Don't Know Much About History...So Don't Romanticize It
In middle school, I had a friend who absolutely hated the popular culture in the United States and the members of his own generation that had embraced it. In particular, he focused on the effect of music. This was in the middle of the 1990's, shortly after Kurt Cobain had decided to recuse his spirit from our world. He felt that the 1960's had been the ideal decade for our country, when the Beatles reigned supreme among the British invaders, and popular culture seemed to dedicate itself to a message of peace.
He came from a religious household, and, to a certainty, he was predisposed to adopting the mindset of his parents without considering it carefully for himself. I'm sure this played a part in how he formed his opinions. In hindsight, knowing more about history, I'm a little confused as to why he settled on the 1960's, the decade that gave birth to the Sexual Revolution, as the epoch that represents America's bastion of morality.
This was my friend's rallying cry, from his favorite musician: "I just wasn't made for these times." He felt this adequately expressed his own sense of alienation from his peers and the world around him. I guess it was completely lost on him that Brian Wilson, with whom he identified, wrote those lyrics during the very era my friend was idealizing.
I've since learned that my friend is far from alone. Sure, not everyone does this for religious reasons, not everyone is so focused on music and how its content affects culture, and not everyone lands on the 1960's...but I've met plenty of people who, for a wide variety of reasons, romanticize some era of the past. They decry what the world has devolved into, and long for a massive, collective return to the some extinct period.
Why do people do this?
For me, this is an interesting thought experiment. I don't know much about history, but when I last studied the subject in high school, it was presented to me as a dry collection of facts, a chronological sequence of events and dates we had to memorize. Abraham Lincoln managed to free the slaves in our country. I learned that much. But I didn't learn until much later that this happened amidst a political hotbed of conflict that, in many ways, rivaled that of our present day. The country was divided over an important social issue that people argued with each other about, so much so that civil war broke out.
So I wonder: what was it really like to live, as a normal citizen, during this era? What kind of lifestyle did the average Yankee embrace? What was their quality of life like? In the days preceding the Civil War, where did their discussions about this divisive issue take place, and what did those discussions sound like? How many of them actually cared about the conflict, and how much did they care, when war broke out? What did they eat? And so on.
I hope it's obvious that I don't romanticize this era; I'm grateful to live in a time where I don't have to argue with my friends and neighbors about the ethics of keeping another human being as a slave. I'm just using this as a example of the difficulty of grasping a true understanding of the distant past. I could certainly read books about any particular time in the past and get a better sense, but I think I'd encounter plenty of downsides to living in this era as well. Certainly enough that I'd come to appreciate the era in which I do live. But I'm sure there are also ways in which our present compares unfavorably with some aspects of the past.
I think people like to latch onto the past as a lost ideal because, like my friend from middle school, they have difficulty connecting with the world that they inhabit. They struggle to find their place, to attain a sense of belonging, to identify with the people around them. You can't point at the world around you and claim that there's something wrong with it unless you have something you can compare it to. If not there here and now, then where and when? We live in an age where enough is documented about modern history that it's relatively easy to pick a particular past era you favor and use that as a basis for comparison.
Naturally, if you pose the hypothetical question: what if you could be transported back and live in during the time period you romanticize? If this were actually possible, I think most of these people would concede that, while the past was great, our present is pretty swell, and it's where our friends and family reside, so you have to take the bad with the good. And they'd easily recognize that this wouldn't solve their biggest problem: even if you lived in the past, you'd still struggle to find your place in it. So these people are more preoccupied with the fantasy of transforming some aspects of our present to be more like the past.
This begs the question: if you could actually morph the present into what you want it to be, would this solve the problem of finding your place in our present? Are you really feeling lost because the world has changed so much from what it once was, or are you just feeling lost because that's the way all human beings feel sometimes, regardless of the world in which they live?
For my part, I love the world that I live in. It's not perfect. There are things about it I might like to change, and we certainly have a wealth of documented information about the past from which to draw inspiration and ideas. But I don't hate the world and the era in which I live. If I wish to change some parts of it, I recognize that dismissing the world as it currently exists is actually counterproductive. If you would change the world, you must start with an understanding of where it is now, and move it slowly forward based on this understanding. You accomplish nothing for the world, and little for yourself, by sticking your head in the sand and trying to wish the past back to life. Let the dead attempt to resuscitate their own dead.
At the same time, it is through these people that the past stays alive in our present. I'm not going to go become a Quaker, but I don't think it's terrible that they've chosen this lifestyle for themselves. My ideal world isn't one in which all young people embrace Meghan Trainor because she's at the top of the Billboard charts; sometimes we need people who will dust off their old Beach Boys CDs, pop them into a player, and let 'er rip. We all have those moments; when the present feels like the cruise on the Sloop John B, sometimes you just long to go home.
He came from a religious household, and, to a certainty, he was predisposed to adopting the mindset of his parents without considering it carefully for himself. I'm sure this played a part in how he formed his opinions. In hindsight, knowing more about history, I'm a little confused as to why he settled on the 1960's, the decade that gave birth to the Sexual Revolution, as the epoch that represents America's bastion of morality.
This was my friend's rallying cry, from his favorite musician: "I just wasn't made for these times." He felt this adequately expressed his own sense of alienation from his peers and the world around him. I guess it was completely lost on him that Brian Wilson, with whom he identified, wrote those lyrics during the very era my friend was idealizing.
I've since learned that my friend is far from alone. Sure, not everyone does this for religious reasons, not everyone is so focused on music and how its content affects culture, and not everyone lands on the 1960's...but I've met plenty of people who, for a wide variety of reasons, romanticize some era of the past. They decry what the world has devolved into, and long for a massive, collective return to the some extinct period.
Why do people do this?
For me, this is an interesting thought experiment. I don't know much about history, but when I last studied the subject in high school, it was presented to me as a dry collection of facts, a chronological sequence of events and dates we had to memorize. Abraham Lincoln managed to free the slaves in our country. I learned that much. But I didn't learn until much later that this happened amidst a political hotbed of conflict that, in many ways, rivaled that of our present day. The country was divided over an important social issue that people argued with each other about, so much so that civil war broke out.
So I wonder: what was it really like to live, as a normal citizen, during this era? What kind of lifestyle did the average Yankee embrace? What was their quality of life like? In the days preceding the Civil War, where did their discussions about this divisive issue take place, and what did those discussions sound like? How many of them actually cared about the conflict, and how much did they care, when war broke out? What did they eat? And so on.
I hope it's obvious that I don't romanticize this era; I'm grateful to live in a time where I don't have to argue with my friends and neighbors about the ethics of keeping another human being as a slave. I'm just using this as a example of the difficulty of grasping a true understanding of the distant past. I could certainly read books about any particular time in the past and get a better sense, but I think I'd encounter plenty of downsides to living in this era as well. Certainly enough that I'd come to appreciate the era in which I do live. But I'm sure there are also ways in which our present compares unfavorably with some aspects of the past.
I think people like to latch onto the past as a lost ideal because, like my friend from middle school, they have difficulty connecting with the world that they inhabit. They struggle to find their place, to attain a sense of belonging, to identify with the people around them. You can't point at the world around you and claim that there's something wrong with it unless you have something you can compare it to. If not there here and now, then where and when? We live in an age where enough is documented about modern history that it's relatively easy to pick a particular past era you favor and use that as a basis for comparison.
Naturally, if you pose the hypothetical question: what if you could be transported back and live in during the time period you romanticize? If this were actually possible, I think most of these people would concede that, while the past was great, our present is pretty swell, and it's where our friends and family reside, so you have to take the bad with the good. And they'd easily recognize that this wouldn't solve their biggest problem: even if you lived in the past, you'd still struggle to find your place in it. So these people are more preoccupied with the fantasy of transforming some aspects of our present to be more like the past.
This begs the question: if you could actually morph the present into what you want it to be, would this solve the problem of finding your place in our present? Are you really feeling lost because the world has changed so much from what it once was, or are you just feeling lost because that's the way all human beings feel sometimes, regardless of the world in which they live?
For my part, I love the world that I live in. It's not perfect. There are things about it I might like to change, and we certainly have a wealth of documented information about the past from which to draw inspiration and ideas. But I don't hate the world and the era in which I live. If I wish to change some parts of it, I recognize that dismissing the world as it currently exists is actually counterproductive. If you would change the world, you must start with an understanding of where it is now, and move it slowly forward based on this understanding. You accomplish nothing for the world, and little for yourself, by sticking your head in the sand and trying to wish the past back to life. Let the dead attempt to resuscitate their own dead.
At the same time, it is through these people that the past stays alive in our present. I'm not going to go become a Quaker, but I don't think it's terrible that they've chosen this lifestyle for themselves. My ideal world isn't one in which all young people embrace Meghan Trainor because she's at the top of the Billboard charts; sometimes we need people who will dust off their old Beach Boys CDs, pop them into a player, and let 'er rip. We all have those moments; when the present feels like the cruise on the Sloop John B, sometimes you just long to go home.