The Madman and the Death of Boredom

Inspired by Nietzsche’s infamous “God is dead” Parable of the Madman

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a screen in the bright morning hours, who ran into the marketplace and cried ceaselessly:

“I seek boredom! I seek boredom!”

As many who did not believe in boredom were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter.
“Has it wandered off like a child lost in the woods?” asked one.
“Has it overslept? Is it late like a sluggish guest?” said another.
“Or is it hiding in the shadows of TikTok and Netflix? Has it emigrated to the far country of monks and hermits?”
- thus they shouted and laughed.

The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
“Boredom is dead. Boredom remains dead. And we have killed it - you and I.
All of us are its murderers. But how did we do this?
How could we drink distraction like water?
Scroll faster than the sun? Swipe away silence itself?
What festivals of banality, what sacred games of triviality must we now invent to cleanse ourselves of this blood?
Where shall we go when every moment is filled, and nothing remains empty enough to give shape to longing?

Do you not feel it? The abyss of endless amusement yawns before us.
Depth no longer grows - because nothing is still long enough to take root.
We are condemned to stimulation without satisfaction,
to pleasures that leave us hungrier than before.

Boredom was the womb of creation.
But we strangled the mother in her sleep, and now demand her child without her labor.
Do we not now wander as hollow men, without silence, without waiting, without rapture?”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his audience; they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment.

At last, he dashed his screen to the ground, and it shattered into countless pixels.
“I have come too soon,” he said then; “my time is not yet.
This monstrous event is still on its way, still traveling - it has not yet reached the ears of men.
Boredom is dead, and yet they sit scrolling as if nothing had happened…”