A New Year… With Old Memories
This post has been migrated from my older blog A Bad Case of Nostalgia.
The first post of the new year! What better time than now to finally talk about the title of this blog? You may notice that at the bottom of this page there is a random quote relating to the topic of nostalgia. Go ahead and refresh the page a few times, read some of the different quotes I put in there, and think about your own views on nostalgia for a minute.
What is nostalgia? Merriam-Webster Online offers the following definition:
a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.
Cutting away the fancy formal English, nostalgia is wishing for things to be the way they used to be. Everyone, at one point or another, wants things to go back to the way they were before.
The question that many people seem to be at opposite ends of however, is whether or not nostalgia is a good thing. On the one hand, constantly preferring the things that used to be can prevent progress and lead to being unprepared for the future. On the other hand, sometimes things get so muddled and messy that the best option is to backtrack… return to something simpler and pick it up there, carefully avoiding the same mistakes that made it so difficult to progress further.
But the biggest reason some people find nostalgia to be a bad thing is because it tends to shine a gold light on the past. The “golden times” probably weren’t really all that golden. In David Tennant‘s final episode of Doctor Who, there is a quick mention of exactly this phenomenon regarding the Time Lords.
Wilf: I’ve heard you talk about your people like they’re wonderful.
Doctor: That’s how I choose to remember them.
Even if it’s unconsciously, this is the effect nostalgia has on our memories. It takes the best aspects of what we remember and amplifies them, while simultaneously dampening the negative memories.
I am a big fan of nostalgia. I am always thinking of the way things used to be and comparing it to how things are now with disappointment.
Floyd the Barber cuts his hair!
I remember when popular new music was about something other than “humps” and “milkshakes” and when television had something a bit more substantial than “Gossip Girl” or “The Biggest Loser“. Don’t even get me started on cartoons. It’s a sad day when “Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo” is considered superior to “Freakazoid!“
It’s true that things weren’t as great as I remember them to be. For each good song I listened to back then there were another twenty terrible songs, just like today. For each good cartoon I watched back then there were another twenty terrible cartoons, just like today. However, the reason that nostalgia can hold such great weight, even if you account for the bad things, is that very often the great stuff of the past is likely better than the great stuff today. Certainly we didn’t have such great shows as “House” or “Psych” back in the day, but honestly, I’d probably rather watch a new episode of “Quantum Leap” or “Home Improvement” instead.
Things just aren’t made quite like they used to be, and there are a good number of reasons for that, none of which are particularly good reasons in my book. But that is a discussion for another time. So what is your position on nostalgia? Is it a good thing, bringing out the best of what used to be and providing an escape from the disappointment of the modern day? Or is it a bad thing, making the past look better than it was and downplaying the achievements and progress that have been made since?
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