As someone who once upon a time suffered crippling social isolation and depression, I agree that nostalgia, especially its nasty side, is a big temptation. A friend of mine plunged deep into the vile realms of misogyny and anti-Semitism for years as a result. It’s so much easier to believe that your life would have been better if only you were born 15, 20, 50 years earlier.
I guess the best solution, or at least the one that worked for me, is an unvarished awareness of what those times were really like, combined with a skepticism about “golden ages”. However tempting it is to retreat into the past (and insist that others do the same) knowing that those charming frontier communities were cesspits of disease, sexism, and genocidal hatred, or that the 1950s were filled with anti-communist paranoia, sexism, and racism is a good vaccination against nostalgia.

those charming frontier communities were cesspits of disease, sexism, and genocidal hatred, or that the 1950s were filled with anti-communist paranoia, sexism, and racism

(sigh) Paradise lost, right?

Interesting that you mention the fact that our online communities really do satisfy a need. I don’t know that you could call our online socializing exactly the same as the face-to-face variety, or even a phone relationship. Still, I feel like I kinda know certain people that I have only ever communicated with online. Last night I spent a few hours shootin’ the breeze, with some people I only know online, and may well never meet face-to-face. The past year or so, this is no longer even wierd to me. It even feels freindly. It’s like the ghost of a relationship.

our bitter, grudge match political culture that encourages people to hate and fear their neighbors isn’t improving the situation

You mean calling people ignorant godbags doesn’t bring our society closer together in harmony? Whodathunkit?

You mean calling people ignorant godbags doesn’t bring our society closer together in harmony? Whodathunkit?

Probably not.  Then again, spending an hour every week to rail against homersexuals, divorcees, sluts, and heathens while inside nearly perfectly race-segregated churches doesn’t either.

I always thought the love affair with the 50’s was more about it’s place in history than how great it was as a stand alone era. Coming out of the depression of the 30’s and war of the 40’s, the 50’s must have seemed like a sigh of relief. People remember that feeling, perhaps more than how great it actually was. If you could swap out now with the 50’s, I don’t think anyone would be all too happy.

Also, regarding the internet fulfilling a need…I just use myself as an example when people talk about how the internet is a lesser form of socialisation or “not real.” I am a deafblind, single mother of twin preschoolers. I do not drive, I can’t read regular print, I cannot use the phone, I don’t have a large budget for a babysitter. I have RL friends, sure. But I would be completely isolated and miserable without the internet. And my kids would suffer as well. I have several internet friendships that have developed into real life friendships. And then other communities that I’m involved with are not going to be easily found locally. i.e. disabled moms, moms of multiples, single moms, etc. Not to mention that I get my news through the internet, the weather, the pediatricians phone number, the restaurant menu, the bus schedule, part of my paycheck, etc.

The internet has made it possible for traditionally isolated people to develop communities and join forces for advocacy and political and social action.

Interesting that you mention the fact that our online communities really do satisfy a need. I don’t know that you could call our online socializing exactly the same as the face-to-face variety, or even a phone relationship. Still, I feel like I kinda know certain people that I have only ever communicated with online.

No, there are serious problems with online communities.  The most successful community I knew had regular gatherings, a few marriages developing out of it, and then still fell apart as people moved on.  There is also a serious problem, and I cannot stress this enough, in writing your own desires or prejudices into your perceptions of people.

They may satisfy a need, but that satisfaction may be hollow.  Back it up with face-to-face relationships.

You mean calling people ignorant godbags doesn’t bring our society closer together in harmony?

Well, to be fair, we only call them “ignorant godbags” if they attempt to impose their ignorant godbaggery on others (and this site has documented case after case of that). Otherwise I don’t think most of us care whether or not they worship an Invisible Bearded Sky Man™

If, instead of “nostalgia”, the term used was “transitional objects”, the writing you quoted would make more sense.

Whenever I feel nostalgia creeping in, I remember that there was usually a giant sucky part of life in those times, and that going back would actually suck, even if there were some good points.

Didn’t Ronald Reagan try to get us nostalgic for the Great Depression, back before the FDIC and Social Security and other trifling economic backstops?

Or do I remember the ‘80s differently than other folks here?

I agree with Lexie.  Internet communities such as this one, at least for me, are just as fulfilling as “real life” ones. 
I like some of the commenters and much as the articles.  In fact, sometimes even when I have nothing to say I read all the comments to see what some of my favorite commenters have to say, or if there was some drama. 
My friends, my family, my husband, I can communicate with all of them, but seriously, if I can’t check pandagon for a week, I miss it a lot.  In real life, I have three friends that I feel comfortable enough to discuss all these topics with.  The others, I’m pretty sure would be bored.  Three people is not a lot!  If I didn’t have this community, I would probably be lonelier, and my life wouldn’t be as rich.

what we really need is ways to help people stay connected to each other, to avoid the encroaching loneliness.

If only there were some technological means of doing this…

Yes, hanging out on the Internet is probably an inferior kind of socializing to face-to-face encounters.  But if it’s all you have, it has to be better than nothing, right?

Lexie!!!  Welcome to Pandagon! Im deaf myself, and i know what you’re talking about. Do u use tactile asl? U should consider living in Seattle. They have the best resources for deafblind here.

What you say about nostalgia is also spot on. 
When I worked with teenagers, even the 13 year olds would be nostalgic of “easier” times if they felt like they were not doing so wellin the present.  And they wrote songs with lyrics that said as much, poems, short stories…  It’s amazing, really, how little real time needs to lapse for people to become nostalgic.

Nostalgia becomes empty romanticism when one wasn’t an adult (or wasn’t born) during the times one is waxing poetic about.

Over the past 8 years, I’ll admit to becoming personally nostalgic for the 1990s. But I never deny the underlying problems of the Clinton/dot-com era (especially for people who weren’t as privileged as I), nor did I use it as an excuse to stop looking toward an even better future.

There’s got to be a separate term for nostalgia for an age you didn’t actually live through. Because if you were in high school in the ‘50s you are at least 64 years old now, and a lot of people who pine for “the ‘50s” are a lot younger than that, as any visit to a “classic-car cruise night” or a showing of Grease will tell you.

It’s a particularly pernicious strand of nostalgia that really should get its own name because I don’t think it even qualifies as such.

... the 1950s were filled with anti-communist paranoia ...

Yeah, have people really forgotten that for about 30 years we thought there very possibly could be a catastrophic, all-out nuclear war that would destroy all human life? I guess they have.

Saying that internet communities are inferior because they eventually fall apart ignores the fact that real communities fall apart all the time. It could be because I’m a recent college grad, but all the good friends I’ve made over the past few years, the community I’ve become accustomed to, has utterly dissipated as people move all over the country for jobs. I’m working on developing new friendships, of course, but even then people move away, grow bitter, there are fights, etc. that lead to a group no longer functioning.

I’ve made some great friends online who’ve helped me deal with things that I would otherwise have felt utterly alone on (like infertility). Without them, I’m certain I’d feel even more cursed and isolated than I do now, and be consequently more depressed.

Back it up with face-to-face relationships.

Unless, of course, you’re physically isolated, are autistic or have Asperger’s syndrome, are physically too frail to go out and meet anyone, have crippling panic disorder issues, or any number of other reasons why it’s damn near impossible for you to have face to face relationships.

The Internet may be problematic for the hordes of ordinary people who find it easy to make friends with ordinary people, but it was a godsend for the people who never *did* make face to face friends easily.  Except in college, when there was a large population of geeks I could draw from for my friendships, I have never had more than one good face-to-face friend a year, and before the Internet but after high school, I met all my friends through the *mail*. Try having all your friendships be pen pals you call on the phone sometimes. Trust me, the Internet’s an improvement.

Then there was this article in the LA Times about how psychologists are rethinking nostalgia.

You mean, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be? 

Dan, I hate and fear you, and all ignorant godbags, for good reason.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8UPXGun5zI

Amanda,
It’s weird how Boomers remember the 1950s. My mom, a dedicated bleeding-heart liberal Boomer, remembers the threat of nuclear war vividly. All those useless duck-and-cover drills did succeed in scaring the utter crap out of grade school kids.
On the other hand, she finds Mad Men enlightening because as a 12-year old girl in 1960, she had no experience with business culture in late 50s. It’s not that she doesn’t believe it, just that she finds herself thinking, “Damn it really was awful back then.” Then she remembers that her mother probably would have been a doctor, or at least a career nurse, but for the expectation that women stay home with the kids.
For people who, unlike my mother, want to remember a golden age, it’s easy to forget the we’ll-all-be- nuked-before-dinner mentality (as well as desegregation battles which were just in the backward-ass South) and think everything was just like Donna Reed, My Three Sons, and Grease. Helps, of course, if you were white, male, and lived in the suburbs.

Worse, the biggest generation is the one that remember the 50s mostly as a time when things seemed peaceful because they were children and sheltered from most problems.

One of the most milk-through-the-nose funny moments I’ve ever had was when someone online referred to the 1970s as “a more innocent time.”  Seriously.

I agree that while the Internet might not be as great as face-to-face time with people, it’s still a lot better than nothing.  I remember early in the Bush years when I was so furious and afraid for the future and I felt like I had no one to talk to about it. It was such a relief to finally discover liberal blogs and meet a whole community of like-minded folks.  I’m a fairly quiet person in real life and I’m not a big contributer online either, but I love coming to Pandagon and my other favorite blogs and reading what everyone else has to say.

The Boomers _are_ old. 
Shoot, we Gen X kids are over 40 now, with teenagers of our own. Most of us left the nest 20 years ago and more.

My nostalgia is limited to the classic country and the 80s radio station, with no desire to recreate any part of the eras involved.

I have an unpleasant tendency to call people out on their nostalgia. That hideous, endlessly forwarded piece about “We survived it!” tends to get the response, “Yes, but many didn’t.”

I don’t know what I’d do if I could not at least read sites like Pandagon and talk to like-minded people in comments.  I live in a big city, and, even here there are not that many liberal, atheist feminists to befriend.  I bet the Internet is a major source of comfort to those who are geographically isolated and/or the black sheep among a community of social conservatives or something.  Knowing that there are other people out there who feel the same way I do about certain issues is great, and I have learned a ton from the blogs I read.

a showing of Grease

And Dreamgirls, too. I love musical theater, but I cringe when nostalgia and the rock idiom (whether imaginary, or real such as “Jersey Boys” or “Movin’ Out”) are put on stage.

It’s just not the same thing!

Rock concerts are about sweating and pulsing and unraveling a little, and singing along when the lead points out to the audience, and incredible solos. Musical theater is about precision and rehearsal and understanding the words the very first time.

When I think of nostalgia, I think of the movie ‘Pleasantville’. It said more about nostalgia than most people can think about- and in a dis-arming manner. And yes, I know the sister decides to stay at the end, but her CHOICE to stay is not based on a love of the fifties, but a choice to begin anew wherein she could be free to be herself without the burden of the old self she regretted. Very existential.

It’s possible that nostalgia’s value for people vulnerable to depression may just be the sense that if things were better once, they might be again. Then, as with so many other positive traits that screw you over if left unchecked, it gets out of control.

In the US, fake nostalgia (50s styles in the 70s, 70s styles in the 90s and since then, blah blah) has been so thoroughly harnessed as a commercial force that it’s hard to even imagine the “real” thing without that overlay.

Looking at it from a Pop Ev Psych perspective, whatever mechanism underlies nostalgia probably has great evolutionary value, because there are a lot of survival-type things, like raising kids or migrating to a new home, that people just wouldn’t do if they had a clear vision of how much it sucked to be involved with them the last time.

Oh, we’ve always had nostalgia, historically.  The Renaissance was sparked by a great longing for the culture of Greece and Rome (Ciceronian Latin, rediscovery of Roman Law, and all that.) 

The problem with our nostalgia is that it usually isn’t even for something that existed—too many people have nostalgia for a particular period as shown by Hollywood movies and ads and we confuse that with actual history.

I inoculated myself against the 1950s when I noticed that it was all those kids that grew up in those Wonderful Period of the 1950s that were the rebellious hippies of the 1960s.  What good is a Golden Age if it doesn’t even have the robustness to last one generation?

Amanda:

Dan, I mean more saying that gays want to rape your children, liberals are undermining society, and that feminists hate men. Calling hateful people names is a much different thing than calling ordinary people that mean no harm names. See the difference?

No, he does not see the difference. He wouldn’t even agree that gays, liberals and feminists are harmless, mostly because he’s never in his life actually met anyone who was gay, liberal or feminist, or any combination of the three.

It’s easy for navel-gazing narcissists (extreme self-absorption is, as near as I can tell, what really drives the engine of right-wing authoritarianism) to demonize the members of a group they’ll never knowingly have to interact with. That’s the real difference. Dan has never personally interacted with gays, liberals or feminists. Most of us, on the other hand, have personally interacted with Christianists, fascists and assholes of all stripes. We speak ill of ignorant godbags because of our real-life experiences with them. He and his ilk speak ill of gays, liberals and feminists (and pretty much everyone else who is even marginally different from him) because that’s just what they’ve been told to do by their superiors. Their claims are informed by very little that could be construed as a factual claim by a neutral third-party observer.

As far as nostalgia goes: if you’re feeling nostalgic for a particular era, the chances are extremely high that you never actually lived through it yourself. I don’t know anyone my age who earnestly talks about a return to the cultural values of 1989, and I don’t know anyone my parents’ age who unironically waxes nostalgic about the 1960s and ‘70s, without engaging in some historically irresponsible whitewashing.

ThresherK:

And Dreamgirls, too. I love musical theater, but I cringe when nostalgia and the rock idiom (whether imaginary, or real such as “Jersey Boys” or “Movin’ Out”) are put on stage.

As a composer and a music historian, I hate Dreamgirls. The music is noticeably and painfully anachronistic, which is pretty impressive (not in a good way) given that the show originates in the mid- to late-1970s, not that long after the era it purports to re-enact.