I think a lot of the problems we’ve been experiencing come from the fact that no one embraces the miracle and amazement of the present. So many people—steampunks, fundamentalists, hippies, neocons, anti-immigration advocates—feel like there was a better time to live in. They think the present is degraded, faded, and drab. That our world has lost some sort of “spark” or “basic value system” that, if you so much as skim history, you’ll find was never there. Even during the time of the Greeks, there were masses of people lamenting the passing of some sort of “golden age.” But I’d never go back and live in any other time than teetering on tomorrow; this is the greatest time to be alive.
Patton Oswalt, in GQ. (via deantrippe)
I think another part of it is that there’s a certain safety to nostalgia. It’s easy to refer to another time or place as better when freed from the consequence of actually having to be there. It’s safe to prefer something that can reside, pure, in one’s memory or imagination. Because let’s face it, a lot of the time periods people are nostalgic for weren’t actually that great if you were any sort of minority. The present might be troubled and imperfect, but it’s new. It’s constantly changing. It’s full of possibility. It’s ultimately all we have to interact with the world. I’ll take that any day.
(A note: Unlike Oswalt, I wouldn’t include steampunks in the group he discusses. I don’t think they actually believe the Victorian era was a better time to live in, and the important role of alternate history in steampunk seems to indicate that it’s not a genuinely nostalgic statement as much as it is an aesthetic or creative one. They’re just folks having fun, really.)
(via caoine)
