The War Between Now and Yesteryear

How do you define nostalgia? Is it the feeling you get when you look at a toy you played with as a child and impulsively buy it for your own child? Is the way you watch your favorite football team, remembering the time spent rooting for them in high school or college? Or is it simply the sensation of collective memory anyone gets when comparing the "now" against "then".

Nostalgia is an interesting anomaly. It is one of the two driving forces of almost all merchandising, the other being innovation. With a tendency to waffle back and forth between the two, the market grows and shrinks in cycles, introducing new ideas and then rescinding them in favor of the familiar, nostalgic eras of the past.

Without becoming too philosophical on the topic though, I want to discuss exactly how nostalgia actually affects the things we buy, see and do in our lives. It doesn’t just affect the toys and clothes we buy, it affects how we watch movies and television, how we read, and what we enjoy in our lives. It is one of the most important forces in play, both for a market economy and for remaining aware of the past.

The Good

There are plenty of ways in which nostalgia can be a good thing. People spend vast amounts of time studying and remembering the past, reading the books they read as a child or revisiting their old stomping grounds. There are numerous rights of passage in the life of a child and when any one of them is passed, it becomes a memorable point in their life, one they will want to return to time and again.

Recently, when purchasing a birthday gift for my 7 year old sister, I entered a local Seattle toy store known for its predilection toward the nostalgic. It has been featured on the travel and discovery channels and in dozens of news reports, simply because of how it caters to those individuals who want to remember a little piece of their past.

I ended up leaving that toy store not only with a pair of great gifts for my sister – a classic, hand painted kaleidoscope and a giant pink piggy-bank – but a fair share of knickknacks that would make their way onto my desk as things to fiddle with when I should be working. Not only do these things remind us of who we once were, they call up a happier time in the world – something that we can always used, save when it becomes a sad comparison to today.

It is not just in a one of a kind toy shop in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle though – nostalgia strikes everywhere. It appears in the clothing trends that resurface every other year from a past decade. It arises in the cars that, instead of striving to become more round and advance into the "future", reinvision classic designs and new features. Nostalgia is a chance to make sure we remember who we once were.

The Bad

Unfortunately, we sometimes fail to remember properly who that was. Nostalgia can have negative effects on society as well, both humorously and seriously. Take for instance the reflux of popular television properties from the 1970s and 80s. Shows that were, by all rights, poorly made 30 years ago are being remade into films today actually manage to underperform their namesakes. Remakes are growing as well, as Hollywood executives home to cash in two markets – those who have not seen original pictures and can be fooled into the theater, and those who only vaguely remember those early films and are nostalgically willing to reenter those worlds.

Yes, the market can prey on our nostalgic urges just as easily as it can offer us what we ask for. It works both ways and as a result, the market can seem sickeningly devoid of intelligent new thought at times. Movies are rereleased in new forms every 30 or 40 years while directors and actors attempt to hark back to the "good old days". At times it works, and at others it is embarrassing.

The Ugly

And then there are the truly damaging effects that a jaded, historical perspective can have. After all, that is what nostalgia is, a jaded perspective. No one enjoys their lives quite as much as they think they did 20 years later and as a result, large chunks of history and ill-will can be forgotten in a surge of nostalgic whimsy.

Politically, this can lead to poor decisions targeting individuals who 'remember' a time when gas was only $1 a gallon and when they could go to a movie theater for $3. Those times are gone, but by preying on them and giving people false hope that they might someday return, certain individuals can gain support for horrible acts of war, corporate wrong doing, or just plain poor management.

The Nostalgic Wave

It will continue fluctuating for as long as we are alive because the world operates on waves of nostalgia. With the world as flat as ever and the transfer of ideas nearly instant, a new craze comes and goes in the course of a weekend, lighting up YouTube and dissipating in equal measure. And there is nothing wrong with a nostalgic wave taking over our lives every now and then. What we must do however, is not forget the past and the real, often times hard to accept, events that accompany any time of 'prosperity'.