According to the European Journal of Social Psychology, “Extreme political orientations are, in part, a function of boredom's existential qualities.” In other words, boredom is more likely to lead to political extremism. If boredom is indeed a precursor to war and violence, then the series of atrocities that awaits us will be worse than those we have experienced in the past. In Bluebeard's Castle, Georges Steiner explains that the outburst of violence seen during the First World War took place as a result of the period of great boredom that preceded it, going back to the end of the Napoleonic Empire. He writes: “How was it possible for a young man to hear his father's tales of the Terror and of Austerlitz and to amble down the placid boulevard to the counting house?” The resemblance between this era and our own is striking, for every day there are millions of tertiary-sector workers filing into their glass towers, spending their days sat at their computers, typing their lives away. After work they rush off to gawp at other, larger screens, silently drinking in grandiose fictions portraying Dantesque battles and superheroes.

From a longer perspective, the two world wars are maybe just the first of a long series of global conflicts, as much due to the need to find a violent release from our frustrated desire for exploration as due to the unprecedented degree of promiscuity in which the global population now lives. This is related not only to an accumulation of population growth in urban tower blocks but also to the global village made possible by new technology. We initially were fascinated by this worldwide familiarity, for the instant nature of our messages shook up our imaginations overnight, shaped as we were by centuries during which “out of sight” really did mean “out of reach.” In the collective psyche, the arrival of the telephone was nothing short of magical, for before this, physical remoteness was complete. In the virtual world, anyone can hang out together, and the global village is no longer a utopia. There are no strangers left on Earth, which is doing nothing to alleviate our boredom.