[HN Gopher] The Paradoxes of Nostalgia
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The Paradoxes of Nostalgia
Author : prhrb
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-06-25 06:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ravenmagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (ravenmagazine.org)
| [deleted]
| biscuits1 wrote:
| A few questions went through my as I read this being incredibly
| nostalgic this past year as well:
|
| 1. Do post-life altering events like a pandemic stoke hidden
| nostalgic behaviors at a higher degree of a population?
|
| 2. What percentage of great creative works (any kind) were the
| result of revelry of that nostalgic wave of thinking?
|
| Obviously this work is a meta result.
|
| As someone wise said to me once "the past is a nice place to
| visit, but I won't want to live there." I'll extend this thought
| "If I'm there, I'll harness it to produce art."
| autokad wrote:
| Back to the Future, as exciting as it was when it came out, is
| essentially a movie of Nostalgia. I remember in the 80s how big
| the 50s and 60s nostalgia was. Now we are going through a
| similar thing by looking back on the 80s and 90s.
|
| I do agree with the author that nostalgia is not just about
| remembering when times were 'good'. I sometimes get nostalgic
| about times I was sick. However, I do think its more than just
| 'the inertness of the past'. I imagine nostalgia serves many
| purposes, including ones that are orthogonal to each other.
| lordleft wrote:
| "What we really seek in our nostalgic reveries, I want to
| suggest, is the inertness of the past." Extremely well said. I
| have never thought of nostalgia in this way but I think it's
| true.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the "inertness"? Like the fact it doesn't
| change or pose an an existential threat to you unlike everyday
| life in the world?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think so. It's an anchor. It's always there, always the
| same. Even if things weren't perfect it's comforting in that
| there's nothing surprising there.
| titzer wrote:
| Another way of putting this is that the present is full of
| doubts and fears, while the past is done, settled; it has no
| risks.
|
| The fundamental problem is that the way we live in modern
| society is full of uncertainty that stems from unbridled
| change. It's driving us all mad because can't stop it, and we
| don't know what is the next casualty.
|
| Nostalgia is also particularly strong for things we know we've
| lost and can never get back. Modern life is all about erasing--
| overwriting, really--both past and present, with new, shiny,
| utterly cheap coats of paint. Or knocking down and paving over.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| And if there is no change they call it stagnation and people
| will find it unbearable as well.
| cubefox wrote:
| They likely don't find it unbearable if it's normal.
| Stagnation was the largest part of human history. Only
| since the Renaissance has progress accelerated
| substantially. Before then, the life of the children was
| about the same as the life of the parents and grandparents.
| Life was governed by tradition. Everyone had their
| predictable role to play. Being unhappy about "stagnation"
| wasn't an option, as anything else would have been
| outlandish science fiction, which didn't exist.
| zht wrote:
| wait what?
|
| it doesn't feel like it is really stagnation if armies
| are rampaging through your lands and you have new
| rulers/warlords/famine/pandemics all the time
| titzer wrote:
| Universal human condition, I guess. If we're going to
| persist in being miserable, might as well keep to ourselves
| and not screw it up for the other forms of life on this
| planet.
| adamc wrote:
| This is a fantastic essay. As someone who went through a _rough_
| divorce and estrangement from my kid (I don 't even really know
| why), I know nostalgia well. This essay does a great job of
| investigating what is going on there.
| Lammy wrote:
| IMO nostalgia is like the DRAM refresh for my own memory. I think
| nostalgia feels good to incentivize me to do it, like how sex
| feels good to incentivize the perpetuation of humanity as a
| whole. I suspect that when I "remember something" I'm actually
| remembering the last time I remembered it, not directly
| remembering the original event. Some day I would like to try
| building a filesystem like that where storage and access are the
| same operation.
|
| Source: drugs
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > when I "remember something" I'm actually remembering the last
| time I remembered it
|
| I remember reading the title of a TIL (Today I Learned) post on
| Reddit roughly a decade ago[0] that was worded almost verbatim
| like this. Just a note that this suspicion seems to be grounded
| in reality, assuming the veracity of that claim. As an
| additional data point, since being introduced to that idea I've
| been anecdotally "confirming" it (with the usual potential for
| bias) through observation of my own recollections.
|
| [0] The absolute pinnacle of journalistic integrity. No salt
| grains needed. /s
| Animats wrote:
| _"...after a while I am still exhausted but have a closet full of
| kitsch. "_
|
| That sums it up.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sometimes I spend time remembering how nostalgia used to be.
| cantsingh wrote:
| nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
|
| I loved this piece; sometimes I think of reviewing past memories
| as akin to rewatching a familiar show. There are no surprises, so
| even the hardest plot-twists have less anxiety associated with
| them.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Jello Biafra Nostalga For An Age That Never Existed:
|
| https://youtu.be/wx5XS6uXP-g
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