Recently I heard a statement that nostalgia is a form of denial of reality,
allowing a person to escape from a difficult present in a certain golden age.
The time is when everything was good and carefree. Probably, everyone has
their own loved time. For some, this is the 20s of the 20th century in Western
Europe - the heyday of new trends in culture, for other years of the post-war
USA with rapid economic growth or the crazy eighties of Reagan. Or the same
Perestroika by Gorbachev. But for me personally, one thing remains a mystery,
how to understand that right now, just today, you live in the golden age -
the most beautiful and majestic time that you will remember until your death?
Folks say that in youth, the sky seems higher and the grass is greener. Maybe.
Well, then what to do with those people who did not live, for example, during
the hippie movement, but who consider the 60s to be their time? How can you
explain the desire of many people to get away from the routine of the present
into the world of spirits and traditions of their ancestors? What is this matrix
failure or denial of the very essence of the present time? Let's discuss this
topic together. The first thing that distinguishes a golden time from a
non-golden one is the presence of hope or prospects. No one would want
to live during the Black Death epidemic that destroyed half of Europe's
population in the 14th century. But there are a lot of people gravitating
towards the time of the Renaissance, which began at the end of the same 14th
century.
This means that people are attracted to the past not just by hope, but by
certain events what happened. But there are people and objects behind the
events. They also personify the era. That same golden age. Through old
objects, a person gets a sense of belonging to the time, where he feel
good himself. Listening to old music, watching old films, using audio
cassettes instead of DVD, VHS, instead of Flac - a person creates around
himself the atmosphere that he wants to see. Filling his mind with works
and texts of the past, a person reprograms his mind to other standards and
values. Be it the works of ancient philosophers or the outstanding works
of Hemingway.
Nostalgia in its purest form is not a mass phenomenon. Rather, groups of
selected people are nostalgic for one reason or another. But what is at
the root of this phenomenon? It's not just not a craving for old things
or ideas, there is something more here. At all times, when the future
seemed vague and uncertain, people always turned to the past. By the time
when everything seemed clear and understandable.
Many of my fellow citizens still want to go back to the 60s of the 20th
century in the USSR to the great shock construction projects of socialism.
Because then, there were no diseases and problems from which society is now
suffering. This means that the roots of nostalgia lie, firstly, in the absence
of hope and confidence in the future, and secondly, they are based on the
inability to adapt to the modern society. Except when nostalgia is caused
by natural causes.
This means that a person experiencing nostalgic feelings in relation to a
particular era becomes a sociopath in one form or another in relation to
the society of his time. So if you are reading this Phlog, then you may be
a sociopath....
