Irrational Nostalgia
Music has seen the rise of Lofi-synthwave from the 80s, Marvel movies with nostalgic jokes and politics constantly revising history as if the past were the best of times. Nostalgia is increasingly being defined by me over we. Remember where you were when India won the 2011 World Cup? Our parents remember the 1983 World Cup win over a shared radio with their neighbours.
According to Jung, our expulsion from Paradise is the price we pay for consciousness, as it separates us from our primordial oneness with the Self. This is a necessary step for personal development but leaves us with a sense of loss and longing for the wholeness we once experienced.
The past decade has made everyone age faster (COVID, Trump, AI, Brexit et al). Our increased search for answers and the truth has led to a waterfall of falsehoods:- medical skepticism, conspiracy theories and UFO sightings. The mainstream has been dismantled and we are all in our own private media consumption pools. To barge away from this comes nostalgia. It becomes a social portal for simpler times even when they weren’t.
But is our appetite for nostalgia worth it? Our constant search for longing is best described by the Portuguese word: saudade: the vague, constant longing for something or someone beyond the horizon of reality — but we recognize it in our marrow, in the strata of the soul beyond the reach of words.
Nostalgic media is here for a while. Maybe until trend reports are discontinued or until the echo chambers are full. As Charles Dickens put it, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.