Dissecting Nostalgia
Entry posted by bonesiii
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I'm really short on time today so I'ma gonna use a quote from one of my posts.
This is from Emperor Kraggh's topic: How Do Newcomers View Nostalgia? which is, BWT, almost dead despite being an interesting topic. (Revival is 30 days in GD so there's still time to post as of this moment!)Bold is for important points, not emotionalism.
These are interesting questions, but even more interesting to me is this -- what causes nostalgia in the first place? I'm hoping to have time to fit yet another blog entry in about this, because there's a simple answer that would solve some of the issues many fans have.
Basically, nostalgia is caused because at the outset, the brain is in an open-minded state, searching for things that fit its personal tastes really well, thus pleasing it. But once we have such an experience, we often lock that in as "THE" way to get that emotional high. So we sort of overspecialize our brain's definition of "my preference", locking out other preferences that are actually in us.
And from that point on, we can sometimes actually lock out our own brain from experiencing similar (but different) situations that would actually please us as much, more, or possibly at least somewhat lol, compared to the original one. I would go so far as to generalize that for many, many older fans, we could be just as pleased every year if we would simply unlock our brains to allow ourselves to be so.
I think I've always been better able to unlock that ability, and maybe that in addition to 2001 not being in a lot of big ways to my tastes even though I was there for it (and enjoying those parts that were) has helped me enjoy new years. Sure, sets have come closer to what I like -- but a lot of it is my own choice.
Obviously the weakness of this is that even if you're open for it, sometimes things are just not going to swing back towards your natural preferences (like if someone is wired to be the uberfan of Technicism, they're not going to ever be quite as happy now, since that failed experiment was mostly dropped). Still, even here it can improve things.
This is just my view of it; I'm no scientist, but it fits perfectly with my observations of myself, you guys, people in real life, etc. It seems that not only is enjoyment about personal taste, but about the "lockdowns" we impose on our own tastes. Sorta like a "cool kid" in school letting everybody else tell him what he's allowed to like just so he isn't seen as "weird" (which is rather silly considering everybody's supposed to be weird, not clones lol), only in this case we are letting a past experience tell us perhaps too exactly how we are to be pleased.
And lemme emphasize that this shouldn't be interpreted as preachy -- it's up to you if you want to "unlock" your own tastes fully, or if you want to stick to a more narrow definition of what you allow yourself to like. It's all taste, therefore subjective, therefore it's not a crime to be confined by nostalgia. However, "unlocking" it may very well help you be a happier person, so it's worth considering!
A simple trick is to pretend that every year, you are coming into it like a new fan, who doesn't remember the old years, and just let your own tastes judge the new year freely, in the same way your tastes judged the old year. Doesn't mean you'll necessarily like new as much as old, but perhaps it can help.
Everybody on BZPower who has ever said that they have tried this tells me that it works for them.
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