Why My Generation Is Drunk on Nostalgia

I am with Mr. Burks on overdoses of nostagia--it always amuses me when I see a teenager wearing an old Rolling Stones "hot lips" t shirt that originally came out in the 1970s or so--but it also strikes me that there are times where one can favor certain things of the past simply because they were better. When I am subjected to the special effects-heavy and plot-and-character-light movies of today, I do think back to the movies of the 1960s and before where they didn't have computers to do the special effects--and where the Hays code kept certain levels of violence and exposure off the silver screen.

Part of what is going on, though, is that we've forgotten the mediocre stuff of the past. So when we listen to an "oldies" station, the horrible stuff is already gone. You'll get a couple of one hit wonders, but not the "B" sides, and the like. Same basic thing that goes on with music in the church; the Wesley brothers wrote something like 8000 hymns, and only about 20 of them appear on modern Methodist and Wesleyan hymnals.

The author used a couple passages from Ecclesiastes, but he didn’t use the passage that’s always been a rebuke to me when I longer for older (“better, simpler”) times:

Ecc. 7:10 - ‘Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.’

That verse speaks directly to the idea that nostalgia is not going to be the solution our hearts’ longing, any more than older times were. No doubt, some things were better at some points in past days, but those aren’t the days God has given us. And, as Bert mentioned, we tend to ignore or gloss over the things about the past that were not so good.

Our society today is terrible at providing meaning, but it’s certain that older times (even the so-called Golden Ages) couldn’t do so either, which should help convince us that true meaning will come only from a better, eternal source.