Good Old Days

There is no date in this photo. I think it's better that way.

Do you know how old you really are? Do you really understand what year we're living in? Sometimes it is easy to forget: we spend so much time in a secular haze of materialism, after all. Deep down we know it's not real, and want to escape from it all, but what else can we do? There isn't much to the present or hope in the future. For some of us, all we can do is look back. And this is where things get dicey.

We've gone on for far too long talking about the dangers of nostalgia around Wasteland & Sky. The harsh truth us that it has been a crutch for us for so long that it is hard to forget how normal the obsession with the past actually isn't the way things are meant to be. Sometimes it is good to reflect, but one can't stare in a mirror forever.

However, that doesn't mean it should never be looked at to begin with.

There is nothing quite stopping us from going into another rant on the subject aside from needless repetition. For instance, did you know that the first Spice Girls album released 25 years ago on this very day and date? That's right, corporate bubblegum has been ruling an entire industry for a quarter of a century. Nothing at all has been learned, and nothing at all has been changed. We're still living in the ruins of the 20th century.

One could make another series of topics about how destructive this entire mentality has been. We've been stuck in a time loop for ages now, and it doesn't look like we're getting out anytime soon. Surely we could go on about it once again.

But that is not what we're going to talk about today.

Instead, for once, I wish to talk about the good side of nostalgia and looking to the past. Though it feels like an aspect of modern culture that should get talked up a lot, it surprisingly isn't. Nostalgia isn't reflective like it should be--it's been made into a cope. Where it could be a wistful look at where we came from has turned into mindless worship of a date on a calendar. It is basically the mirror image of futurism, and just as empty and pointless.

Most worship of childhood properties today comes down to longing for better times than current ones we are forced to endure. However, there can be more to it than this. Sometimes it really can just be wistful remembrance of memories of other times. There is also the fact that studying what happened in the past allows you to see how you got from one place to another. Knowledge of what once happened is important to see where we are going next.

Regardless, someone who has no nostalgia for anything is worse than one who has too much for one thing. This is because a person incapable of reflecting on the past at all will have no perspective to the future and are left helpless and adrift. They are prisoners of the present, endlessly reshaping their lives to be acceptable to the person the suit on the news tells them to. You have to be modern! There isn't any future here, because there is no future being looked towards. All this accomplishes is endlessly changing your wardrobe as third parties egg you on.

Ironically enough, modern mega corporations have figured out how to sell nostalgia to people who both have no interest in the here and now AND to people who hated everything that came before at the same time. It is quite ingenious, and they really should get more credit for this. You get the glossy candy shell of the thing you remembered stuffed with fashionable present trends ticked off like a corporate checkbox list. It's a poison pill that smells of roses. You get your nostalgia and the corporation gets paid. Everybody wins!

I should have added quotations marks around the word "wins" because nobody ever does these days. Every nostalgic "revival" you remember from the last decade or so is consumed and discarded almost immediately after releasing so you can be pushed to devour next old new thing they're shoveling out. You'd figure more people would have understood their hatred for the past was being used to fund people and systems they supposedly dislike, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Buy products to support the revolution!

They could just stop buying, but they can't. Instead, they'd rather feed the beast.

What you aren't nostalgic for is those Saturday Morning Cartoons you got up early to watch when you were seven; you are nostalgic for the experience of getting up to watch and enjoy them in the first place. This is where many, including those currently "creating" today's culture, get horrifically wrong. The product itself is not what you are longing for to fill the hole inside of you; it is everything around the product, everything that caused it to be made to begin with, that you crave. You long for a place and time, not things.

I realize this is difficult to process in a world where you are always being sold something new every five seconds and are expected to hop right on it unquestioningly, but it is true. Products do not cause any nostalgia--the trace feelings and memories of long lost times and people you experienced at the time engaging in said product does. What you are longing for is not an intangible feeling or a product, but to reconnect with that primal feeling of loving life for what it was back when you were younger and happier. You are pining for that simplistic and completely natural sensation of wonder that was beaten out of you as you got older.

I've heard a lot within the last decade about how common nostalgia was for other generations, but it's fairly inarguable that it didn't exist at the level it does now. This should prove that it is not as natural as the party line says it is. There has always been a heavy sense of nostalgia in the modern world that even used to extend back to the Old West, back when that was disappearing, though such things were usually painted over by the Cult of the New's need for progress. The future was always going to be better, so the past can be easily discarded.

How many times have I covered such a subject on this blog? Mythic and Futuristic storytelling was hijacked by materialist cultists in order to make their own religion out of at the expense of the art of storytelling itself. Any criticism of this corruption was deigned backwards thinking and heretical. You can't long for the past because it is Bad and the future is Good, so just forget about everything that came before. It's all uniformly evil, anyway.

What has become clear in recent years is that nostalgia as a movement has actually been growing steadily over the years. It isn't that it is a constant: it is that it was a seed planted in the bowels of industrialism that has only flowered as we've sped through modern life. Nostalgia has strengthened over the years, there is no up and down wavering trajectory of it. It's not part and parcel of existence. It is a byproduct of a culture obsessed with always charging blindly forward. In essence, it is only going to get stronger as long as we live in the age we do.

You can find trace blips of this nostalgic obsession while scanning articles and footage from the past, but it was never that prevalent in, say, the 1920s as it is today. However, as the decades went on, looking to the past became a more and more common occurrence. Perhaps because, and a lot of people won't want to hear this, the times really were getting worse. Not only that, but we were abandoning many forms and ideas we never got to properly flesh out before they were discarded and abandoned by the Cult of the New.

Nostalgia is a way to cope with the present, but it is also a way to keep your bearings in a mad world where things are not what they could be. At least it is based on lived experience and not the vague hopes of a future utopia that will certainly be built any day now! This is what got modernists through the cultish secularism of the 20th century. We are almost there!

You just have to close your eyes and believe!

But the rabid hatred and misunderstanding around our complicated relationship with the past has also led to a lot of confusion and depression in the modern day about our place in the world. This came about from an insistent and dogmatic belief system that can best be summed up with six words: Old Thing Bad, New Thing Good. You better believe you have something wrong with you, nonbeliever! Now do what we tell you, and in the frame we tell to to do it in. Is it any wonder things are as skewed as they are these days?

Western culture had definitely reached a point within the last decade, which is pretty inarguable, that it was considered wrong to prefer anything that existed in the past to what exists in Current Year. It simple didn't Work That Way. And because of the current misunderstanding around nostalgia that barely exists outside of a materialist standpoint, it then became warped into the cruel mockery we do battle with today.

It's essentially another side effect of the modern medicine we've been mindlessly dosing ourselves with for as long as we have been alive. We have lost perspective with everything: our past, our present, our future, and even the nature of our existence. We've replaced it all with another new hit from our favorite drugs instead.

No wonder we mistake online discussion groups as "communities" even though they have nothing in common with real communities at all. We might as well be calling music videos movies instead. After all, they both feature moving pictures and music!

But this is veering off topic. The important thing to note is that we have it backwards, as we do so often in Current Year.

You aren't at war with the past--you are at war with your misunderstanding of it. You are at war with the false framing modernity fashions around you. This isn't as simple as the past, present, or future, being "bad" or "good" or anything of the sort. This is an existential issue about your place in the universe we live in.

Find the rest here (it's worth the read!)

I would add that it does not help when cultist Baby Boomers and reactionary Gen Xers went out of their way to create so much art that deliberately to cast doubt on the meaning of existence and insulted everyone who came before them as stupid and evil. They scrubbed that out for younger generations, giving them a biased, at best, look at the way things were.

They took this attitude into art and created a decay state we have been unable to shake for decades. Let us be honest, outside of b-movies, the movie industry as a whole had been on a downhill slide for a long time, replacing quality craftsmanship with flashy new computer gimmicks to hide the fact that their stories don't actually have anything to say. Message fiction stories usually don't have anything to say, which is the problem with them. They want to hammer correct thoughts into your head--they don't want to share the experience of life with you.

This isn't about "messaging" of the sort you might think. This is a problem of the plot itself not reflecting normal human experience or hopes and dreams, but instead being fashioned as Scripture to reinforce your ill-fitting place in the modern world. They don't believe in any sort of purpose to anything, so their inability to create a story that can instill that feeling in you has all but rusted away. Now the theme is little more than "obey the rules we put in this year" and expecting you to pay the big bucks for it.

They can't do this if you're still watching your beat up VHS copy of The Goonies instead of salivating over the remake and ready to buy the merchandise, can they? Therefore, the current destruction of the past you see around you has unfolded the way it has.

There is no reflection or love of the past. It's all material to them.

One of the reasons Hollywood cannot create a decent Christian character (or any religious character really) anymore that isn't a vapid cartoon character that always fills the same clichés over and over is because they took for granted the world they grew up in. They hate that world and want it destroyed for their oncoming paradise. That one was a world built with meaning and purpose which was then taken away as the younger generations came of age, now lost without anyone to guide these hopeless kids. Simply yelling "Future!" in their ear as they contemplate downing a handful of pills to end it all isn't going to save them from the emptiness we have been raised in. It very obviously never saved anyone at any point in history.

It's certainly not saving modernity from currently imploding.

So many cling to nostalgia because it is the closest thing they have to a religious experience. It is the closest they can get to understanding the transcendent from their badly educated position in a badly educated time of existence. What else can they reach for that isn't being sold back to them right now for a special price?

Think about being brought up in a purely materialist world where only pleasure and "being nice" matters. You have impulses and desires floating in the back of your brain telling you that this isn't enough to be whole. You know that there is more. You might not say it, but you know it. This is why even materialists find excuses for explaining the existence of love. They know it is real, but they can't prove it through their shallow philosophy. But what exactly is it that you're reaching for? The only experience you have, the only understanding you can muster, is of the past. What other transcendent notions or experiences can you find in modernity?

What aspect of modern life encourages actual spiritual practices? Is it between the rampant consumerism? Is it aside from the talk of the oncoming materialist utopia in the commune? Is it after paying bills or buying groceries and utilities for yet another month? When is there time for anything transcendent in how things are structured today? The obvious conclusion to come to is that there isn't any.

So if you can't imagine a transcendent future or a transcendent present then what is left to connect with outside of the physical dimension?

That's right, it's the past.

When the programming kicks in

This is what makes the past so important to control for those who want to sell you on the present we are trapped in. Demonize the past, make people hate it, then you can sell them a new identity complete with the pretty wrapping of the old. For examples of this process, see every single reboot of an old franchise over the last decade or so that uniformly falls short. This is what they are doing to culture in an attempt to hijack your nostalgia.

But no one really buys what they're selling. Talk to anyone long enough and they will admit to liking, and even preferring, a lot of things from the past. They have to do this in secret because of the stigma that looking to the past has in mainstream culture, despite it being a normal thing that people have always done and always will do. It is yet more proof that modern times aren't what they should be that something so natural is detested for such silly reasons.

The term "the good old days" is usually said to denigrate nostalgia, or generalize to an absurd degree the concept of there being any good in the old days at all. However, the saying should be emphasized as the good old days, as in the better times from those forgotten days. When someone talks about the good times, they are referring to specific moments that stand out from the rest. Nothing in that hokey old saying implies that the person bringing it up believes the old days were all uniformly perfect and without blemish.

They are merely holding up the best of the old as the standard going forward. Is it really that ridiculous an expectation? Why?

And is it really any different than instead thinking the future they imagine will be a perfect paradise that no one dares question? No low points, no lulls? There was no glorious unblemished past, but there is also no advanced utopia on the way either. Neither of them exist, but we are supposed to expect one to be feasible.

Why else would they want to control the way you see the way things were? How many Ghostbusters movies do you need, anyway? At what point can Harold Ramus' creation by left alone by the people who wouldn't help him make a third movie while he was alive? They didn't have respect for him then and they don't now.

It should be left in the past. That it can't be is proof of the sickness of modernism. We need that hit, art be damned. Rewriting the past forever and ever will never create anything new. The state of things now shows that much.

However, we can use the past to help us understand the present and build towards the future. Should we skip out on any of these then the whole system crumbles. This isn't even really debatable since it is what the people currently running old industries into the ground are actually doing as you read this. Do not fall into their traps.

The past is gone, yes, but it isn't dead. It can't die, no matter how much we might wish it away. It is what lead us to where we are as people. We either accept and build from it, or we run from and bury it. Regardless, refusing to face reality has never failed to hurt anyone, has it? We only have an entire generation that prides itself on rejecting observable reality as they melt down for the entire world to see. In other words, we should probably reconsider the way things are now. Why in the world would you want the state of things today to continue on forever?

The past isn't dead, but those who refuse to accept that will kill a part of themselves in the process. A lot of genuine bugmen are out there, after all.

A bit ironic, but that's always part of the process. God has a sense of humor and we are always ready to fall for the joke.

And that's what modernity is: one crazy joke that has been going on for a long time now. Fortunately, the joke is over now.

But that doesn't mean you can't remember and appreciate the good old days when you do so. The times where things were at their best, when you could shine the brightest, and when everything was the way it should be. They might just be moments, but they are important moments that are cherished for a reason. You need to remember that in order to know exactly what to strive for. If you aren't striving, are you really living?

The conventional wisdom is that the days you are living right now are "the good old days," but they aren't really. You won't know what really worked and what didn't until you pause and reflect on what led you to where you are. That comes mush later. You need  the life experience to come in order to judge how good it actually was.

"The good old days" are always in the past, and they are always important. You remember them for a good reason, and it is up to you to keep them close for when they matter most. Otherwise, they will be lost and forgotten in the riptide of modernity and future worship. Lose your past and you lose an essential part of who you are.

Remember that tomorrow never really arrives, but yesterday always stays behind. It's up to us to use the time we have as they were intended to be used. Otherwise there really never will be any more good old days. We will have lost them along with ourselves.

I don't know about you, but I think I've had enough of that in one lifetime. The 20th century is over, but it never will truly go away, even when we do.

The past remains no matter how old you get. Maybe the question at the start of this post shouldn't have been to ask if you know how old you are, but how much time you have left. Without knowing the past, and everything you've gone through, can you really know that answer? Even if you were to die in a freak accident, God forbid, would you be remembered for your present or your future? No, you would be regarded by your past. 

Because that is what we are all destined to become. One day we will have no present, no future. One day all we will have left is the legacy we leave behind.

Perhaps it would be best to try making these current times the "good old days" before we go and leave the world behind to its eternal march towards an inapproachable future. And all we can do with our frame of reference is to use the past as our guide forward.

After all, how do you make good old days without the good and the old?

Check out this recent podcast of Superversive's Halloween special! Lots of great stories being shared here, including one from yours truly!