In Defense of the Boring: a Small Rebellion

There is a striking honesty in calling our phones “addictive,” for it confesses that we have made a companion who prefers our weakness to our strength. Yet the real scandal is not that we are distracted, but that we have mistaken distraction for advancement. We did not merely invent a new convenience; we invented a new idol whose chief miracle is making everything urgent that was once merely important. That is the sort of miracle one can see through: it turns patience into a sin and hurry into a virtue, and then, like any good religion, asks for sacrifices at the altar of novelty.

When everything must be immediate, nothing can be lasting

What is being lost is not merely time but the very grammar of attention—the sentences in which a friendship, a craft, or a thought can be formed. When everything must be immediate, nothing can be lasting; when every image is a bite-sized banquet, the appetite for a real meal is destroyed. We are not so much overwhelmed by information as impoverished of endurance; we have the means to know everything and the will to know nothing deeply.

The cure is stubborn, not technological: a stubbornness to be boring. To refuse a constant audience is not a retreat but a declaration of dignity—an insistence that some things deserve the slow work of our hearts. If we take up such a dull rebellion—walk, listen, read without applause—we shall find that patience is not merely a lost habit but a reclaimed kingdom. And like every true kingdom, it will feel at first disagreeably old-fashioned.