This strange boredom that drives those who lie down yet are always on their feet

Alberto Ronchey, in his famously idiosyncratic way, had it in for those off-road vehicles which, for some inexplicable reason, always end up on the road. For my part, I simply cannot understand those ‘lazybones’ who are always standing to attention, always on the march – even when politely asked to do so by grassroots or ‘yellow’ trade unions – and who mix protest-driven minimalism, solidarity with mums and teachers, school-trip-style smiles, the occasional bonfire – even a mimicked one – the occasional shop window displaying fashionable shoes, explosive anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian ideologies in recurring ‘mobilitazzzzioni’ with four or five z’s and plenty of selfies, now even featuring the display of the Italian tricolour.

More recently, following Michele Serra’s famous novel and Francesca Archibugi’s subsequent film about teenagers lazing about on the sofa – subtle family dynamics and psychological romance from the past decade – it has become fashionable to lament the tendency of young men and women to adopt hikikomori-like behaviour, a state of perfect isolation, perfect immobility, and impeccable, stubborn ostracism towards the abstract rules of verbal and non-verbal communication in use within adult society. It is highly complicated to delve into the sociobiology or microphysics of the forces at work in so-called ‘liquid’ society, or to interpret the state of mind of successive generations – the sofa, the street, isolation, socialisation and mobilisation. One possible explanation always stems from that famous and prophetic professional incident involving Pierre Viansson-Ponté, who echoed Alphonse de Lamartine’s diagnosis from over a century earlier: ‘La France s’ennuie’ (France is bored), and in *Le Monde* on 15 March 1968 he highlighted the state of tranquil stupor among young French people, all preoccupied with their petty consumerism in a country without problems, whilst across the world marches for Vietnam and against imperialism were stirring the general conscience. We were on the eve of the May uprisings and the nights of the barricades – the sort of thing that would have given General de Gaulle a nervous breakdown.

Boredom is, in fact, boredom born of stability, boredom born of narrow horizons, boredom born of the ‘end of history’ and globalisation, boredom born of artificial intelligence, boredom born of scrolling, boredom stemming from families with few or no children – a less fleeting explanation than the high cost of living and the dilapidation of schools, at least according to the Istat report maliciously published by Cerasa in Saturday’s treacherous Fogliuzzo, commenting on a rate of average happiness and average well-being that isn’t actually all that low, contradicted by the more or less incendiary spirit that invades stations, ring roads, squares and streets on Saturdays. It is difficult to ascertain the precise causes. Certainly, these listless wanderers are the closest thing we have to zombies, to the voodoo and pop myth of the living dead, a phenomenon that aligns well with the pervasive apocalyptic discourse of these times, which are hardly conducive to peace of mind.

It would take a Berselli; an Aldo Grasso or a Masneri would have to go to extraordinary lengths to bring into the picture the ‘standing-up lounger’ – the one, as Arbasino put it, with his ‘low-life’ attitude – the rapper or the sofa-bound Trappist who mobilises and demobilises, and who knows why he does it.