Is the "past" better?

[Taker Sucks]

It seems everyday as a teenager that everything was better back in the day. From the "Funny ,but respectful TV" to the "Good not trash music of the devil." Even in more condensed subjects like Wrestling everyone wants the past back. They always want the "attitude era" not this "PG crap". Well, it seems like to me every generation has had to face this scrutiny. I found myself arguing with my little cousin that Disney Channel that show "That's So Raven" and "Even Steven" was significantly better than the programming I see on there now. When I realized I was doing what all of my older peers have been doing to me for so long I started to truly ponder the subject. From the people I have asked and the things I have researched the past is always made to look better then the present. In the '70's fans of Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, The Who, and others were being scrutinized by the 50's and 60's lovers of music. The cycle keeps repeating itself over and over again. You can fit this with any art form, piece of entertainment, technology, anything!

So the question is:


Do you think that the "past" is better than our "present?

Do you think this whole pattern is bogus?

Do you acknowledge that sometimes maybe our age gets in the way of progress?

 

[Dagger Dias]

The past seems better than it really was due to a little thing I like to call nostalgic inflation. You miss things when they are gone. That is simple human nature. Things from the past are remembered fondly and we miss them when they are gone, but were they really as great as we claim they were? People complain about how the WWE is nowhere near the quality of the Attitude Era or how 90's shows or music were far superior to today's entertainment. Even video games see this type of criticism where fanboys prefer the SNES over the Wii's games, and so forth. Every single thing we miss today had critics claiming something before THAT was better. It truly is an endless cycle because people cannot live in the present.

Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, it is able to inflate the quality of a memory so much that nothing similar in the present or future will be able to take its place. Nostalgic inflation. That is why the past always seems "better" according to fanboys who refuse to move on, when in reality today and tomorrow often offer better things to those willing to move on to something new.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

Just as things always seem more fun when you anticipate them then when they actually happen, things SEEM like they were better the further you move away from them. In fact, I often times step back DURING something and think to myself "man, when I look back on this...it will probably dawn on me how fucking awesome this is"


thats were the two different factors come in.

1- the first one I spoke of.....the further away, the more you dont remember the finer and maybe shittier details of something, or other factors such as having less to worry about in life at the time is the real concept of the wamr fuzzies....Which is why a lot of people remember things with their childhood so fondly....back then, they could simply embrace unbridled joy, with reckless abandon. Not so much, as an adult. When what they are thinking about (flipping over bowls of jello, throwing rocks at each other, what have you) may not even be so great in reality

2 - some things have too great of a scope for you to fully process how huge they are when they occur. People who have the ability to exist within and thrive in big moments 99% of the time dont realize them as such....Because if they did, the moment would crush them, as it does so many others...but when looking back, they think "wow....that was really fucking cool I got to be a part of that..." or "that went magically well" etc etc.

Truth being, the majority of advancement and updates made moving forward were made for a reason...because they are simply better. its fine to have fond memories, but one should lose sight of that, in the majority of cases.

 

[LilacFray]

This thread! Nice.

I've got so much to say but I just can't get them all together. >.<

Reading your post, I agree with what you've said.

But this whole 'Past being better than the Present' is a cycle that keeps going..

You mentioned up there how you argued with your little cousin about TV shows being better when we used to watch them.

Likewise I have to hear this kind of rants from my parents and I'm sure back when THEY were young,

their parents probably said that the kids those days were into these boxes with pictures called Televisions and how back in the day,

THOSE people did much creative and productive things than their children did.

Lol. It's funny cos I say all that and still find myself talking to my older sis about how we had

a better and more innocent childhood than our younger sisters.

I guess it's a cycle that would never go away as long as there was no change.

But there will always be change and we've gotta adapt.

Oh and I've gotta mention that I've seen a quote that means something like

'Some people are never happy because they always find the past much more better than the present.'

Kinda true when you come to think of it, living in the past doesn't help.

And yes, I do think that age gets in the way of the process.

 

[ABMorales787]

In some cases, the past is truly. I mean look at cartoons of today and look at older one's. Censors have become so tight that slapstick cartoons are pretty much dead and action cartoons are rarer than ever now.

 

[Ubiquitous]

It is pretty much what Dagger said, but I'm going to add on a bit. As we get further away from things in our past, it seems like we enjoyed them more than we actually did. One of these reasons being that there's no point in remembering the shittier qualities of some of these things, when instead you can just remember what you enjoy, and that's actually how most people's brains work. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, things from the past are better. Earthworm Jim? Case closed.

 

[H33LTurn]

Do you think that the "past" is better than our "present?
Some of it is. You mentioned music and yeah, I miss people actually getting a deal with a label because of their talent and not because of certain "deals" they make. I miss music, like rap, that reflects what our life is actually like, and not the lifestyle of the rich and famous. The attitude seemed awesome, I would much rather have it now than the PG era. However, I like that we have advanced laptops, cell phones, video games, safer neighborhoods, and more socially tolerant people.

Do you think this whole pattern is bogus?
Not really.



Do you acknowledge that sometimes maybe our age gets in the way of progress?
I dont think that my age gets in the way of anything. Whether I am 5 years old or my age now if I saw attitude era on TV I would like it. Tupac still sound awesome, so does 50 Cent.

 

[Dowdsy McDowds]

The past has become better because of how the present can be. Nowadays, the amount of information and the tools to get this information (thinking mainly of communications/social media) has verged on overload. Everything being connected comes with benefits, but it also has drawbacks too that can cause uncertainty. Some people may have noticed this, but say you are on facebook and an online retailing site, if you browse a few things on the retailing site, links can/will pop up on your facebook page either of the products you looked at or recommendations. While maybe not an invasion of privacy, it is a bit worrisome.

So with all this going on (without even touching on environmental, economical or social concerns) it's not a great surprise people will regress (in a sense) in their minds to a less complex time. Was it as good as they remember, maybe not, but thinking back to a certain time can also remind the person of past possibilities and opportunities that they maybe don't feel now.

There is a theory called Disneyfication which a French theorist (I think either Bauman or Baudrillard) brought up after going to Disneyland. He wrote a lot about it and one point was that history was condensed to only the positive parts and so the children visiting would have a skewed view of history and it was down to the parents to balance out the perceived perfection of the past.

The nostalgia industry is a highly profitable one, so company's will try and recreate certain things from the past to entice more sales from customers who wish to recreate their past in a sense. WWE did this not too long ago with the old School Raw and it'd be interesting to find out if that show's ratings did anything significant.

So to sum up, the past being perceived as better may not always be the case, but it is a highly valuable market to generate money from.