rambling about nostalgia

[redbird]

browngirl has an interesting post in which she points out the flaws in a certain kind of nostalgia, the sort that sees seatbelts and lead-free paint as threats to, um, something or other.

Somewhere in the comments is the observation that people who talk about the wonders of the family of the past tend to stop dead when asked to specify what year they're talking about. Small wonder.

People want to live in a hypothetical, broadly sketched, past with all modern conveniences. They want to be rid of seatbelt laws, but probably not to drive a 1950s car, even a brand new one, but without the air conditioning or the modern brake systems. They want to use rollerblades without helmets or kneepads, not the old-style roller skates you attached to your sneakers with a key. And, of course, they want the Internet, cheap long distance phone calls and affordable air travel, and such.

The past is a foreign country, and they don't have tourist facilities.

Comments

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

I'd take the sixties before the fifties. But even then -- well, just one anecdote: a friend of mine died in 1963, at age 12, because the link between aspirin and Reye Syndrome was not yet known.

And time-traveling in the other direction, I often wish my mom, who died in 1986, had lived long enough to have access to the Internet. She would have loved it.