Idealising The Past Can Only Be A Signal That Something Isn’t Right

We will probably still do it, so we might as well use it.

Image by Gerd Altmann

A Dangerous Game

Out of the many dubious things humans do, idealising the past is probably one of the most pernicious. We all do it to a certain degree. Its noxious effects can range from those of a minimal flaw to those of a personal tragedy.

I hated it when I started a new job and my new colleagues would wax lyrical about times gone by, about how they used to have so much fun, about how everything was better back then. I felt like I had missed out on the best time to work for that company. I felt like I wasn’t as cool as those who had come before me.

Doomed To Repeat Ourselves?

Ironically, years later I would do the same: tell the recruits how things used to be so much better when I joined the company, how we used to have so much fun back then when there wasn’t as much control and the company wasn’t so big and professionalised. I bet they went on themselves to glorify the same period I was deriding when they were veterans welcoming future new troops.

Idealising the past is unintelligent to an insulting level. If we were all correct, and each new year was worse than the one before, the origins of anything…