The-Conquest-of-Happiness-by-Bertrand-Russell

Chapter 4: Boredom and
excitement
Boredom as a factor in human behaviour has
received, in my opinion, far less attention than it
deserves. It has been, I believe, one of the great
motive powers throughout the historical epoch, and
is so at the present day more than ever. Boredom
would seem to be a distinctively human emotion.
Animals in captivity, it is true, become listless,
pace up and down, and yawn, but in a state of
nature I do not believe that they experience
anything analogous to boredom. Most of the time
they are on the look-out for enemies, or food, or
both; sometimes they are mating, sometimes they
are trying to keep warm. But even when they are
unhappy, I do not think that they are bored.
Possibly anthropoid apes may resemble us in this
respect, as in so many others, but having never
lived with them I have not had the opportunity to
make the experiment. One of the essentials of
boredom consists in the contrast between present