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of his boring life, he would be laid in a boring grave, above which
a plain headstone gives sole evidence that there lies a boring man.
Because the root of all evil is boredom. Moreover, Kierkegaard
adds that if we need a starting point, we cannot go too far astray
if we say that all people are boring. Boredom is just so enjoyable.
All people enjoy boredom—it only causes them to stop existing.
Boredom results in a kind of crowd, a faceless army of people who
feel pretty good in this state, a state where instead of insufficiency,
facelessness, and uniqueness you get uniformity, where quantity
rules instead of quality. In the crowd, the herd mentality eliminates
all responsibility, whether that is responsibility for oneself or for
others. Action ceases and is replaced by a state of fixed, passive
existence. This starts an endless process of leveling, and we can
follow it back to the beginning of the world. The gods were bored,
so they created humans. Adam was bored because he was alone, and
therefore Eve came into being. And from that moment boredom
also Since that moment, “from that time boredom entered the
world and grew in exact proportion to the growth of population.”
(Kierkegaard 2004, p.583. SKS 2-3.) The vast number of people in
the world indicates neither aloneness nor the end of indifference.
Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored en famille.
After that, the population of the world increased and the nations
were bored en masse. To amuse themselves, they hit upon the notion
of building a tower so high that it would reach the sky. This notion
is just as boring as the tower was high and is a terrible demonstra¬
tion of how boredom had gained the upper hand. Then they were
dispersed around the world, just as people now travel abroad, but they
continued to be bored. And what consequences this boredom had:
humankind stood tall and fell far, first through Eve, then from the
Babylonian tower ,, Adam was bored alone, then Adam and Eve were
bored in union, then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored
en famille, then the population increased and the peoples were bored
en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of building
a tower so high it reached the sky. The very idea is as boring as the