[HN Gopher] When Nostalgia Was Deadly
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When Nostalgia Was Deadly
Author : Petiver
Score : 52 points
Date : 2024-04-13 05:38 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| By the modern definition I'm prone to nostalgia. And I moved a
| few times during adolescence. Yet I can't imagine it being fatal
| unless the circumstances were completely outside my control, such
| as a serving during a war.
|
| I also wonder how much of it was due to the place vs the
| community the sufferer came from. Places aren't that special to
| me, at least not nearly as much as the community and the people.
| okr wrote:
| When you take elders into care and move them to places, that
| are closer to you, i am sure, that it disrupts their life in a
| way, that could incur nostalgia. Ambiguous. Modern life sucks
| in many ways.
| andreasmetsala wrote:
| > Modern life sucks in many ways.
|
| Isn't that also nostalgia? Life before "modern times" likely
| sucked in the same ways but then some more.
| aidog wrote:
| As Swiss abroad in far away Japan "Kuhreihen" didn't make me
| deadly nostalgic. I guess the soldiers lived in the alps. I miss
| my family more than mountains.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| That's not homesickenss. 1700s medicine was doing more harm than
| good and when she was sent home and they were no longer filling
| her with what was likely poisonous she recovered.
|
| Frankly, today's hospitals are so poor in terms of infection
| control (because of simple things like doctors not washing their
| hands, or staying home when they themselves are sick) and
| providing patients with good nutrition - the food is basically
| prison quality - that you are indeed better off going home as
| soon as it is safe to do so.
| ctrw wrote:
| The whole article is nothing but presentism.
|
| It projects the values of 2024 coastal America on the 17th
| century Switzerland of all places. A country so poor and
| desperate its only export was young men to be canon fodder.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > because of simple things like doctors not washing their hands
|
| Because of very complicated things like needing to maintain
| sterile rooms too. Educating people is important, but hospitals
| are inherently prone to spreading infections. If everyone
| behaved flawlessly, they would still have this problem.
|
| And let's not forget how incredibly stressful they are.
|
| Honestly, I can't understand the bias from modern medicine of
| interning people into them.
| robocat wrote:
| Hospitals are terribly unhealthy places to be: stress, broken
| sleep, weird temperature and queer air, noise, light,
| sedentary, theft, viruses and bacteria, removal of choice,
| domineering doctors and nurses, drugging, and worse. A
| necessary evil, but much of the system is more evil than
| necessary.
|
| Mental hospitals are even more unhealthy: violence, rape,
| threats, stress, forced submission, locked away from all
| comfort and familiarity, no family, no love, the vulnerable
| learning from completely whacko inmates (worse than YouTube
| LOL), trusting insane people, can't trust nurses or doctors.
| I try to always look after my friends and family. I would
| admit them into "professional" care only as a last resort:
| the mental health environments are dangerously toxic.
|
| Hospitals are great places to meet people though. Deep
| intimacy is wonderful for getting to know people and we don't
| get many opportunities for knowing people properly. And
| usually an eclectic mixture of backgrounds - which I enjoy.
| m3047 wrote:
| I think this still happens today, except that people are so
| denatured that they can't even articulate: "I want to go home"
| because they don't know where home is or what it is, and it would
| seem ridiculous even to them to say "I want to go home but I
| don't even know what that means!". Don't wanna be thought mental.
|
| It's probably not simply "home" either, it could involve
| periodicity, repeated activities, etc. Rosaries, doodling,
| shoveling shit.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I am sometimes so scared to imagine myself as a person without
| a home or without an understanding of what home is
| bdowling wrote:
| Is there a term for nostalgia for a time and place that one never
| experienced? Triggered by music or movies or reading about
| history, some people experience a kind of nostalgia for life in
| times they never lived and places they've never been to. (A
| popular one is Japan during the economic boom of the 1980's.)
| rightbyte wrote:
| There should be a term for it. A couple of people I know seem
| nostalgic for Marvel movies but I know they did not read Marvel
| comics when young at all. Some kind of manufactured nostalgia.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I didn't read their comics, but there were Xmen cartoons,
| plus Spider-Man, when I was a kid. Also the Justice League
| which of course is different but hey when you are 8 you don't
| know that.
|
| Also toys. When the Marvel Movies started up I was mostly
| excited for Iron Man, a character I'd never actually seen in
| anything, but I had a couple different colored Iron Man's
| when I was a little. It turns out that they are mostly all
| the same guy which is sorta boring.
|
| Other people probably were nostalgic for the movie about the
| silver robot from Marvel vs Capcom.
| schneems wrote:
| Reminds me of "Paris syndrome" where people fall in love with
| the idea of a thing/place and the disillusionment of
| experiencing the real thing can be so violent that people can
| have panic attacks.
|
| Not what you're talking about exactly, but it seems like a
| similar vibe.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| Hiraeth is a Welsh word that describes a longing for a place
| that cannot be visited, perhaps because it no longer exists or
| has never existed.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Anemoia
|
| https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/anemoi...
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/nostalgia-doesnt-need-real-memories-a...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I enjoy soviet-era rock, which wasn't really a thing until
| the 1980s, but to better understand its context, I've sampled
| a fair number of 1970s VIAs as well.
|
| The strangest thing happened while I was watching Chastnoe
| pionerskoe 2 (set in 1979, including computer printed
| samizdat): a song I knew came on in the background, and I had
| a very strong nostalgic sensation, as if I had just heard
| "Heart of Glass" as diegetic music -- but for music I'd
| _never_ heard before this century and YouTube (2005).
| omnibrain wrote:
| Have a look at the portuguese word "saudade":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade
| achairapart wrote:
| Check out _Hauntology_ [0] by French philosopher Jacques
| Derrida (also used as a music genre[1]).
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology_(music)
| neilv wrote:
| I actually felt something like that, both times I played the LA
| Noire video game, years apart.
|
| (It's a film noire-ish detective story set in booming postwar
| Los Angeles, with a mostly open world you can drive around in
| accurate models of period cars, and walk around.)
|
| I didn't feel that because it was a nice social environment (it
| wasn't), nor did I want to be the traditional white male head
| of household (it was especially not-nice for POC and women),
| and I actually dislike cars.
|
| I think what caused the feeling was the immersion in the
| prosperity, and new/recent construction, which seemed
| accessible to most. (While in real life living in overpriced,
| deteriorating old New England apartments.) I'd guess the game
| atmosphere like background music also contributed.
|
| It's a persistent general feeling of curiosity tinged with
| melancholy while in the game, longing for something I want
| maybe more than I realize, but that I believe doesn't exist or
| is inaccessible.
| xandrius wrote:
| A word for it is "sehnsucht".
| pessimizer wrote:
| Minstrelsy? Pretendianism? Xenophilia? Autobiographical
| mythomania? Media addiction?
|
| edit: weeaboo?
| deepsun wrote:
| I was thinking of all the refugees from early ussr, who were
| lured back home by fairy tales of socialism, only to get sent to
| far north (government knew they would get disillusioned quickly,
| and tried to isolate from the rest), and the ones wanted to flee
| again got jailed and tortured.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Right-wing politics is rooted in nostalgia.
| binary132 wrote:
| Ah, so that's what I've been experiencing. I suppose if I don't
| make a hasty return to Windows 98 at 1280x800 it's probably over
| for me.
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