Boredom

Canonical definition

The phenomenological signature of the exhaustion of the Thinker's Ground-Resolution activation condition: the state reached when an Object's novelty and capacity-deepening potential have been consumed and no unresolved residue remains for the ground-resolution function to operate on. Boredom is the endogenous termination signal of the I-process (as distinct from A-satiation, which follows deficit-repair). It is not a failure of the Thinker but the correct signal that the ground-resolution function has nothing further to resolve in the present Object, and it is the signal that recruits the Thinker toward the next unresolved Object. The next unresolved Object may be one the field presents or one the Thinker sets itself, and a question set from within ends Boredom on the same terms as one the field supplies. Nothing guarantees either, and Boredom persists for as long as neither is present. The impoverishment of a field of anything novel, unusual, or unresolved, whether through monotony, over-familiarity, or the removal of any Object the Thinker can engage, is the impoverishment of the conditions the ground-resolution function requires to operate, and Boredom is the felt registration of that impoverishment. Boredom stands in complementary relation to Curiosity: Curiosity marks the presence of the activation condition, Boredom marks its exhaustion.