In this reading, the author, Derek Owens, mainly discusses how land development, poor neighborhood planning, and an overall uninteresting physical environment makes young residents of these areas more prone to a condition known as "hyperboredom." According to Owens, hyperboredom is characterized by "all people, objects, relations, and activities are permanently, and seemingly unaccountably, stripped of interest...the search for anything of interest itself appears utterly uninteresting, worthless, or totally ineffective." Furthermore, Owens claims that communities in which hyperboredom is especially prevalent are prone to increased levels of racism, vandalism, and violence. This reading explains that the root-cause of hyperboredom lies in a misconception that "self" and "world" are separate, a misconception that arises when one does not feel the need to feel attached to a place--economically, culturally, or spiritually. The author gives examples in which hyperboredom had a causal effect on negative behavior in the form of his own students' personal accounts. Owens explains that educators bear responsibility to help their students realize the value of their local environments, which will in turn help them realize a new kind of self-worth that would help combat the hyperboredom that is almost inevitable in our present consumer culture.
While Owens presents a valid argument on how a detachment between one's self and environment might lead to socially destructive behavior, I have a hard time believing that hyperboredom is a widespread/significant issue or that it is even a real thing. I personally come from a town where there is "nothing to do" and nearly every Friday and Saturday night were spent at the local Taco Bell. Our main sources of entertainment were house parties, video games, and sports. We knew that our town was incredibly boring and we would mention how boring it was every weekend. If anything, it brought us closer together knowing that we were all stuck there and we had to rely on each other for entertainment.
The student narratives presented in the reading generally described a high school student population that would get drunk, then go get food. From my standpoint at least, this is expected and normal behavior of high school students. To me, the peculiar part of the reading is that hundreds of kids would gather in the same parking lot week after week. Considering this was written 13 years ago, I simply can't imagine a high school student population in 2014 interacting with each other like this, especially with the current prevalence of social media and more accessible forms of entertainment (a product of technological advancement). For the sake of argument, even if a high school student in the late 1990s/early 2000s growing up in a "boring" town were to lose a college scholarship, placing the blame on the fact that he doesn't like his town seems like a stretch, not to mention a blatant rejection of personal responsibility. A student having a scholarship that would give a clear opportunity to leave a boring town, then blaming the loss of the scholarship on the fact that the town is so boring?
Zyad,
ReplyDeleteI want to respond to your doubt that hyperboredom actually exists. As you quoted, “hyperboredom is characterized by "all people, objects, relations, and activities [being] permanently, and seemingly unaccountably, stripped of interest...the search for anything of interest itself appears utterly uninteresting, worthless, or totally ineffective." This definition sounds so familiar to me that I also doubt the need for a new term for it. It sounds like the definition of clinical depression.
I think you are right to point out that the boring design of your town had a positive effect by forcing people to come together to make their own fun. My situation growing up was the opposite. I had a place in the woods with a river to do whatever I wanted but I didn’t have any people there to help pass the time. In both of our cases there was reasonable cause for boredom but it was overcome. Kids can be creative and find fun anywhere that they are allowed to. It’s not, I propose, the problem that the physical environment is limiting but that there are rules about how the environment can be interacted with. These rules are enforced more in public spaces so people are either to be alone or obedient to rules that have no clear connection to their safety or values.
Your points about social media and personal responsibility are independently agreeable to me- I see them both happening. But that the kids are hanging out in a virtual environment may actually be worse than the parking lot. People are not programs so we can deal with that cognitive existence for a while but eventually this capability wears out. What is driving these kids to be awake into the middle of the night drinking? What are they looking for that they couldn’t find while the sun was up?
I think that this trend being named hyperboredom is not helping reverse it and that it may not have needed a name at all. But I do think something is happening. It is not the total population being affected and it is happening gradually so that it may not appear to be happening at all but I do believe that the increasing layers of abstraction are wearing us down and making us tired and leaving us feeling disconnected. We have gone beyond using isolated abstraction as a problem solving technique to living lives that never really fully let go of abstraction. Abstraction itself is not this issue but that it is going on so much unconsciously.
I am also unconvinced that "hyperbordom" is an actual thing. As Nigel stated above, the provided definition of hyperboredom sounds exactly like a symptom of clinical depression. I also come from a small town with relatively nothing to do besides go out to bars, or hang out at a friends house, doing the same things with the same people time and time again. While there is a high prevalence of crime including violence, drugs, and gangs, in certain areas of Zanesville, I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the poor design of our town and more to do with the lifestyle those people chose to live and even with the way they were brought up. Like you, we all made our own fun and by doing so, it brought us closer together. The weekends usually consisted football games followed by house parties or drinking by a fire, which would turn into, essentially, a huge sleep-over with nearly everyone in my high school class. To us, this was fun. I don't think teenagers getting drunk and eating food is a result of hyperboredom. I think it's part of their need to rebel and defy the rules every once in a while. I think our interconnectedness and strong sense of unity made us feel like we belonged. For some, this might not be the case, and I could see how that would lead to feelings of being disconnected, however, I do not believe the poor design of a town is to blame.
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