The Nostalgia Trap: Nostalgia as Decadence

November 29, 2020

“The reboots will continue until morale improves.” stated a November 2019 Gizmodo article. While the article itself did not quite touch on the philosophical depth of the headline itself (itself a play on the phrase "The beatings will continue until morale improves"), it did give me some food for thought in this crazy world we live in. The Gizmodo article both assailed the public’s view that nothing original is currently made, and the public’s continuing appetite for them that monetarily incentivize major studios to continue with the reboots. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act berating creativity while craving the past once again continues to confound and assail Hollywood as it attempts to make new shows for old and new audiences. Mr. Pulliam-Moore ends his article noting that “So, if we’re all really committed to this idea of breaking free of the reboot cycle—especially if we want it to happen within the next decade—all that’s really left to do is to simply stop flocking to the theaters to pay for the things, and to let Hollywood know that we’re hungry for change.”

But what if change is exactly what we are looking to avoid? I know for me, nostalgia is as appreciated as a warm blanket, as I type this on my Geocities-style website with Windows-98 theme, while using a Linux distribution meant to look like Windows 98. What's wrong with reliving the past? It makes me think of the good times!

But an anonymous quote has made its round around the internet, stating that “Nostalgia is a mild form of depression.” What is making us depressed? The nightly news or front page of the paper has more than enough problems to shock the conscience of the average individual. Compounding the bad news to the 24/7 cycle is the fact that it is piped in through screens that seem to bear a stronger resemblance each day to the video screens in George Orwell’s 1984 that could not be turned off. With so much uncomfortable truth, can it be any wonder that we would wish to look for a time that is not our own? And better yet, we as humans know one thing: That our lives are not permanent. This lack of permanence is locked into even smaller grim realities of change we don’t like coming, and the change we wish to come as never arriving. So how to cope with this reality?

Star Trek: The Next Generation gives us some good insights on the fickle relationship between human beings and how they view time. Note this interesting phrase from Guinan (played by Whoopi Goldberg) stating in the episode “Q Who?” that: Humans will learn. Adapt. That is their greatest advantage.”

This occurs right before Captain Picard and the crew had their first encounter with arguably the most memorable threat in Star Trek fandom: The Borg Continuum. Captain Picard confidently states: “How can we be prepared for that which we do not know? But I do know, that we are ready to encounter it.” 13 episodes later, we see the fruits of this encounter, one so daunting that it left Captain Jean-Luc Picard a broken man. In the episode “Family,” Captain Picard returns home to France and his family’s vineyard. Picard meets with his brother Robert, a man who lives in the past in the Star Trek universe. He tends to a vineyard making wine, by hand when the rest of the galaxy has moved onto "synthohol." Robert homeschools his child and his wife is a homemaker. This family life in Star Trek is portrayed as retrograde in that version of Earth 300 years into the future. But rather than simply paint Robert as a backwater yokel, "Q Who" reflects on how Robert and Jean-Luc views past and the future as a way to comfort the holes in their own upbringing. Robert, a man who lived in the shadow of Jean-Luc, views the past as the right way to live, while Jean-Luc eschews such old methods for new and improved standards of living. But in the end, it seems both come out right, and wrong.

We need not look too far back in history in the real world to see similar themes at work. In the 1960s, instead of looking to the past, we looked to the future. The Post-World War II optimism that set the world aflame wanted to free itself of the grim realities of mutually assured destruction through the A-Bomb, extreme nationalist sentiments, and crippling poverty. So we sent Man to the Moon, and declared war on many social ills. We created the space station, cured Polio, and built high-speed rail. Donald Fagen’s brilliantly-produced 1982 song I.G.Y. from the album Nightfly captures the sentiment of the time perfectly:

“A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We'll be clean when their work is done
We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young”

Who wouldn’t feel good in life thinking that robots would take away our cares and quality of life would be raised to such a high level? But perhaps that very futuristic way of thinking is the reason why we ended up on a nostalgia-bender for the last ten years. New York Times columnist and proud Roman Catholic Ross Douthat in his book “Decadence” gives us a great insight into our love of everything old.A society that has become so futuristic, it has ceased needing to work and innovate. Instead, we slouch back into the same routines of creativity. According Nostalgia is really just a byproduct of our Netflix-binging, hedonistic decadent lifestyle in the United States.

When it comes to decadence, the philosopher Plato summed up the problems with decadence some 2500 years ago in his Seventh Letter. In the letter, Plato writes about how he travelled to the island of Sicily during the reign of tyrant Dionysius the First. Plato's goal was an attempt to make Dionysius II, nephew of Plato's friend Dion (then the ruler of Syracuse) in the mold of a philosopher-king:

"When I came to Italy and Sicily, at the time of my first arrival. And when I came, I was in no wise pleased at all with "the blissful life" as it is there termed, replete as it is with Italian and Syracusian banquetings; for thus one's existence is spent in gorging food twice a day and never sleeping alone at night, and all the practices which accompany this mode of living. For not a single man of all who live beneath the heavens would ever become wise if these were his practices from his youth, since none will be found to possess a nature so admirably compounded; nor would he ever be likely to become temperate; and the same may truly be said of all other forms of virtue. And no State would remain stable under laws of any kind, if its citizens, while supposing that they ought to spend everywhere to excess, yet believed that they ought to cease from all exertion except feastings and drinkings and the vigorous pursuit of their amours. Of necessity, these states never cease changing into tyrannies, oligarchies, and democracies." Excerpt from Plato's Seventh Letter. Translation quoted from: Loeb Classical Library's Plato -- Volume IX: Timaeus. Critias. Cleitophon. Menexenus. Epistles

So, will the reboots continue? Sure. They'll never stop, as long as humans wish to free themselves from the sufferings of this age of decadence through excess. Ecclesiastes 1:9 famously states that "Nothing is new under the sun!" But I’d bet that nostalgia by itself won’t be improving morale anytime soon. To improve our morale, we must have something greater: Self-discipline.