On Boredom (L’ennui); Or, The Happy Cupcake Syndrome

Happy Cupcakes

Boredom is not a phenomenon of the world (Greek -physis) – rather, it is an echo from an inert mind (Greek -kosmos).

In Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal writes of his 19^th century protagonist, Julien Sorel, that he scares his youthful peers because of his ‘energy’.  Just to introduce the character briefly, Julien is a bourgeois clerk/librarian who is employed by a wealthy Peer of the French aristocracy; he is poor, a country bumpkin from ‘lesser’ France (i.e., the provinces), and has the (mis-)fortune to be transplanted from the hinterlands of France into the brilliant and complex aristocratic ecosystem at the center of 19^th century Parisian society (i.e., the enriched, endowed, entitled, and ennobled). Julien is educated (in the tradition of poor humanist priests although he is not yet a member of the clergy), but he is also socially ambitious in a world where the social classes can never successfully mix. Stendhal’s plot hinges precisely on this “caste” tension, in which the irresistible force of a socially humble man’s individual merit and ambition is pitted against the immovable rock of society’s enshrined rules of inherited rank and lethargy.

            Because of Julien’s education and his personal intellectual merit and efforts (as well as a little pushing from his priestly teachers), once our budding Tartuffe becomes established in his clerical employ in Paris, he discovers that his learning and his reflective habits of mind intimidate the indolent but aristocratic young people in his entourage, who have inherited their merits and their high-society positions from their wealthy families and connections. From this strain between Julien and his social milieu shall unfold more complexity in the plot intrigue, of course; and so, writes Stendhal about this bourgeois arriviste Julien, “Dans ce siècle, où toute énergie est morte, son énergie leur fair peur.”

            The first Characteristic in the story for our consideration is énergie, which it seems should be understood as being something like intellectual daring, emotional drive, or just simply commitment to an idea that inspires and moves our hero to action. In the context of this description Stendhal creates an additional tension between ridicule, which serves to oppress and enthrall Parisian society in general, and an intriguing notion of personal vitality, which makes of certain individuals social mis-fits who seem always to be crusading for some greater fairness in, or amelioration of, the social context. To be exact, Stendhal’s reasoning is that the fear of ridicule has long since died in his 19^th century, leaving behind a particular hardened ‘moral’ shell for the coming generations of society; and this moral shell of codified and inflexible opinion both dominates individuals and transforms them into a homogeneous flock. This Staid Mass, in turn, demands from its younger constituent elements that each should conform to inherited ideas and usages, and it uses ridicule and mockery to subdue and beat the wayward down into submission. The idea is that we grow up into this cupcake mold, which in turn comforts the previous generations of our society because they can rest assured that one young cupcake will look just like another and that all cupcakes will look just alike for the foreseeable future. The promise of success in such a world lies in conformity—everyone is and acts like everyone else.

            (P.S.- John Locke, in his “A Letter about Toleration” §4 The limits on toleration, also writes about the zealotry that accompanies this type of imposed and imposing conformity in the Christian religious communities of his day; but he studiously avoids using the language of cupcake…)

The second Characteristic to which Stendhal draws our attention is the adhesive that unites the herd, this society, into one homogenous group. The binding glue for this particular 19^th century Parisian society, which is so tightly girdled and entrapped inside the mold of its received ideas, opinions, manners, etc., is ridicule. The vital piece of information here is that the younger generations are not even bothered by the fear of ridicule, because they have simply slipped into the dead, but actively constraining cupcake mold as inheritors of a previous generation’s battle of words and ideas. The young themselves have no intellectual or emotional investment in the mold that is imposed on them, and which they unwittingly adopt. They are taught the “proper” way of doing things, and their world asks of them not that they should have their own ideas and battles, but only that they should conform to what they have received from those who have gone before. The (intellectual) battles are long over; theirs is now simply to continue to change the dressings on the metaphorical and never-healing wounds.

            In his chronicling of 19^th century France, Stendhal minutely observes and dissects the phenomenon of cultural transmission. There is an inherently dialectical and dialogical tension among and between generations. One generation fights for its manners, usages, and beliefs, and then passes that acquired ‘body’ of beliefs and actions onto the children and the children’s children, who receive and believe because they respect (fear?) their parents and their elders. In the best of cases, from the point of view of a Nietzschean philosopher anyway, as the child becomes the adult of the new generation he will challenge the teachings he has received, fighting his own battles and winning through to his own understanding of the world. In most cases, though, this struggle will not occur (so also says Nietzsche!); and the next generation, aimless, will meekly ramble around until it comes together into a free-ranging herd, conforming to and obeying the cupcake-type precepts and “truths” it received in the mother-milk.

This brings us to the 3^rd characteristic that interests Stendhal in Le Rouge et le Noir – ennui, or boredom.  Cupcakes are inherently bored. They are not encouraged to challenge their shape, nor the color of their sprinkles, nor their position on the serving plate; they are simply expected to sit patiently, in all the glory of their cupcake-ness, and wait until whatever is going to happen inevitably happens. So it is with every generation’s children.

            Except on the rare occasion, coming-into-adulthood is not marked by us personally doing battle with the dragons that live in the hidden places of our minds, dragons that have snuck in through the education we have received and tucked themselves away in the corners of our imagination, dragons that have carefully secreted themselves in our most shadowy places and there patiently await the Dawning-of-Their-Day. (P.S.- The image of dragons is from the first discourse in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra; Immanuel Kant would have very properly called such ‘mind-critters’, Verstandeswesen).

            More typically, coming-into-adulthood tends to be marked by acceptance of and conformity to the teachings and traditions received from the hands of the Elders. This means that the excitement of discovery for self, the heuristic call of the wild, and of engaging in one’s own personal and private ‘heroic’ tussles against the demons that attend us and stalk us, is not only not an outcome desired by the Elders of our societies (including our educational institutions), but is aggressively discouraged, indeed excluded from those individual right-of-passage experiences that are considered, at least by Nietzschean philosophers, to be healthy and good. So it would seem that we may conclude that it is therefore ‘the way of things’ in society that we should be profoundly bored.

            Stendhal, like Nietzsche after him with his ideas about the world’s Great Men and of social evolution through their Will to Power, understood that each generation is automatically the hero of its own stories. However, while this may be true of generations, most individuals probably will not ever become authentically heroic, precisely because they are being pressed and molded into the societal cupcake patterns (teachings and traditions) that require no individual thought or action, but only obedience to the principles of conformity and a passive mind. This irrepressible ennui at the heart of Stendhal’s vision of 19^th century France, whose controlling mechanism is ridicule, is directly translatable today by our alpha-state inducing relationship to technology, which first lures our eyes to the screen, then dulls our brains and senses. Ennui – the emotional flat-line of the Nietzschied masses. This is the defining characteristic of the Merseaults (…remember Camus’ L’Etranger) of our world, of the “outsider” who does not remember whether his mother died today, yesterday, or whether she is still sitting at home right now having her afternoon tea and crumpets.

The world become existential, and therefore ultimately unpredictable, still however invites us to dare. To dare to rebel; to dare to listen to the sound of the different drummer; and to dare to follow the path toward that new beat by taking the high road of our own thoughts and dreams and visions, that most solitary and desert way which so titillated and so seduced Stendhal’s Julien Sorel and Mlle de la Mole, and which so profoundly enthused Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. To be sure, the terminus of this journey is seldom, if ever, happiness. But then how could it be? Are we not, after all, daring to break the cupcake mold, and thereby necessarily drawing down upon ourselves the disapprobation, indeed the wrath, of the Elder generations of cupcake makers? But while this journey’s end may not be happiness in the sense of social contentment, Nietzsche has argued that we will finally find there freedom in the truest philosophical sense.

            And what will these new cupcakes-without-molds look like? Some will make great contributions to the world of men; some will wreak great havoc. Some will become admired; some reviled. All will be Rebels in courage. Thinkers of thoughts independent. Ayn-Randian-type Architects of their own realities. New-world Iconoclasts. The Ridiculed. The Isolated and Insular. The Street Fighters of the world.  The Alive. And, at the end of the day –the Dead.

Further reading: Roland Barthe’s essay, “Toys”.