor man anerkjenner at alle har rett til et privatliv.

Privatlivet er en institusjon hvor det sosiale fellesskapet fortsatt er intakt selv om man har anledning til å trekke seg ut av det.

Forvisning fra fellesskapet har vært betraktet som en av de hardeste straffene et menneske kan utsettes for, og i antikken ble det betraktet som nesten like strangt som en dødsstraff. I dagens fengsler betraktes isolat av mange som en grusom straff.

De fleste bøker om følelsenes filosofi eller psykologi unneholder ikke et kapittel om ensomhet. Som oftest er temaet fullstendig utelatt eller det nevnes i høyden i forbifarten.

Heidegger protesterer mot ordtaket om at kjærlighet gjør blind, og fremhever snarere at kjærligheten får oss til å se ting som vi ikke kan se når vi ikke er forelsket.

Når du er i dårlig humør, er deler av verden avstengt for deg, og du klarer for eksempel ikke glede deg over andres glede.

Ensomme hjelper også andre i mindre utstrekning enn ikke-ensomme. De ser også ut til å føle mindre empati for andre.

Jo mer tillitsfull du er, desto mindre ensom, og jo mindre ensom, og jo mindre tillitsfull, desto mer ensom.

I land som Norge og Danmark mener et klart flertall at innbyggerne at man kan stole på de fleste mennesker, mens bare èn av ti mener det samme i land som Brasil og Tyrkia.

Som det heter i George Eliots Misslemarch "Han stolte ikke på hennes hengivenhet, og hvilken ensomhet er mer ensom enn mistilliten?". I misstilliten er du helt og fullt overlatt til deg selv.

Imidertid er det godt belegg for at tillitsfulle personer har en mer korrekt bedømmelse av andre menneskers personlighet og hensikter.

Mistillit forstrer mer mistillit, blant annet fordi den isolerer en fra de situasjonene hvor man kunne lært å få tillit til andre.

All humans are lonely, some more than others, but no one escapes loneliness

Boredom is the ‘privilege’ of modern man. While there are reasons for believing that joy and anger have remained fairly constant throughout history, the amount of boredom seems to have increased dramatically. The world has apparently become more boring.

If boredom increases, it means that there is a serious fault in society or culture as a conveyor of meaning. Meaning has to be understood as a whole. We become socialized within an overall meaning (no matter what form this takes) that gives meaning to the individual elements in our lives. Another traditional expression of such an overall meaning is ‘culture’. Many theoreticians of modernity have concluded that culture has disappeared and that it has been replaced, for example, by ‘civilization’. If boredom increases, this is presumably because the overall meaning has disappeared. There naturally is a mutual relationship between the overall meaning and the submeanings, i.e., between culture on the one hand and cultural products on the other – and we can also ask ourselves to what extent things are still bearers of culture. Do things still thing?, to quote Heidegger. To put it another way: Do the things have a cohesive influence on a culture?

One does not know what to do with time when one is bored, for it is precisely there that one’s capacities lie fallow and no real opportunities present themselves.

El tedio es pariente de la muerte, pero se trata de un parentesco paradójico pues, mientras que el tedio profundo se experimenta como una especie de muerte, la muerte se presenta como la única ruptura total posible con el tedio

El tedio está ligado a un modo de pasar el tiempo en el que el tiempo mismo no es un horizonte de posibilidades, sino algo que debemos pasar

El vacío del tiempo en el tedio no es un vacío de sucesos, porque en la actualidad siempre sucede algo, aunque no sea otra cosa que la contemplación de cómo seca la pintura sobre la pared. El vacío del tiempo es un vacío de sentido

Un criterio para distinguir el tedio situacional del existencial podría ser la consideración de que, mientras que el primero contiene la añoranza de algo que se desea, el segundo añora el deseo mismo

Es como si toda la reflexión naciese de una mirada sentimental reflejada en un nostálgico espejo retrovisor [...] Una esperanza exagerada, tal vez; de ahí que dé lugar a esa ausencia, a ese vacío. Anticipamos un duelo metafísico que está basado en una ausencia que quizá demos por supuesta. El sentido que buscamos en la ausencia de sentido, la experiencia que buscamos en la ausencia de experiencia y el tiempo en la ausencia de tiempo, ¿no serán sólo ilusiones? La conciencia de una pérdida no garantiza que hayamos perdido algo y, por tanto, tampoco habría nada que recuperar

El ser humano tiene necesidades que determinan bien la naturaleza, bien la sociedad, bien la fuerza de la imaginación. Cuando los objetivos no se ven cumplidos, nos vemos abocados al sufrimiento; cuando los alcanzamos, obtenemos el tedio como resultado. En razón de la insatisfacción en el mundo real, el hombre crea un mundo imaginario, y así es, en efecto, como nacen todas las religiones: como un intento de sustraerse al tedio (paráfrasis de Schopenhauer)

Como si hubiese huido de mí todo lo que he poseído, y no hubiese de satisfacerme si regresase - Franz Kafka

Boredom normally arises when we cannot do what we want to do, or have to do something we do not want to do. But what about when we have no idea of what we want to do, when we have lost the capacity to get our bearings in life? Then we can find ourselves in a profound boredom that is reminiscent of a lack of willpower, because the will cannot get a firm grip anywhere. Fernando Pessoa has described this as ‘To suffer without suffering, to want without desire, to think without reason.