The boredom of plenty: why rich societies grow restless

Bored with abundance: the rich society doesn't know what to do with its time

Peace, food, material superabundance, more wealth than work. The verdict some economists pass on our era sounds like a utopia come true. So where does the discontent come from? An uncomfortable line of thought points to a simple cause: having it all, society gets bored. And boredom drives the craving for more wealth and less work, if only to avoid being left alone with the emptiness.

Boredom as an economic category

Ortega y Gasset said it before anyone else: those who have everything don't value it. The modern version adds a twist: those who have everything act cocky and take their gains for granted. Desire, the engine of capitalism, needs chronic dissatisfaction. If abundance satisfies, new shortages must be manufactured. A leisure, culture and free-time specialist summed it up as the real ailment of societies that no longer need to fight to survive.

Nostalgia for scarcity and the weight of debt

Some look back and long for the peace that preceded 9/11, however imperfect and limited to certain regions it was. That nostalgia acts as fuel: when everything is going well, people seek what is missing. Debt, meanwhile, a reminder that abundance was bought on credit, weighs on the balance sheet. The society that has it all doesn't know what to do with it, and politics, tangled up in permanent sniping, offers no answers either.

The million-dollar question remains open: how do you manage a crisis of abundance? Nobody has yet come up with a convincing answer.