We feel strongly about [boredom], but rarely discuss it. Occasionally it's a subject of nostalgia, as in, "Remember how wonderful it was, two years ago, when business news was boring?"

It occupies some philosophers, most of them following Martin Heidegger. He considered profound boredom the modern era's basic mood. Not always original, he pointed out that waiting for a train can be boring. He disliked the industrial world and argued that the unrelenting desire for novelty reflects our fear of being bored.

...

My own mind fills up with what Heidegger called the "muffling fog" of boredom during all announcements given on aircraft, particularly those filled with plonkingly ordinary data, such as the news that we are to travel from Calgary to Toronto, via northern Ontario, at 35,000 feet. (If we were going via New Orleans, at 350 feet, it might be notable.)

An article in the summer issue of The American Scholar by Mark Edmundson of the University of Virginia puts the blame for tedium, apathy and the rest on other people, in particular his academic colleagues.

¶ 5:43 PM