What are your thoughts on the feeling of nostalgia?

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The other day there was an interesting essay about nostalgia in Aeon:

Nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works as well | Aeon Essays

Neuroscience is finding what propaganda has long known: nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works too

aeon.co

It covers a bunch of topics, like nostalgia's link to imagination, how people can feel nostalgia for places or times they've never experienced, and how it can elicit both positive and negative feelings. Some excerpts:

By the early 20th century, nostalgia was considered a psychiatric rather than neurological illness – a variant of melancholia. Within the psychoanalytic tradition, the object of nostalgia – ie, what the nostalgic state is about – was dissociated from its cause. Nostalgia can manifest as a desire to return home, but – according to psychoanalysts – it is actually caused by the traumatic experience of being removed from one's mother at birth. This account began to be questioned in the 1940s, with nostalgia once again linked to homesickness. 'Home' was now interpreted more broadly to include not only concrete places, such as a childhood town, but also abstract ones, such as past experiences or bygone moments. While disagreements lingered, by the second part of the 20th century, nostalgia began to be characterised as involving three components. The first was cognitive: nostalgia involves the retrieval of autobiographical memories. The second, affective: nostalgia is considered a debilitating, negatively valenced emotion. And third, conative: nostalgia comprises a desire to return to one's homeland. As I'll argue, however, this tripartite characterisation of nostalgia is likely wrong.

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More interesting still is that nostalgia can bring to mind time-periods we didn't directly experience. In the film Midnight in Paris (2011), Gil is overwhelmed by nostalgic thoughts about 1920s Paris – which he, a modern-day screenwriter, hasn't experienced – yet his feelings are nothing short of nostalgic. Indeed, feeling nostalgic for a time one didn't actually live through appears to be a common phenomenon if all the chatrooms, Facebook pages and websites dedicated to it are anything to go by. In fact, a new word has been coined to capture this precise variant of nostalgia – anemoia, defined by the Urban Dictionary and the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows as 'nostalgia for a time you've never known'.

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Emotions have different valence: some are positive, some negative, and some both. Negatively valenced emotions include fear and sadness, while positively valanced emotions include happiness and joy. According to the traditional view, nostalgia is seen as a negative emotion: early medical reports described homesick patients as sad, melancholic and lethargic. The psychoanalytic tradition continued this view, and characterised nostalgia as involving sadness and pain. Indeed, it catalogued it as a particularly sad version of melancholia, tantamount to today's depression.

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But what about all these negatively valenced symptoms – the sadness, the depression – associated with nostalgia? Aren't they also effects of nostalgia? My sense is that physicians of old got the order of causation backwards: nostalgia doesn't cause negative affect but, rather, is caused by negative affect. Evidence for this claim comes from a number of recent studies showing that people are more likely to feel nostalgia when they are experiencing negative affect. Specifically, it has been documented that certain negative experiences tend to trigger nostalgia, including loneliness, loss of social connections, sense of meaninglessness, boredom, even cold temperatures. This doesn't mean that nostalgia is triggered only by negative experiences, but it does suggest that the negative affect can often be a cause, rather than an effect, of nostalgia.

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The question now is, how can we make sense of nostalgia as involving both negative and positive valences at once? This becomes less surprising when we understand nostalgia as imagination. Often, when we entertain certain mental simulations, we go back and forth between the current act of simulating and the content that's simulated. Both the act of simulating and the simulated content elicit emotions, and they needn't be the same. Consider another paradigmatic dynamic mental simulation: upward counterfactual thoughts, or mental simulations about ways in which bad outcomes could have been better ('If only I had arrived earlier, I would have got tickets for the show'). Typically, these kinds of counterfactual thoughts elicit feelings of regret.

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So what are your feelings towards nostalgia? Do you feel it for things you've never experienced? Does feeling nostalgia put you in a positive or negative mood? Is it something you feel often or rarely? If the studies mentioned are right and that 'negative' effects like boredom, loneliness, etc. can cause it, maybe it's something more people are experiencing lately (assuming this can trigger general nostalgia and not simply 'i miss eating at restaurants like i was doing last year').

 

[Neece]

I absolutely experience nostalgia for things and time periods I never experienced.

 

[ClickyCal']

I get nostalgic about some stuff, but don't let it change how I look at older stuff compared to new things.

 

[nsilvias]

its fine in small doses but dont let it control your life. dont let nostalgia make you hate on the kids either.

 

[acheron_xl]

Nostalgia is poison. I avoid it entirely if I can.

 

[Deleted member 4346]

Nostalgia is ok to indulge in sometimes. It's the driving force behind a lot of today's big media properties. Even nostalgia based on places you've never known, like citypop, is fine too, but I think it's unhealthy to get lost in nostalgia. Focus on the things that you experience right now.

 

[Doc Laserstein]

I avoid it entirely if I can.

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Do you ever get nostalgic for nostalgia?

 

[signal]

Nostalgia is poison. I avoid it entirely if I can.

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Whoa. I'm the opposite I love it. It does get easy to get too absorbed into if you have nothing but time to think during the day, but I don't consider it negative for myself.

 

[Navidson REC]

It's the subject matter of perhaps the best episode from HBO's Watchmen, soooo that's a plus haha.

Nostalgia is ok to indulge in sometimes. It's the driving force behind a lot of today's big media properties. Even nostalgia based on places you've never known, like citypop, is fine too, but I think it's unhealthy to get lost in nostalgia. Focus on the things that you experience right now.

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Seriously though, this seems to be a very good take. It's an awesome feeling from time to time but remember also that you're likely to experience the past through a quite biased lens. Live in the now, but be aware of the past.

 

[The Albatross]

I like nostalgia and nostalgic feelings get roused in me for really mundane things. Like stepping outside at a certain time of year and smelling a specific smell -- like damp air in the spring from melting snow -- and wash waves of nostalgia over me. Not that I have any experience specifically tied into that smell, it just intrudes a sense of longing and satisfaction at the same time.

For me, nostalgia is just that -- a satisfied longing .

Videogames are really capable of evoking nostalgia in me too. Not just nostalgia for playing that game but often for experiencing the time or place the game is set in, combined with a nostalgia for the time and place that I played the game in. Both GTA San Andreas and vice city do that to me. I've never been to Miami and I wasn't even alive in 1982 or whenever the game mostly takes place, but playing vice city makes me nostalgic for that time and place AS WELL as the hot summer in 2005 when I first played GTA Vice City all the way thru. It's a complicated feeling that I have.

It can work in reverse for me too. Cold, dry nights can remind me of Skyrim. Not just because Skyrim is set in a cold dry winter environment but because when I first played Skyrim it was November thru February of that year ... 2011 or 2012, and it was also when I got a dog and I'd take the dog out at night to walk him after playing for a few hours late at night and that cold dry winter air I'll have an association with Skyrim. So now when I walk out and it's cold dry and winter I'll think myself "aah a Skyrim night..." It was also a pretty carefree time in my life too.

Most if my videogame nostalgia feelings are also during times of carefree. Or fewer cares. Married with a baby and job and all that these days, i wouldn't trade this for anything, and I'm sure I block out challenges from those years too, but playing GTA SA and VC in 2005 when I had almost no real responsibility, playing Skyrim in 2011, there's a nostalgia at play there.

Smells trigger nostalgia for me the most. But they're mundane smells. Like... Smelling pancakes and bacon does not make me nostalgic for anything, or the ocean doesn't make me nostalgic for going to the beach as a kid. But like.... Very specific difficult to pinpoint smells can take me back to the feelings that I had in specific points and places in my life and make me nostalgic for them.

 

[DarthSpider]

"Remember when is the lowest form of conversation." That Tony Soprano quote really stuck with me over the years, and it can be applied internally I think. I'm not very open with my emotions, but I am extremely sentimental, and I think back on Christmases and all the wonderful memories that feel like a lifetime ago. For the longest time I tried to recreate those Christmases as an adult with my wife and son, and it always turned out a bit disappointing. I was letting my nostalgia manifest into expectations and that was never going to end with satisfaction. So I'll just save those memories as the treasures they are and try harder to live in the moment.

Oh, and I absolutely experience nostalgia for places and time periods I've never been. Showa-era Japan, specifically the late 60s and early 70s is a big one.

 

[Tagyhag]

I'm a very nostalgic person. My SO believes that I'm TOO nostalgic, which I understand.

I'll smell certain smells or look at photos and it just makes me reminiscence.

 

[GamerJM]

It's one of my favorite feelings ever but it feels like the way I often experiencing it (basically reveling in positive memories) is less common than the ways corporations weaponize it to get people to buy stuff.

 

[Spaggy]

I get feelings of nostalgia all the time, but rarely tied to an actual memory from my life. More so of a mood, like seeing the long shadows of a late afternoon in summer and imagining a quiet house in the countryside with cicadas buzzing, feeling the humidity growing as clouds darken overhead.

It's not a real memory, but the feeling of a place and time that could've been. I daydream a lot, so that is tied to it.
It just makes me want to draw it to capture that feeling in my mind.

 

[Typhon]

I enjoy my nostalgia and I'm ok with corporations capitalizing on it with remakes. But don't fuck up the source material and then claim you made it for a "new generation".

 

[Rendering...]

Cinema, visual art, and music evoke a lot of emotion for me, sometimes intense feelings of longing. I'm not sure if that qualifies as nonstalgia. I have very little nostalgia about my past. I have a lot of nostalgia for works of art and entertainment that made an impression on me. Probably because there's no personal element that triggers negative thoughts.

I associate the first kind of nostalgia with the warm glow of pleasant memories, and also with a wrenching awareness of mortality and the fleeting nature of experience. I think I try to resist nostalgia for real life experiences because it's so closely linked with pain.

It's probably healthier to be able to look at the past without angst. Guess I'll have to work on that.

 

[Tap In]

Beyond just remembering the past for a purpose, Nostalgia is a waste of energy by and large

 

[Dommo]

I am an extremely nostalgic person and I hate it.

It's like a massive weight on my shoulders that grows heavier and heavier as time passes, as more and more memories are converted from uninteresting recollections into yearning sentimentality. I used to actively try to chase recapturing past events that filled me with nostalgia, only to leave me hollow and empty. Naturally, those new memories would convert themselves into fond nostalgia some years later. So it's this constantly unattainable entity taunting me from afar. My experiences in the present don't hold anywhere close to the amount of magic that my long distant memories do, for no reason other than the fact that they're long distant.

It holds me back from moving on and from growing. It's a great frustration because I know that logically there's nothing special about any certain memory, and yet the feeling lingers.

 

[Scottt]

Most of my work is on memory, so this is my damn jam.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

I do love positive nostalgia — when it evokes a sense of carefree mental state, empowerment, or wellness. I hate when something takes me back to a feeling of anger, loneliness, or desperation that I've experienced in the past, though.

I experience nostalgia from both real lived experiences as the two major places I've lived since moving out are barely like my hometown, so re-identifying with the positive aspects of my upbringing is something I sometimes really cherish. For me personally, it's access to Korean food — never been to Korea, I'm biracial part-Korean so I grew up with Korean food in the household and there were a few small pockets of Korean businesses around my hometown that allowed me to go out and get Korean food at restaurants as well. I also generally kinda miss "urban" culture — the two places I've lived extensively since moving out are a remote mountain college town and a white suburban college town. I used to live in a huge city with something of an urban flair that just has not been very visible in the two cities I've moved on to, and I frankly get super nostalgic for that one aspect when I go back home or visit a city that reminds me of my hometown. If I were to put it another way, I moved to a place where I see Teslas on the road all the time and shit is just super clean and well-organized. I grew up in a place that had a lot of visible urban decay, people cared more about your sneakers than your car, etc...

I've pretty extensively outgrown my hometown, but I still get nostalgic for it. The flavor of a local comic shop is so much different (and worse) in my current town than the way I felt about the dingier, more personal comic book shops of my hometown, as another specific example.

I just now kind of live in a bland, "enlightened" suburbia that doesn't feel much like my upbringing. I don't feel entirely comfortable in this environment but I often try to convince myself that I've "moved up" by being here.

I don't miss a lot of the heavy US military influences of my hometown, having grown up a military brat. Saw a lot of aggression and heartbreak that comes with that culture that I've never really felt comfortable with. Domestic violence, threats made with guns, etc — I'm lucky I've never actually seen anyone die within that aspect of my upbringing, but I've seen some insanely tense and violent stuff still. I legit got paralyzed by some of the earlier scenes in Wolfenstein II because of this aspect, probably the most intense trigger moment I've ever had in my life.

And yes, I do sometimes feel nostalgic for eras and places and I never lived in, like "the 60's" and "disco," which I think were at least partially passed onto me from my parents growing up, as they both grew up in those eras.

I was born in the late 80's and had enough of a sliding exposure to that in the early 90's with Transformers and He-Man reruns and toy re-issues to kind of feel vaguely connected and nostalgic to the 80's, too.

I live with pretty real 90's nostalgia all the time, having actually grown up through that.

EDIT: worth mentioning that one uncomfortable part of my nostalgia is that whenever I try to express myself within the framework of my aforementioned urban nostalgia in my current environment, I totally feel like I'm faking it. It's really uncomfortable and I'm gradually just kinda letting it slide into the past, so that's another negative for nostalgia.

 

[Deleted member 19626]

In high school vice city made me nostalgic for the 80s, though I was born in 89. Now I'm just nostalgic for a time when I didn't read the news and hate everything going on, when I was younger and didn't have a care in the world lol

 

[Future Gazer]

Nostalgia goes hand in hand with my depression. I envy those who can just live in the present.

 

[BizzyBum]

This is probably a really unpopular opinion, but I dislike looking at old photos. Yeah, it's nice to look back and reminisce on occasion, but it actually depresses me more than anything. Just seeing loved ones who are no longer here, everyone looking younger and better looking, the smiles people show give off the vibe of happier times. For me, all I think about when viewing the family photo album is a strong desire to go back to those times.

 

[Aldo]

This article is extremely interesting, thank you. The fact that nostalgia could often be a symptom of unhappiness makes a lot of sense.

 

[kami_sama]

Nostalgia is ok to indulge in sometimes. It's the driving force behind a lot of today's big media properties. Even nostalgia based on places you've never known, like citypop, is fine too, but I think it's unhealthy to get lost in nostalgia. Focus on the things that you experience right now.

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Damn, I was going to say something about citypop.
I agree 100% with your take.
But I also want to add that people can experience nostalgia for things that never were. A lot of vaporwave's art and music gives me nostalgia. And while it is based on US consumerism of the 80s and 90s, it is so distorted that ends up being it's own thing. But I still experience nostalgia for it.

 

[signal]

Need a classification describing corny nostalgia about a setting you've never been in in reality but have otherwised experienced somehow.

This article is extremely interesting, thank you. The fact that nostalgia could often be a symptom of unhappiness makes a lot of sense.

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Yeah. I think for me it's way more of a boredom thing but for a lot of people I could see a negative emotional mood activating it.

 

[Khanimus]

Nostalgia as a personal experience is vapid comfort food too easy to get mired in and hold as precious.

In media, nostalgia as aesthetic is fine, but it's masturbatory and meaningless without text or critique.

 

[signal]

Nostalgia as a personal experience is vapid comfort food too easy to get mired in and hold as precious.

In media, nostalgia as aesthetic is fine, but it's masturbatory and meaningless without text or critique.

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Sounds a bit harsh. At worst it seems on-par with any type of day-dreaming, unless a personal is abnormally absorbed in nostalgia all the time.

 

[Fallout-NL]

I may have overindulged over the course of my life. Trying to cut back on wallowing in it.

 

[Yossarian]

I think nostalgia is fucking poison.

 

[Maligna]

Nostalgia is one of my favourite feelings. It's a comfort to feel as if you're living a happy moment or feeling over again. I wish I could bring it on at will, but true nostalgia is usually triggered.

 

[eXistor]

Nostalgia is nothing more than a yearning for something that once was and can never be again. It doesn't need to be from your own experience or lifetime.

 

[Conal]

Nostalgia literally makes me feel a bit sick. Probably some unresolved trauma there lol

Nostalgia is nothing more than a yearning for something that once was and can never be again. It doesn't need to be from your own experience or lifetime.

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It doesn't even have to have existed. See: MAGA

 

[Kinggroin]

I've experienced nostalgia to the capacity described by that article. Nostalgia in all its forms, with both negative and positive emotional evocation.

 

[eXistor]

I like to think I indulge in healthy amounts of nostalgia and I find it to be a very enriching feeling. I do know some people who indulge in it a little bit too much and they can't seem to let go of the past, which is where it gets obsessive and dangerous.

 

[Reym]

I hate nostalgia.
It reminds me that I used to be happy, which in turn hammers home the feeling that I'll never be happy again.

 

[signal]

Kind of surprised many view it as so toxic. Aside from the 'maga' type, which honestly seems like a separate thing itself, I find it to be mostly harmless. Again, unless it's some extreme case where it's dominating a persons life and causing depression.

 

[Deleted member 24079]

I dislike nostalgia because it causes me to waste time and money. I've spent time playing retro games that ultimately have had spiritual successors that I've already played. If YouTube existed I should've just scrubbed through let's plays. My nostalgia isn't even for playing the games, just the curiosity of games I wanted but couldn't get. Not worth it.

 

[Baccus]

Is a useless, harmful feeling that you should avoid at all costs.

 

[Green]

I visited my elementary school yesterday for the first time since attending. It was so... weird. But good. But wow what a weird feeling.

 

[HomokHarcos]

I can't tell if I'm a nostalgic person or just somebody very interested in the past.

 

[AliceAmber]

I get nostalgic for what things were like this time last year. But I try not to dwell on it, because it can get upsetting.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

I don't think nostalgia is completely toxic, as I have heard said... but I treat it carefully. My childhood kinda sucked and my life is generally better as it goes along, so for me it's more personally triggering fun memories, not some overall wish.

I do get the feeling from times before I was born, sometimes. There are appealing aesthetics to a lot of past eras. But whenever I think about that, I recall an exchange with my college roommate that woke me up on the matter. I was saying hey, wouldn't it be cool to live in the 1950s? And he said "Uh, no, not at all!" He's black. And while I am not, I have no desire to romanticize or filter out shitty aspects of the past after that. It's not just the racism either, it's advances in health, it's the way art and science and society evolve.

I can enjoy old things (and I like old movies and games a lot) without it being at the expense of new things and without ignoring aspects of the past that sucked.

I do think that in the US, nostalgia and racism often buoy each other in really nasty ways. The whole confederate worship thing is a perfect example. Racists push their ideas via nostalgia.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

I dislike nostalgia because it causes me to waste time and money. I've spent time playing retro games that ultimately have had spiritual successors that I've already played. If YouTube existed I should've just scrubbed through let's plays. My nostalgia isn't even for playing the games, just the curiosity of games I wanted but couldn't get. Not worth it.

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As a Retro gamer, I find that the best approach is to cut a game loose as soon as you find it's been superceded effectively. I like a lot of old games, but whole swathes of them don't have the appeal when something newer fills the same niche better.

 

[Deleted member 24079]

As a Retro gamer, I find that the best approach is to cut a game loose as soon as you find it's been superceded effectively. I like a lot of old games, but whole swathes of them don't have the appeal when something newer fills the same niche better.

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Exactly and that cut away feels so good. I felt beholden to see the game through but it never has been worth it. I'm going to get flack but the sms and nes library largely feels like this. I truly respect the libraries but realize Lttp is going to be more fun that Zelda 1. I also do know Zelda 2 is unique and at least worth watching someone play real quick.

 

[Darryl M R]

It's my favorite emotion and word.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Exactly and that cut away feels so good. I felt beholden to see the game through but it never has been worth it. I'm going to get flack but the sms and nes library largely feels like this. I truly respect the libraries but realize Lttp is going to be more fun that Zelda 1. I also do know Zelda 2 is unique and at least worth watching someone play real quick.

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Yeah. I'm a golden age arcade game fan, and some of that experience exists best in those original games. But often (and even more on console games) the basic appeal has been preserved and improved upon in descendants.

The moment I (fairly recently) had this revelation was liberating.

I'll play Joust, Mr Do and Robotron until I die though. Descendants of those may be good, but also fundamentally different.

 

[Vibed]

I don't get nostalgic for times and places I haven't experienced because I realize they're often stereotypes romanticized in a bad way. However, I do often feel nostalgic, and that stems from an appreciation and gratefulness for the good things in my life rather than longing for it. I recognize things like past relationships' or my childhood's good points and feel a sad happiness, but keep my thoughts in the present for all the good I have now, as one day I'll probably be nostalgic for the current present too. Everything in moderation.

 

[Glasgow Mega-Snake]

Nostalgia just isn't the same anymore these days. When I was young we still felt real nostalgia. All the youngsters will never know what it was like.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Nostalgia just isn't the same anymore these days. When I was young we still felt real nostalgia. All the youngsters will never know what it was like.

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