On a recent trawl of the Guardian website I came across an article bewailing the ‘New Boring’ (Stuart Jeffries – 17 November 2011). A melting pot of Downton Abbey, a simpering Kirstie Allsopp, crooner Ed Sheeran and novelty woolly jumpers are, Jeffries claims, symptomatic of a “spiritually depleted” nation. Austerity measures being taken to the point where we are becoming austere ourselves.

The first recorded use of the word ‘boredom’ was in Dickens’ Bleak House; possibly not surprising in a novel which explores the machinations of litigation in the Courts of Chancery.  Rather than implying fault in the object though, boredom as a psychological process says far more about the person describing an activity as ‘boring’.

The psychologist C.D. Fisher defined it as “a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity.” Cue that familiar chorus about our sound bite, fast food culture and our consequently tiny attention spans.

It is not that culture is inherently boring but rather that we are inherently bored. The ‘New Boring’ is not ‘New’ at all but something we have created ourselves in our refusal to stay interested in anything beyond 15 minutes. I have to admit, when Jeffries’ article reached the ‘meta-boring’ stage my eyes did begin to glaze.

What needs to be done is to stop complaining and to re-galvanize our interests. Why could Jeffries not find anything positive to say? Because he refused to see it. Our National Gallery is currently hosting one of the largest da Vinci exhibitions of recent times. David Attenborough has returned to our screens to remind us in his oh-so-soothing voice about the beauty of our planet. The cinema is jam-packed with decent films to see (if you haven’t yet seen We Need To Talk About Kevin, I recommend that you do) and the Radio 1 chart is, believe it or not, not full of pretentiously beige singer-songerwriter types. In fact it’s full of R’n’B. In fashion news, the 70s are making a comeback and nobody could argue that that was a boring decade.

Perhaps we have stagnated a bit: originality is not something that I would say characterizes much of the current cultural scene. Looking through Vogue’s ‘Things to look forward to in 2012’ was certainly illuminating from this point of view. Much of the list revolved round re-runs of already well-known things: Woody Allen is releasing another film, David Hockney is having a major retrospective, the Queen is having a Diamond Jubilee, as we all know the Olympics are coming and Salman Rushdie’s first TV series will be aired.But just because things are familiar does not mean they are boring. Christmas is the same every year and yet we still love it from about August onwards.

As I was reading Jeffries’ article a favourite maxim of my grandfather came to mind: “only boring people get bored.”  If we all become boring people then we really will face a situation of cultural standstill. Plus, with the nights drawing in if we really are bored we could always make a start on Bleak House…