Nostalgic diarrhea

Factfulness by Hans Gosling and his talks give a great insight on how sometimes we are tuned to perceive the world as getting worse. The pleasure we derive through nostalgia is perhaps a safety net we create for ourselves when faced with uncertainty.

Nostalgia is mostly accompanied by positive and relaxing thoughts. In such a mood, the past seems simple and cohesive, irrespective of how it was. Perhaps the nature of our biological memory is such; that such emotions supercede the pricky details. Is this why we often find people talking about 'Golden days' ?

The tricky part is that our few fleeting years of life somehow merge with a million years of a perfect utopian world (unknown though), but then "just" got corrupted. I am not referring to any particular generation here, but pit two people with an age gap of 10 years against each other and we will get to hear some equivalent of 'good old days'. For Indians born between 60-90s the fine line between modern and western also confuses on what is progress and what is influence. Nevertheless, in a nostalgic mood,  old is gold! The interesting bit is the micro-craving to bring back that elusive bliss. 

Statements like "people were healthier", "television plots had meaning", "depression was unheard of and cancer only a zodiac sign", "music has melody" or even "test cricket had character" unapolgetically crush today's progress.

Guillotines, iron maidens, polio and small pox are done away with. Wars, even though they could be out of vested interest or self righteousness, are atleast proclaimed to be for unenslaving. There is a spectrum from tinder to divorce matrimony instead of waging Wars for women. People are diabetic because there are mouths being stuffed beyond limits and 24x7 high definition sattelite tv and ott streaming to your face. If compared with a century earlier, the modern urban educated youth is perhaps  living like royalty, with unlimited potential access to education, entertainment, health and nutrition. 

I would end this post with a wonderful talk show clip from Louis CK on the Conan show about 'Everything is amazing but nobody is happy'.