Oldal 72 [72]
OCR
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 demonstration 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
