From the Pleistocene to the Cubicle
Shock me, don't bore me
➡ This Week’s Takeaway: The purpose of boredom.
Run for Your Life
You’re running, not for fun but for your life. Legs throb, lactic acid clogs them, the sludge that is your blood creeps, your body working against the brain’s synaptic firing.
A communication breakdown.
Your thoughts are sharp, clear, crisp, and decisive, like a freshly honed blade. A fire in your chest rages—not a new feeling; it’s familiar. Your nose is bleeding, maybe from a fall or the strain on your blood vessels. You want to keep going, but your legs feel like molasses. The chemistry of the moment dictates you shift gears and turn to face your pursuer.
Flight mode to Fight mode.
The First Mountain Man
John Colter was an integral member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. Capable of independently scouting and hunting, Lewis and Clark relied on Colter. Today, he’s considered America’s original mountain man. Physically capable and intellectually curious, he was also an effective communicator, establishing trading relationships with Native American tribes.
In 1809, Colter and John Potts (two original members of the Corps of Discovery) ventured into Blackfeet territory to trap beaver. An unsanctioned endeavor, they tried to stay under the radar. When encountering numerous Backfeet, Colter immediately recognized the inevitability of their capture and surrendered while Potts attempted escape, resulting in him being porcupined with arrows.
After being stripped naked, the Blackfeet soldiers told Colter to run. Chased by a group of soldiers, Colter became the game, a plaything used for sport. How long would he last? Whoever caught Colter would get the reward of killing him. The odds of survival weren’t great; probably similar to when a cat finds a mouse. Escape is possible but unlikely.
Beyond the Cubicle
It’s 2025. Alarm clock. Shower. Coffee. Remote starter. Warmth, shelter, protection. Screen on and the work begins: shift electrons with our fingers and mouse. Sleepy? More coffee. Bored? Doomscroll.
This is safety, this is the pinnacle.
The villain is boredom. Too much boredom or not enough?
In our collective quest to avoid boredom, we always have a screen to distract us. Given a moment alone, look at your phone, the crutch, a nervous twitch, a contemporary equivalent to a cigarette—something to do with your hands.
The phone, the algorithm, and social media trick our brains into thinking we’re not bored; they give us a taste of thrill, intrigue, hope, and fulfillment, but not the complete meal, so we never feel full. Instead of feeling that boredom and subsequently looking for something else to do, we scroll. But at the end of the day, our hunger remains, our boredom persists.
The Exception?
John Colter’s Run and life experience, in general, may seem exceptional.
The exception, however, is the current moment and the generic resident of the Global North: the modern knowledge worker. This knowledge worker is the product of modernity, a child born from industrialization and the liberation of a wealthy middle class no longer constrained by day-long labor (Uehara and Ikegaya).
It is cubicle life that is exceptional: humans engaged in hunting and gathering for a couple of million years prior to the relatively recent technology we call agriculture, developed only ten thousand years ago. Humans lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle for ninety-nine percent of their time on Earth. As Paul Shepard declared, we are a “people of the Pleistocene.”
Fast-forward to the modern and increasingly urbanized world, it’s no wonder we sometimes feel out of place staring at a computer screen all day.
Ranging for miles, foraging, hunting, surviving, adapting, then returning to your tribe didn’t allow for much boredom.
The Modern Labrador
Let’s say we breed a dog for a specific purpose (e.g., retrieving gamebirds) for seven generations to create a dog that intuitively retrieves and is suited to jump and swim in frigid waters (e.g., thick coat, above-average webbing on its feet). We take one of these retriever puppies to live in a fenced suburban yard for the eighth generation. Caged all day, unable to retrieve. What’s the outcome? The answer isn’t a head-scratcher: the dog becomes overweight, barks too much, jumps on people, and wants to sleep all day. This is the modern-day lab: the chubby, friendly “family” dog.
The lab is “happy” in an anthropogenic sort of way, but will it ever hold a dead duck in its mouth?
The analogy to humans is hardly a stretch. At each fork in the road, we choose efficiency and comfort, even to the point of detriment where we become the modern-day labrador retriever.
What Are We Afraid of?
In 2014, Timothy Wilson et al. published an article in the journal Science, entitled, “Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind,” with chilling, albeit not surprising, findings about our inability to be alone with our thoughts:
In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, even if that something is negative.
(Wilson et al., bold emphasis my own)
They found that men were more likely to administer negative stimulation in the form of a shock, 67% compared to women’s 25%, likely “due to the tendency for men to be higher in sensation-seeking” (Wilson et al.)
The Purpose of Boredom
The distance between Colter and his pursuers increased, except for one soldier who was as out of breath as Colter. A miscalculated spear launch resulted in a deadly consequence; Colter took the Blackfeet soldier’s spear and killed him. Colter then hid in a beaver lodge and eventually made it to safety.
What elements of our shared human history can we borrow to address our contemporary boredom crisis? What’s the point of boredom?
Movement into new places, a concrete link between thought and action- these were regularly present in Colter’s life.
Play is a generally accepted remedy for bored children. Spontaneity, freedom, and surprise in play environments keep kids from being bored. These activities also have external benefits, such as socialization and cultivating independence.
The tougher nut to crack is adult boredom. Since our phones trick us into thinking we’re not bored, we need to bypass them and recognize the utilitarian purpose of boredom:
Our brains are telling us to seek out something new to do so we’re no longer bored.
Boredom does not suit humans. John Colter had Yellowstone and Grand Teton to discover and occupy his mind; what are we left with to explore?
There’s an element of relativity here; what one person finds captivating could bore another. One person’s skydiving is another’s spooncarving.
In this sense, boredom is a gift. It’s a “check engine” light for our brains that warns us that our minds need attention. Our phones are akin to bypassing the warning light by only pulling the fuse; the lights are no longer on, but the problem is still there, only superficially corrected.
I was actually listening to Jonathan Haidt this morning, talking about how we’ve traded boredom and risk for safety and convenience. The disconnect from our own nature—our need for movement, purpose, and real engagement with the world (and each other)—is something we barely notice most days. This is so timely, and so well articulated.
I've read a couple of histories of the Lewis & Clark expedition. When reading about the physical strength and mental fortitude of the participants, I had the sense that they were members of a different species. Just shows how much we have weakened/deteriorated in our post-industrial cocoon.