why your happy childhood memories MUST be destroyed

[acalculatedname]

It's been my growing feeling that nostalgia is a form of serious mental illness. And, unfortunately, it's one that nearly everyone in the Western world seems to have "caught," myself included.

Comments

[tatdatcm]

I think nostalgia has its place, but in severe moderation, much like any other "thing". There are definitely those who take it too far. What bugs me most about that Facebook vomit is when my teenaged nieces/nephews/sons/daughters post it, like they've lived so long and are wise enough to miss the "good old days".

Well, that and how they can't even make a decent movie anymore without it being based on something else or continued from something else, which I believe has a base in nostalgia, but that's a different rant.

[acalculatedname]

I've written a lot in LJI about circular culture, which encompasses modern day "let's reboot it AGAIN" Hollywood as well. In the big commercial entertainment venues, there has never been more resistance to risk on a new thing, which is ironic since the "assured blockbusters" keep getting more and more expensive to create

[halfshellvenus]

This was a lot of fun, but there is also truth in the idea that glorifying our past and avoiding risk is not moving us forward.

I went to an Aerospace museum about a week ago. My God, we put men on the moon and brought them back in an era where people in the financial trade considered themselves lucky to have adding machines.

Now we're using technological drive and innovation to make better phones. What the hell has happened to us?

[acalculatedname]

Well, we handed the direction of the country over to business like never before when Reagan took office. Corporations have figured out you can monetize phones in a big way, quarter to impending quarter (and results of immediately impending quarters are all they give a damn about). The commercialized moon travel we all thought we'd see by now could be profitable, but, like, that would take a couple years, dude.

I have faith in us that we'll figure it out as a culture eventually and wrest back control from business. I thought it was primed to actually happen in '08-'09, but they did enough to defuse the situation and "live" to keep ruining everything they touch for the next decade or two at minimum.

[adoptedwriter]

I love almost all the music from the 60s through now. Just a few days ago I was discussing w someone that the 70s style in terms of color was pretty darn ugly. Avocado appliances....orange, brown......carpets and drapes.....yuck
AW

[anyonesghost]

Well, I think there's another aspect to the stereo thing. See, you're really sensitive to sounds when you're high.* I think that if the boomers smoked up while listening to Houses of the Holy on one of those midget Bose speakers, they'd be let down. It's not the same sound at all. So I can appreciate their discerning nature, even if it's horribly misguided.

Also, you win one nth of an internet for casually dropping Moore's Law into an entry. Bravo.

(You win a second nth for the fact that you have the same marital age difference as I do.)

Very nicely done.

*I used to mess with the smokers in the next dorm room over by waiting for the second pass before turning on Soul Coughing's El Oso on at full blast ... and maximum bass. Used to drive them up the wall. Ahh, those were the days ...

[acalculatedname]

El Oso isn't my favorite SC album, but I spent a great deal of my freshman year listening to Ruby Vroom while high as a kite.

I do still partake on occasion (and hang out with a few grownups who are stoned more often than not), and the thing about pot & music is that it gives you a greater appreciation of whatever it is, on whatever setup you have available. I never got why stoners choose things like Phish that only sound good when you're high. There's so much music that sounds good sober and only gets better when you're baked. And yes, it still sounds better than Phish while altered.

Of course, there was a lot of gear in the period that was designed to make the experience more... profound, if you had the setup. And there is undeniably a connection, which these 50somethings will readily admit. ("I remember when I dropped eight bills on that DBX dynamics processor back in '75, and I was blazed for the next two weeks...")

Also, a lot of those guys who got into hi-fi and High Times simultaneously still think the Bose 901 is the end-

[agirlnamedluna]

I'm a bit of a mixed bag on this sort of thing ... I am obviously also prone to nostalgia, but like alycewilson said above, we're told so often you can only mean something if you're young, it's hard not to fall for that sometimes. I'd also like to go back to some basic politeness and respect.

That said, I feel like all the big revolutions (over here) came years ago and now we're sort of like "uh, so what now? What's left?" while running around in circles, being blind for a lot of injustice (and even then it's under the "we fixed all that shit 10-20 years ago don't you see we all did it back then??).