The Concept of Boredom: Its Impact on Work-Based Learning

Abstract

Heidegger’s analysis of work and especially his observations that the technological way of being leads to an instrumental approach to work encounters (through the enframing of the notion of work) lead not unnaturally to the potential for boredom. Indeed, boredom might be considered a significant consequence of modernity and this seems to be the point made by Simmel in his discussion on the rationalization of society and the instrumental money economy that strips modern society of its cohesion and purpose, replacing it with an emptiness. In view of the importance given by Simmel (1990), Heidegger and Weber (1958) to linkages of boredom with production and consumption point, it is surprising that boredom engenders little interest in the WBL literature, yet is a major “fundamental attunement of our Dasein” (1995a, p. 166). I am reminded that the notion of boredom, as a concept, has a history that has been beset with negative connotations.

This profound boredom is the fundamental attunement. We pass the time, in order to master it, because time becomes long in boredom. Time becomes long for us. Is it supposed to be short, then?

(Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 1995a, p. 80)