The Spiritual Significance of Overload Boredom

by Sharday C. Mosurinjohn

The spiritual crisis of the twenty-first century is overload boredom. There is more information, content, and stimulation than ever before, and none of it is waiting passively to be consumed. The demands exceed our capacities.The Spiritual Significance of Overload Boredom makes the case that withdrawal and resistance are not our only we can choose kedia, an ethic of care. Rather than conceiving the world of information as external, Sharday Mosurinjohn turns to the sensational and emotional, focusing on the ways the digital age has radically reconfigured our interior lives. Using an innovative method of affective aesthetic speculation, Mosurinjohn engages the world of art, literature, and comedy for a series of unexpected case studies that make strange otherwise familiar scenes of overload texting, browsing social media, and performing information work. Ultimately, she shows that the opposite of boredom is not interest but meaning, and that we can only make it by curating the overload.The Spiritual Significance of Overload Boredom is a bold and original intervention for the present condition, unsettling the framing of existing work around technological modernity and its discontents.

Genres: Philosophy

184 pages, Paperback

Published August 15, 2022

Reviews

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do we even feel bored anymore? How can we, when everywhere we turn is a new opportunity for information, stimulation, and sensation? There is no escaping the constant deluge and bombardment of information in our digital age. Stress levels, depression and anxiety, and states of meaningless wandering are all on the rise. But how did we get here and what can we do about it? To find out, read the Spiritual Significance of Overload Boredom! With deft analysis, clever writing, and an intellectual acuity found only in the rarest writers, Sharday Mosurinjohn has produced a text that truly captures the spirit of our age. Dancing between philosophy, art, psychology, history, and the study of religion, the book guides you through our current overloaded situation and offers a glimmer of hope, through a kedic (caring) curation of our relationship to data and the world.

This is a MUST-read for anyone looking to make meaning out of the chaos of information!

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I can think after finishing this is: wow. What a wonderful, relevant, and absolutely necessary book. I came across it by chance last time I was out book shopping, and I was so thrilled when I found it because it's related to the research I'm currently working on. And anyway, I find the concept of boredom caused by an oversaturation of media ("overload," as Mosurinjohn calls it here) so fascinating. I've been reading things like this for two months now, and it's drastically changed my outlook, and probably my life. For the better!

Hoo boy, this did not disappoint. From the second I started reading it, I was hooked. Lately it's been hard for me to get properly into a book, and I find it more difficult to go back to one than to set it aside. But it's different with this; I could read it for long periods at a time, and I was constantly taking notes (for my research and my own personal interest). It's so well-written and thoughtful, and provocative in the sense that it makes you think about and confront things that are usually easier to ignore. Admittedly I'm not an expert in these things, and I am still just a student so my knowledge is limited, and that limited knowledge sometimes made it a bit difficult to understand because I feel like there were some things I was just expected to know, but overall I found it fairly easy to comprehend. It's a book that involves a lot of thought and time for reflection, and it does challenge you, but it's so worth it.

I'm so thrilled to have read it. It truly is one of the most profound books I've read this year, if not ever. I highly recommend it to everyone, even if you've never read anything about boredom before. I think it's essential reading, honestly, in our day and age.