Nostalgia is shallow.

Discussions about Nostalgia on the internet are often pretty shallow. “Everyone is nostalgic for the time of their teen years”. The free press ran an article called “The past wasn’t inherently better. So why does it feel that way.”

It feels like the zeitgeist is there are roughly two sides to the argument. Either you’re a backwards looking sentimental-fool who waxes for a time that is inherently tainted by rose-colored glasses, or you’re a realist who looks at the data and understands that lifehas never been better.

I think I enjoy making the argument that there was some kind of cultural peak in the second half of the twentieth century that we are largely in decline from.

I find that the argument that “Everyone is nostalgic for the time of their teen years”. Misses the mark. Sure I am nostalgic for the time of my teen years but I don’t think one can make a serious argument that the 90’s were a cultural peak for anything. Everyone from that era knows “Smells like teen spirit”, and yet, I think the alt rock from that period is otherwise forgettable. It doesn’t have the nearly global impact that the classic rock period of the 70’s and 80’s did. There’s this amazing cinematic period in the late 90’s where we get the Matrix, The Shawshank Redemption, Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, but Pulp Fiction is almost purpose-built to describe how in fact the 90’s are an echo of the cinematic innovations of an earlier era. Jurassic Park is just Jaws for a new generation. Kevin Smith is maybe the beginning of the deconstruction of the entire idea of shared cultural experience.

I think the 90’s, and maybe even in some ways the 80’s are this period of decadence. They appear like the peak and we see it in the reverance of the 80’s as this period of peak nostalgia, but in fact the cultural peak occuring during this period is mixed in with the decline.

Part of the problem is that the peak and the decline are happening at the same time. It’s a spectrum.