Obsession with Nostalgia

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Have you ever noticed how movies and TV seem to just be becoming reprocessed versions of the same thing? Think of how many movie remakes and TV reboots there have been in the last 20 years. Well there's actually scientific evidence to support the reasoning for this! 

Everybody is familiar with nostalgia: the yearning for a time that once was. That warm bittersweet feeling you get when you remember how things used to be when you were younger. We feel comforted by the fact that it happened and those feelings reemerge into a feeling of safety, security, and love. Yet we feel upset and frustrated that this is no longer how things are, so we try and seek those and attain them through whatever mediums we can. 

"Remember Ghostbusters? What a cool movie!" "I used to play Pokemon and Super Mario Bros. when I was a kid. It was so much fun I spent hours on those games." "I would watch Beauty and the Beast over and over again when I was younger!" 

Have you ever said or thought anything like that? If you answered no, it's okay I won't tell anyone you're lying. My point is that there are entire industries based on this feeling we get when we just remember something we were fond of back in the day. Disney and Nintendo began as cutting edge industries and now largely sustain themselves by banking on people spending money to try and recreate those good feels when they were younger. 

A study by Allan Hirsch defines nostalgia as a "yearning for an idealized past." This is such an uncanny definition because he isolates that it's an idealized past we yearn for. Not necessarily the one we actually experienced. We don't remember those moments where we were crying or upset because our parents wouldn't let us do what we wanted as much as we do the ones where we are enjoying ourselves and having fun with our friends and family. Nostalgia actually can be a driver and predictor of behavior, as we will do things that put us in that nostalgic state of remembering the past fondly and trying to recapture that.

So why does this all happen? Well a lot of those warm feelings stem from the fact that we had so much less responsibility as a child than we do now, as it was all taken care of by our parents. The added stressors of taxes, a job, student loans, etc. make the present seem so much harder and more stressful than when we were younger. That's why us trying to recapture this feeling through those things we used to consume makes sense, because we want to have that feeling of little responsibility and security. 

This is also why we bring forth the good feelings of our past and try and not pay as much attention to the bad ones. If we remembered only the bad times, what would be the point of it all? Wouldn't it be much more preferable to remember the good times when times get tough as a reminder that things have been okay and therefore could be again? 

Hirsch talks a lot about olfactory reminiscing, or nostalgia evoked through smell. Our sense of smell is so powerful it can trigger processes in the brain that take us back to moments in time that are so visceral it's almost like we're there. The smell of pine trees takes you back to Christmas time, the smell of freshly baked cookies reminds you of walking into your house after your mom has just baked a delicious batch, the smell of the ocean evokes imagery of that vacation you took to the beach with your loved ones. Hirsch finds that smell induced nostalgia is present in 85% of the participants, which he implicates as an important marketing tool (think Yankee candles). 

Nostalgia has become such an important part of our culture to the point where there are entire markets designed around trying to bring you back to a time where things were simpler and worried. Even political ideologies based on trying to get back to "traditional" ways or the way things were when we were younger. Why do you think the conservative party is composed of substantially more older people than the liberal party? People want to recapture what they felt when they were younger.

"Regean was the best president, nevermind the Iran-contra affair, the cold war, or the systemic targeting of 'welfare queens'." "Clinton was the best president, nevermind him expanding the war on drugs, signing DOMA, and his Lewinski scandal". "I remember when things were better back in the day so that's what party I'm going to vote now!" Were things better or are you just remembering them more favorably because they were president during a time when you had had substantially less responsibilities than you do now? 

Nostalgia is a powerful driver of human behavior. Yet it also helps us get through the hard times, by reminding us that things were once okay, and that they can be again. Nostalgia is a universal feeling that we all can relate to: the idea that things were better when we were kids.