Nostalgia Creep

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present." - Lao Tzu.

Five years have passed since the world was turned upside its head. During the peak of lockdowns, I wanted to tune out all the blackpilling and doom scrolling. I started buying books on topics I enjoyed immensely as a teenager, playing music from that time, calling my father, asking him if he remembered this or that, and watching TV shows that hadn't been on the air in two decades. I started feeling upbeat and figured it would all work out one way or another; life goes on. Talking to others, they, too, were going through some kind of time warp. I go see my mother and walk in on her, watching YouTube videos of people walking on the city sidewalks where she grew up, and old friends I haven't been in touch with in over a decade reached out. Adjusting fire, thinking it wasn't healthy to rehash old amusements, I decided to see if I could find other outlets to occupy my time, but to no avail.

Nostalgia is the sentimental longing for the past as a response to loneliness. Nostalgic memories are most intense for events that involve others with the theme of success. The word derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain) and was considered a mental disorder up until the second half of the 20th century. It is worth noting that one of the main symptoms of the disorder is a feeling as if you were being smothered. Many on the right meme themselves to death with ideal images of a bygone era with quotes such as: "Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition" or "The World You Live in No Longer Exists.” We have no idea how to get back "there," wherever "there" was. Often, we reject some of the pitfalls or complexities of what life was like back “then." Ask a Boomer from NYC what the city was like in 1980, and they will recoil in horror. Things like mothers being closet alcoholics, fathers beating their children with belts, lead paint, secondhand smoke, and the constant fear of annihilation from nuclear weapons. We can go even further back to what life was like without electricity, child labor, or bloodletting as a form of medicine, but I digress.

Nostalgia is a retro appeal, an illusion that is temporary and reinforces loneliness. The lonelier one feels, the more nostalgic one becomes. Nostalgia is primarily interested in condemning the present. Its framework grounds a person’s reference point, but only within the individual's mind. Everything around them changes at breakneck speed, but they stay firm and are less aware of the problems surrounding them. Nostalgia is intensely self-referential, and in an era of militant individualism and hyper-modern living, the role of nostalgia is in situating the dislocated person somewhere. If he or she has been displaced from where he or she lived his or her entire life and relocated elsewhere, there is always something in today's world to keep them inside a retrograde bubble. It keeps the person self-relevant; this nostalgic connection is purely symbolic and thus not real. One could argue that nostalgia confuses life with meaning.

The weaponization of nostalgia pacifies an alienated population. As the 24-hour news cycle became prominent, leaving the masses in a constant state of anxiety, obviously amplified during COVID and smart technology, we noticed this nostalgia creep to cope, offering an alternative reality to someone’s vicissitudes. People experiencing social exclusion will be more inclined to purchase products to enhance feelings of belonging. Depression is a great love substitute in the long term. Short-term consumerism fills the void. Today, Americans are at constant odds with themselves, with a consistent lack of self-confidence and a fluctuating self-worth. An individual lacking a core identity will identify with their goods. Commercial and political messaging share the same methods and aim - attaching your feelings to a given symbol to manipulate you.

Recently, a report came out about how adults are buying children's toys, accounting for 60% of growth this past year. It became so popular in this regressive state of affairs that McDonald's decided to launch an adult Happy Meal, which, of course, includes a toy of McDonald's characters like the Hamburglar and Grimace. In my social circle, I know a few people well past 30 who have an affinity for anything related to Disney. They have no children and are not married, but they will spend a minimum of two weeks traveling to Orlando annually. There is certainly a market for singles who enjoy Disney, but isn’t Disney meant for families? This can amount to the never-ending self-infantilization and lifelong immaturity bleeding into basic decision-making, which circles back to nostalgia. Yet we cannot criticize people's life choices, and the knee-jerk reaction to any criticisms of these “kidults” would be that it's perfectly understandable for one to cling to one's inner child. Trends today are prefabricated, sterile, brutally generic, and treated as a commodity. It’s become much more omnipresent because of the digital space, so it’s difficult for one to escape. Suppose everything is treated under the aegis of the market. If this the case, nothing is sacred, hence why you see the rehashing of movies infused with the browning agenda in order to humiliate and demoralize the populace. If your culture can be turned off, did you ever have a culture to begin with? Trends come and go, but in the past ten years, anything and everything is either “pos” or nostalgia, especially in music and film. Multinationals use nostalgia as a new revenue stream, considering that everything new they create culturally is now “pos/woke” and is not palatable for the overriding majority. Interestingly, shows that depict the past are focused on the equipment or clothing, never on its values, sensibilities, or its places. When you watch Harrison Ford at 81 star in Indiana Jones or Tom Cruise at 62 in Top Gun, one has to wonder why they are still relevant. Fred Durst, now 54, of Limp Bizkit, was interviewed by Bill Maher and made a point that most, if not all, of his fans attending shows are under 30, without any form of marketing, new releases, or promotion. It is apparent to anyone with children or young siblings that there is a want for authenticity without it under the guise of monetary gain. It will be horrifying three decades from now when we look back at Young Thug and the mumble rap genre with nostalgia. Even more depressing is witnessing the great boomer die-off as every generation after theirs lives and still lives underneath their shadow.

As mentioned during the COVID lockdowns (a collective experience), politicization was amplified and magnified this yearning for the past, as every action or inaction is a political statement. The word conservative itself invokes nostalgia as a means to preserve, but usually does not revert what was done. There are a plethora of articles on MAGA and what many perceive “Make America Great Again” to mean. Still, in hindsight, America was hoodwinked into thinking we could turn the clock back without actually making any personal sacrifices. Once nostalgia became conscious of itself, the term rapidly entered the lexicon for political abuse.

Other ways of coping on a more primordial level are people inking themselves, i.e., tattoos. Tattoos are another form of keeping one's relevance. This is not to judge anyone who has tattoos, but the explosion of people covering their bodies in ink is not discussed. Tattoos remind someone they exist. They represent a perfect snapshot that can be rewound and remind them of something significant to keep the thought alive. Everything is a fleeting moment, yet a tattoo is permanent. Usually, those without ink have a stronger core identity, whereas a tattoo is associated with someone experiencing carnality in a specific way.

We obsessively document ourselves, visually and textually, creating massive archives of our lives. Yet, we have no one to share them with, as the rapid disintegration of the social order shows no signs of stopping. Speaking of myself, I can help by mentioning the foolishness of selling the family home with my brother, ever so often reminiscing on house parties we used to throw and holiday gatherings, but then again, as Tony Soprano famously stated, "Remember when is the lowest form of conversation".

The substitute for nostalgia in place of grief and anger for what has been done and is being done to our society keeps us in a self-induced state of purgatory. How can we discern where memory ends and nostalgia begins? We cannot move forward or strive for future memories. We are limited to just looking back at times no longer obtainable because when all things are said, they brought us to where we are today.