Nostalgia is terrible way to heal from trauma. Nostalgia is a poor source of information for identity formation. Nostalgia is a picture pretending to be a mirror. Nostalgia is a novel pretending to be an autobiography. Nostalgia is a drug posing as a cure. Whether on a personal and private level of trauma or identity crisis or on a cultural level of mass trauma of cultural identity crisis, nostalgia is not good treatment for suffering or identity formation.
But we’re already doing it.
“Remember places?” “Remember sports?” “Remember…” We are already anticipating the return to normalcy during this pandemic, and of course we will go to places and we will play and watch sports and we will eat a restaurants again. We are longing for the good ole days that happened generations ago? Decades ago? Year ago? No. We are longing for the good ole days we enjoyed early last month.
Were Americans to reduce our dependence on nostalgia as treatment for trauma, as a coping mechanism, as a distraction, as identity formation, as a way to preserve the comforting obliviousness we all secretly long to protect by 50%, our economy would collapse, our political parties would lose their leverage, our religions would suffer (mainly the religious charlatans), and our government would be shaken if not destroyed.
America runs on nostalgia. The problem is that nostalgia is the opiate of the people.
After World War I, also called the War to End all Wars (which occurred at the same time as the Spanish Flu), the roaring 20’s was the expression of American nostalgia. We partied and danced because we would never have a war like this again. We got back to normal, whatever that was prior to 1914. However, our American addiction to nostalgia and the presumed wealth that comes along with it resulted in the worst economic catastrophe in American history, The Great Depression. To survive The Great Depression in the 1930’s people did everything they could do just to make ends meet. Coming out of The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, we presumed were immune to war because we had ended all wars in The War to end all Wars. We were immune to economic collapse because we just survived that. Now, we can get back to normal.
World War II destroyed the normalcy assumption again. Americans resisted entering into WWII because it was not our problem. We were enjoying our nostalgia as we were finally normal once again. Pearl Harbor broke Americans of our trance and there was no way to ignore the catastrophic evil happening in the world because now it was happening to us. Nostalgia persists until it is threatened. Then we find something better than nostalgia to pay attention to.
After WWII, we tried it again. The return to normalcy when men returned from war was palpable. We can finally get back to being Americans again. We lost hundreds of thousands of people in the war. More than that were wounded physically and psychologically. We tried once again in the 1950’s to return to normalcy. We began once again to take hits of nostalgia to feel better. We would finally feel good and return to our true identity, even though there was no clear identity to return to. We simply recycled our nostalgia.
And then the 1960’s happened. Another jolt to take us out of the nostalgic trance. Social unrest broke out. Rebellion against the relentless nostalgic gaslighting that papered over the social consciousness trying to form fit all Americans into a singular kind of American and when someone didn’t fit, then they weren’t truly American. The 1950’s brought us the message that if you did not conform to the one way to be American, you were not American at all – a threat to America. The 1960’s was a robust, unignorable, and relentless rebuke of the singular American nostalgic effort of the 1950’s which was a cultural effort to feel better after the worst war ever (in America) and figure out once and for all who we are. The backlash against American nostalgia became violent as prominent leaders of those who challenged the nostalgia were killed off.
We tried nostalgia again in the 1980’s and leveraged the winning of the Cold War as evidence that the American nostalgia is correct.
We tried nostalgia again after 9/11.
We heard the call for American nostalgia in “Make American Great Again” and we bought it.
We Americans have been trying to heal our individual, cultural, economic, and geo-political wounds with the singularity of American nostalgia for over a century. We Americans are so eager to know with certainty who we are that the quick answer nostalgia gives relieves the angst of not knowing without actually having to know.
Here’s the problem: Nostalgia doesn’t heal. Nostalgia doesn’t tell you who you are.
Nostalgia is the opiate of the people. Nostalgia is a reach for identity for a people who still don’t know who they are. It is a short cut to the relief of having a certain identity without having to do the hard work of developing an identity. It is lipstick, it is paint, it is plastic surgery, it is paper mache. Nostalgia is a narrative that seems good enough such that it relieves the legitimate author that we all are of our lives from actually having to write our own stories. It relieves creators from having to create. It is pain relief for hurting people that bypasses actually having to heal. Feeling no pain is not the same healing. We are too eager to relieve the pain and call it a cure.
Nostalgia is the ultimate in seductive gaslighting. It is the lie we really hope to be told and really hope to be true. Nostalgia is the process of culture-wide objectification of people to help them feel no pain and believe they know who they are in exchange for profit and power.
Now we are in the throes of a Pandemic that has threatened the lives of people we love, threatened our economy, threatened our education system, threatened our health care system, and threatened – wait for it – our way of life. These threats are real. However, the cures we are about to be offered are not.
Nostalgia is awaiting its triumphant return. Major corporations will feed us nostalgia to get back to normal. They are prepared to sell us all the answers to all of the disruptions – of our nostalgia. Political parties are eager to answer these questions with nostalgia. We long to know who we are and how to feel good. The now century (or more) old American nostalgia machine is prepared to crank up once again. And most of us probably won’t even notice.
I make no claims to be immune to such forces. I probably have no idea how deeply these forces of nostalgia have invaded my own desire to heal and my own search for myself.
My own little subversive efforts to disrupt the powers of nostalgia is an effort to actually heal by doing the hard work of healing, even if it hurts. I trust that all healing is God’s healing, not corporate answers or political promises. My own subversion of nostalgia is the keep my own existential questions ever before me: “Who am I now?” “What does it mean to be made in God’s image right here and right now?”
Perhaps I am just partaking in another opiate. I don’t know for certain. What I do believe is that I do not want to be seduced by nostalgia and lose everything I stand to lose in doing so. Jesus asked, “What does it profit a person to gain the world and lose the soul?”
What does it profit a person to gain pain relief and continue to be injured?
What does it profit a person to adopt an identity while never knowing themselves?
I’d prefer to take my nostalgia is small doses, a sip of wine at dinner and not expect it to solve for all of my appetites, longings, and beliefs.