The Thrill of Boredom – NYTimes.com by Peter Toohey.
Existential boredom, it is claimed, can infect a person’s very existence with unrelieved emptiness, isolation and alienation. And it takes in many well-known conditions, evoked by such names as melancholia, ennui, mal de vivre, tristesse, taedium vitae, acedia, spiritual despair, existentialist “nausea” — and garden-variety depression.
Boredom is counterrevolutionary, it may also be evolutionary.
it acts as an early warning that certain situations may be dangerous to human well-being. It’s not unlike disgust, another emotion that helps humans prosper. Just as disgust stops you from eating what is noxious, so boredom, in social settings, alerts you to situations that can do no psychological good. Boredom, interpreted properly, might act as an alarm.