Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be…

… is the deliciously ironic saying variously attributed to many sources including, of course, the inimitable Yogi Berra.  Actually, it probably dates back to the early years of the twentieth century when a version of it was used to describe the London satirical magazine “Punch”.   Less well known is the second – but more telling - half of the quote which is “… and it never was”.

For months during the current pandemic, commentators have been asking the experts when we might expect a return to ‘normalcy’ – a return to ‘the way things were’.  The responses have invariably been vague and non-committal, not least because it’s far from clear what the question truly means.  And yet it’s a beguiling notion which many people – especially politicians – will turn to when the levels of general dissatisfaction with the ‘status quo’ reach fever pitch.

It was true of the recent presidential election campaigns, embodied in the deceptively simple slogan ‘Make America Great Again’.  The addition of the word ‘Again’ transformed the message from a straightforward and uncontroversial aspiration to an emotively loaded and provocative criticism of the opponent’s position.  And “Build Back Better” wasn’t much … well, er … better.  Again there was an implicit criticism of the incumbent’s track record, especially given the circumstances of an ongoing pandemic, which had brought the nation to its economic knees while killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens.

Across the pond, public discourse fared no better as we watched the United Kingdom inflict major economic, geopolitical and social injury upon itself with the ill-fated ‘Brexit’ campaign, whose slogan was “Take Back Control”.  The Brexiteers (as they were called) delighted in evoking an image of plucky old England – England the Blitz survivor, England the Empire builder, England the bucolic paradise much beloved of chocolate box illustrators and advertising copywriters.  ‘Ye Olde Englande’ in other words.  Except that not only was it all a fiction that never existed as portrayed, but three of the four nations in the United Kingdom - namely Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – wanted nothing to do with the whole enterprise and would much rather remain in the European Union, thank you very much. 

But such was the power of nostalgia, especially in times of regional disaffection with the way the London based British government had treated them over decades of neglect, that the chocolate box illustration won the day.  The Brexiteers won by the slimmest of margins, but they won.  No amount of rational analysis could persuade the resolute middle-Englanders that the ‘good old days’ hadn’t actually been all that good, if they had even existed at all.

But perhaps the strangest example of misplaced nostalgia is to be found in former East Germany.  They even have a word for it – “Ostalgie” – which is literally nostalgia for the East.  It’s a nostalgia for the days of the communist GDR, when the Stasi (state police) monitored every citizen’s activities, and there was only one state owned brand of soap, beer, toilet paper and automobile to be had when there wasn’t a shortage, (which was often).  Why?  Why would a now free, once subjugated, populace want to return to the dark days of oppression?  Part of the answer lies in another telling German neologism – “Freiheitsangst”.  Literally it means fear of freedom, and as many East Germans were keen to point out, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of East and West Germany meant that the were indeed now free – free to be unemployed, free to be penniless, free to be ill without medical aid and free to be denied access to education.  No wonder they were experiencing Freiheitsangst.

The common thread that runs through the German, British and more recent American experience of nostalgia is an aversion to uncertainty and change.  ‘Back then’ you ‘knew where you stood’.  Life was comfortably predictable.  Or so it seems in retrospect.

The problem is that much of our modern way of life is predicated on there being winners and losers.  Capitalism wouldn’t work the way it does if that weren’t the case.  And as has often been observed, the winners are the ones who write history and shape our collective recall.  So when they extoll the virtues of the ‘American Dream’, they are referring to the benefits of being a ‘have’, not the privations of being a ‘have-not’.  And the supposed comfort of ‘knowing your place’ and ‘knowing where you stood’ looks more than a little flimsy when you have neither the money nor the power to control your own destiny.  In many respects, the modern day ‘American Dream’ is a made-for-TV construct that belongs alongside the English chocolate box illustration and the artificial security of a police state.  It works for the ‘haves’ – all too frequently the ones who are white, male and affluent.  Even the founding fathers realized that the Union they were crafting could be ‘more perfect’, and few would argue that the brilliant, visionary, and aspirational document they produced was without its shortcomings. 

But we’re getting there.  Not by looking over our shoulders at what we think we may have lost, but by looking forward to what has still to be achieved.

So yes, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.  And it never was.