El derecho a aburrirse (In defence of boredom)
MCER C1407 palabras
There is a particular kind of complaint, common among people of my age, that begins with the observation that nobody is ever bored any more and ends, within a sentence or two, in a description of how much better things were when we had nothing to do. The observation is worth keeping. The conclusion is not.
Boredom, in the version we are nostalgic about, was rarely chosen. It was what happened when the shop was shut, the second channel had finished for the night and the friend who might have come round lived four kilometres away. Those conditions have gone, and almost nobody who lived through them wants them back. Any defence of boredom that depends on restoring them is not an argument; it is a wish.
What can be said, more carefully, is this. Certain kinds of thinking appear to need a period in which nothing is arriving. Not rest, exactly, and not concentration either, but a sort of idling in which the mind sorts through what it already has. Most people can recognise the state from experience: the idea that turns up in the shower, on a walk or during a long and tedious journey. It is hard to summon deliberately, and it is remarkably easy to abolish, because it only requires something mildly interesting to be available at all times to be crowded out altogether.
This is where the argument tends to go wrong. The problem is not the phone, and treating it as the villain lets everyone off too lightly. Long before the phone there was the radio, the newspaper on the train and the habit of falling asleep to the television; what is new is not distraction but its portability and, above all, that it is now supplied by companies whose income depends directly on how much of it you accept. That is not a conspiracy and it is not hidden: it is a business model, described plainly in the documents those companies publish for their own shareholders.
So the useful question is not whether we should be bored more. It is narrower and more practical: whether we are prepared to defend, deliberately and against a certain amount of discomfort, the few remaining stretches of the day in which nothing in particular is happening. That is a decision about a habit, not a moral position, and it can be made without any nostalgia whatsoever for the second channel closing down at midnight.
Palabras que quizá no conozcas
- nostalgicnostálgico
- to come roundpasarse por casa
- to idleestar al ralentí, sin hacer nada
- to sort throughir clasificando, poner en orden
- tedioustedioso, pesado
- to summonprovocar a voluntad, invocar
- to crowd outdesplazar, no dejar sitio
- villainel malo de la película
- to let somebody off lightlydejar a alguien sin culpa fácilmente
- stretch (of time)tramo, rato
Preguntas
Se contestan con el texto delante. No es memoria: es entender.
What does the writer accept, and what does the writer reject, in the usual complaint?
The observation is kept; the conclusion is rejected — Lo dice en dos frases seguidas y muy cortas: the observation is worth keeping, the conclusion is not. Separa el diagnóstico del remedio.
The writer would like to bring back the conditions that produced the old boredom.
False — Falso, y lo remata: casi nadie que viviera aquello lo quiere de vuelta, y una defensa que dependa de restaurarlo «no es un argumento, es un deseo».
How is the mental state described that the text defends?
As neither rest nor concentration, but a sorting through of what is already there — Lo define descartando: not rest, exactly, and not concentration either. Y da los ejemplos que cualquiera reconoce: la ducha, el paseo, el viaje largo y pesado.
Why does the writer say that blaming the phone 'lets everyone off too lightly'?
Because distraction existed long before phones, so the phone alone cannot explain it — Enumera la radio, el periódico del tren y dormirse con la tele. Si el culpable fuera un aparato, bastaría con quitarlo; al negar eso, la responsabilidad vuelve a quien decide y a quien vende.
According to the writer, what is genuinely new about today's distraction?
That you can carry it everywhere and that someone earns money from it — Lo dice con un «above all» que marca cuál de las dos pesa más: la portabilidad, y sobre todo que la suministran empresas cuyos ingresos dependen de cuánta aceptes.
How does the writer reformulate the question at the end?
As a practical decision about defending small empty stretches of the day — Cambia la pregunta grande por una «más estrecha y práctica», y aclara qué NO es: no es una posición moral, es una decisión sobre un hábito. Y cierra negando otra vez la nostalgia.