Reply
Thu 9 Dec, 2004 08:46 am
When our grandparents raised our parents, they remembered the "good old days". Those days when roads were dirt, you plucked your own Thanksgiving Turkey, and Christmas wasn't so commercialized.
When our parents raised us, they remembered the good old days, when the roads were quiet, family got together and ate a good meal and Christmas wasn't so commercialized.
And now that we raise our own kids, and we remember the good old days...
"The Good Old Days"... I suspect that people have been saying this since the beginning of thought. If every generation remembers the good old days, then it means that what we have at any given time are "the good days", and we just don't recognize it.
Either that, or it's not the stuff around us which makes the days good, but simply childhood which we miss.
Yep! I think I had a thread on Abuzz about this one, it's something I've thought about a lot.
I think the tendency to nostalgia is hardwired -- not sure of the function, I guess to avoid re-inventing the wheel with every generation? (Maintain traditions/ wisdom of the elders.) I think that pretty much whatever was happening when one was young, once you get older it is nostaglia-ized as being better than what is happening now.
sozobe wrote:Yep! I think I had a thread on Abuzz about this one, it's something I've thought about a lot.
I think the tendency to nostalgia is hardwired -- not sure of the function, I guess to avoid re-inventing the wheel with every generation? (Maintain traditions/ wisdom of the elders.) I think that pretty much whatever was happening when one was young, once you get older it is nostaglia-ized as being better than what is happening now.
Yup, I think so too.
I think people don't easily differentiate between the feelings they had as a child, and the stuff that surrounded them. I think this is what leads to that tendency of people to say "the world is going to hell in a handbasket".
I would be interested to hear what people who had "bad childhood's" think of this. I wonder if they think things are getting better in the world, or if childhood itself is just such a different state of consciousness that we long for it no matter what.
There is a psychological term for the tendency to remember things more positively than they actually were.
I'll ask my wife tonight, if I can remember to do so.
I was thinking about this just today after coming across an article in my paper about "10 Web sites to lift your holiday spirit."
That certainly makes me nostalgic for the good old days when you got your spirit lifted by doing something nice for someone.
Interesting. Maybe my childhood wasn't as good as I remember it. Maybe I just forgot all the bad things.
"Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days.
Sometimes it feels like this world's gone crazy.
Grandpa take me back to yesterday
when the line between right and wrong didn't seem so hazy.
Did lovers really fall in love to stay,
and stand beside each other come what may?
Was a promise really something people kept,
not just something they would say? (and then forget).
Did families really bow their heads to pray?
Did daddies really never go away?
Oh, oh, Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days.
Grandpa ev'rything is changing fast.
We call it progress but I just don't know.
And Grandpa let's wander back in to the past,
then paint me the picture of long ago.
Did lovers really fall in love to stay,
and stand beside each other come what may?
Was a promise really something people kept,
not just something they would say? (and then forget).
Did families really bow their heads to pray?
Did daddies really never go away?
Oh, oh, Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days.
Oh, oh, Grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days....."
The Good Old Days...formerly known as "these trying times".
No matter how screwed up you happen think things may be at the moment, if you live long enough, you're more than likely gonna bore some young whippersnapper with tales relating these current times as "the good old days".
"These are the good old days" Carly Simon
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace