There once was a highly modernized and rich country that rejected modernity and decided to RETVRN to traditional values. That country was Iran. It didn’t work out well for most people.
The left is also extremely susceptible to this rose-coloured glasses nostalgism (although perhaps for slightly different reasons). You can see it every day when someone inevitably posts something like "I am tired of living through unprecedented times" (ever read a history textbook?). I also remember being incredulous at a post where someone claimed that gay rights were stronger under *Bill Clinton* than the current administration. I don't know what world that person is living in but DOMA and "Don't Ask Don't Tell" were not good policies for gay people, not to mention how radically different broad public sentiment was at the time. While the current moment is indeed tumultuous, I think everyone on both sides needs to recalibrate their dish a little bit.
"But while conservatism doesn’t have to be backwards looking, this backwards looking posting is itself virtually always conservative."
Kind of disagree with that. Its more characteristic of conservatives but there's plenty of nostalgia on the left for the supposed idyllic times when marginal taxes on the rich where 99% and a working men could supposedly afford a house cars and college on a single salary cuz unions or something. Its just as dumb.
I've argued with a lot of other liberals about this. They really think that everyone in 1950 had a union job where they made enough to afford a sweet lifestyle.
Um no. And I'm not even brining up the plight of women, minorities, and gays.
The thing is that this group liberals who believe this are....you could guess it.......older!
You are absolutely right that things in general keep getting better in so many ways.
I often feel nostalgic and when I examine it I think it is because:
1. Life was happy and easy when I was a kid and had no responsibility. So, thinking of the things that we had and the way things looked back then makes me feel comforted. They also remind me of people who are gone.
2. I wonder if there is only so much change our psyches can absorb comfortably. For every generation in recent time there has been an acceleration of change in technology and culture.
When I think through it rationally, I’m much more comfortable and thriving at a job that wouldn’t even exist without technology that did not exist when I was a child, but I still feel the emotional pull of wishing for the good/bad old days.
I just have to say this- I don't know much about terrible quality 70's appliances, but 90's appliances are the opposite of terrible. My 30 year old fridge and range are both still chugging along, and every appliance repairman who sees them says "hang on to those for dear life"
Tucker's comments here are an example of the deep incoherence of the populist right on this issue: he literally sounds like a hippie. But of course, he denounces policies aimed at mitigating AGW, and every other law or rule meant to keep ecosystems going and rural areas fit to live in. (I think many of those issues would be better handled in a more market-driven way, but that's not the point.)
I remember a Dickie Spencer live in which screamed "Liberals are cool! Conservative are just people who would have hanged Jesus just to venerate him three generation later"
I think it's a little more complicated than just 'it was worse therefore it was better'. Part of it is undoubtedly the idea that labour-saving, convenience, consumer abundance etc are sinful in and of themselves for promoting sloth and greed and lack of grit, but binmenism is fixated on foreign food and changing social mores because of an underlying sense of 'it's better because it's Ours/worse because it's Theirs'. The suffering-as-virtue logic has been inextricably tied up with that because the social and material changes happened at the same time.
I also get the impression they're using the material conditions of their childhood as an empty signifier for the intangible things about society that truly have been lost for the worse since that time - mostly sources of social cohesion like the sense of belonging to extended family and to place because people didn't move around as much, and the sense of belonging at your workplace because of the expectation of long service and that you would advance your career by moving up within the one organisation rather than by job-hopping like we do now.
Pasta came to the UK (pretty much) for the first time in the 1960s and 1970s as lots of economic migrants came here from Italy and opened trattorias, particularly in London. In fact, my mum's family moved to Milan for a couple of years in the 1970s, and when they came back to parochial Surrey my grandma would make pasta occasionally; even then guests found it exotic and foreign and would ask her what it was. Her brother-in-law, a Yorkshireman, refused to eat lasagne and asked for a boiled egg instead...
(Though I'd like to clarify that the UK's food scene is now wonderful, though only has been since about the early 2000s!)
I remember watching Band of Brothers, a story of an American paratrooper regiment in WW2 (40's), and for one of their meals they ate spegetti, so I presume the heavy immigration of Iltaians to the US in the late 1800's and early 1900's meant that Americans started eating Pizza and Spegetti much earlier than in the UK.
"Hey if you actually think doing heroin is bad, then why aren't you living your values and not doing heroin?"
Sure man.
I don't disagree with your main point, but this is a bad argument. And the nostalgia is referring to something real, even if people are confused about the thing that was actually better in the past: Community, human connection--bowling leagues. 3% of men had no close friends in 1990. Now that number is 15%. Close relations are the single biggest predictor of happiness. And they really were better when things were worse, even if that is just a coincidence.
So I have to know, Jeremiah, do you write the branded subscription requests that show up in articles? When it says "who remembers proper blog posts" and asks people to subscribe, does Substack have some kind of software that takes a pass at that for you? Or do you have to do it yourself every time?
There's a lot of coded thinking that I'm not even sure conservatives are aware they're doing: the unvarnished reason for the RETVRN movement is power. There's been a re-sorting of who is valuable and who is not based on the work that needed vs. needs to be done.
Currently, we're in a world where women and Asians literally have a leg-up on the Common White Man, and this is BFD (big friggin' deal). At the same time, cultural norms continue to evolve in such a way that a non-white male gets more social currency just for not being a white male (lots of white men are roughed up by cops, but you don't see people protesting in the streets for them!).
The power dynamic has shifted, but nobody is actually willing to come to grips with the fact that it's the power shift that bothers them. Instead, they point at signals that represent a time when they had virtually absolute social (and, to an extent, economic) power. In the 50s and 60s, the Great Middle Class was what every company catered to. Now, it's the lower-class and the upper-class. So not only have they lost power, they've also lost the interest of the economy to boot.
The future (i.e., now and moving forward) will continue to benefit those who are best fit for what the future needs. The Common White Man is what the past needed. It's no surprise whatsoever that they would fantasize about going back to feeling fundamentally needed.
I would argue that most of your angry relatively disinfranchised white conservative males are guys that would not have been well off in the 1950's either. The best jobs have always been for the most capable and competitive - and there were less of them in the good ol' days.
Watch a movie from the 50's, not a fantasy musical, but a film about everyday American life (think "On the Watrerfront"). A lot of white men were poor and desititute then too. What they had pride in was that they were White Men. "I may be poor, but I'm a white man!"
It used to mean something, but now it means nothing. They used to get social credit for merely existing with the right skin and genitals. Now they do not (at least as much).
It seems perfectly coherent to believe that culture was better in the past in some ways (people less socially anxious, fewer phones, more rational political discourse) even if life is better now in other ways due to technology.
The politics of nostalgia is alluring, and I'm known to share versions of the "we walked uphill both ways!" stories with my own kids (though, honestly, they walk to school more often and in much harsher weather than I ever did). But as a historian I find it fundamentally ahistorical, often amusingly so. Gregg Easterbrook writes about this quite well in "It's Better Than It Looks."
There once was a highly modernized and rich country that rejected modernity and decided to RETVRN to traditional values. That country was Iran. It didn’t work out well for most people.
The left is also extremely susceptible to this rose-coloured glasses nostalgism (although perhaps for slightly different reasons). You can see it every day when someone inevitably posts something like "I am tired of living through unprecedented times" (ever read a history textbook?). I also remember being incredulous at a post where someone claimed that gay rights were stronger under *Bill Clinton* than the current administration. I don't know what world that person is living in but DOMA and "Don't Ask Don't Tell" were not good policies for gay people, not to mention how radically different broad public sentiment was at the time. While the current moment is indeed tumultuous, I think everyone on both sides needs to recalibrate their dish a little bit.
"But while conservatism doesn’t have to be backwards looking, this backwards looking posting is itself virtually always conservative."
Kind of disagree with that. Its more characteristic of conservatives but there's plenty of nostalgia on the left for the supposed idyllic times when marginal taxes on the rich where 99% and a working men could supposedly afford a house cars and college on a single salary cuz unions or something. Its just as dumb.
I've argued with a lot of other liberals about this. They really think that everyone in 1950 had a union job where they made enough to afford a sweet lifestyle.
Um no. And I'm not even brining up the plight of women, minorities, and gays.
The thing is that this group liberals who believe this are....you could guess it.......older!
You are absolutely right that things in general keep getting better in so many ways.
I often feel nostalgic and when I examine it I think it is because:
1. Life was happy and easy when I was a kid and had no responsibility. So, thinking of the things that we had and the way things looked back then makes me feel comforted. They also remind me of people who are gone.
2. I wonder if there is only so much change our psyches can absorb comfortably. For every generation in recent time there has been an acceleration of change in technology and culture.
When I think through it rationally, I’m much more comfortable and thriving at a job that wouldn’t even exist without technology that did not exist when I was a child, but I still feel the emotional pull of wishing for the good/bad old days.
I just have to say this- I don't know much about terrible quality 70's appliances, but 90's appliances are the opposite of terrible. My 30 year old fridge and range are both still chugging along, and every appliance repairman who sees them says "hang on to those for dear life"
Tucker's comments here are an example of the deep incoherence of the populist right on this issue: he literally sounds like a hippie. But of course, he denounces policies aimed at mitigating AGW, and every other law or rule meant to keep ecosystems going and rural areas fit to live in. (I think many of those issues would be better handled in a more market-driven way, but that's not the point.)
He sounds like a hippie because guess what a lot of middle-aged people were in the 1990's?
Grown-up Hippies!
And since conservatives tend to run 20-30 years behind liberals, guess who thinks they own hippies now?
Conservatives!
I remember a Dickie Spencer live in which screamed "Liberals are cool! Conservative are just people who would have hanged Jesus just to venerate him three generation later"
Exactly
I think it's a little more complicated than just 'it was worse therefore it was better'. Part of it is undoubtedly the idea that labour-saving, convenience, consumer abundance etc are sinful in and of themselves for promoting sloth and greed and lack of grit, but binmenism is fixated on foreign food and changing social mores because of an underlying sense of 'it's better because it's Ours/worse because it's Theirs'. The suffering-as-virtue logic has been inextricably tied up with that because the social and material changes happened at the same time.
I also get the impression they're using the material conditions of their childhood as an empty signifier for the intangible things about society that truly have been lost for the worse since that time - mostly sources of social cohesion like the sense of belonging to extended family and to place because people didn't move around as much, and the sense of belonging at your workplace because of the expectation of long service and that you would advance your career by moving up within the one organisation rather than by job-hopping like we do now.
Pasta came to the UK (pretty much) for the first time in the 1960s and 1970s as lots of economic migrants came here from Italy and opened trattorias, particularly in London. In fact, my mum's family moved to Milan for a couple of years in the 1970s, and when they came back to parochial Surrey my grandma would make pasta occasionally; even then guests found it exotic and foreign and would ask her what it was. Her brother-in-law, a Yorkshireman, refused to eat lasagne and asked for a boiled egg instead...
(Though I'd like to clarify that the UK's food scene is now wonderful, though only has been since about the early 2000s!)
I remember watching Band of Brothers, a story of an American paratrooper regiment in WW2 (40's), and for one of their meals they ate spegetti, so I presume the heavy immigration of Iltaians to the US in the late 1800's and early 1900's meant that Americans started eating Pizza and Spegetti much earlier than in the UK.
"Hey if you actually think doing heroin is bad, then why aren't you living your values and not doing heroin?"
Sure man.
I don't disagree with your main point, but this is a bad argument. And the nostalgia is referring to something real, even if people are confused about the thing that was actually better in the past: Community, human connection--bowling leagues. 3% of men had no close friends in 1990. Now that number is 15%. Close relations are the single biggest predictor of happiness. And they really were better when things were worse, even if that is just a coincidence.
So I have to know, Jeremiah, do you write the branded subscription requests that show up in articles? When it says "who remembers proper blog posts" and asks people to subscribe, does Substack have some kind of software that takes a pass at that for you? Or do you have to do it yourself every time?
Those are all me! Sometimes I don't feel particularly clever and I stick to the default message, but it's fun to mix it up.
There's a lot of coded thinking that I'm not even sure conservatives are aware they're doing: the unvarnished reason for the RETVRN movement is power. There's been a re-sorting of who is valuable and who is not based on the work that needed vs. needs to be done.
Currently, we're in a world where women and Asians literally have a leg-up on the Common White Man, and this is BFD (big friggin' deal). At the same time, cultural norms continue to evolve in such a way that a non-white male gets more social currency just for not being a white male (lots of white men are roughed up by cops, but you don't see people protesting in the streets for them!).
The power dynamic has shifted, but nobody is actually willing to come to grips with the fact that it's the power shift that bothers them. Instead, they point at signals that represent a time when they had virtually absolute social (and, to an extent, economic) power. In the 50s and 60s, the Great Middle Class was what every company catered to. Now, it's the lower-class and the upper-class. So not only have they lost power, they've also lost the interest of the economy to boot.
The future (i.e., now and moving forward) will continue to benefit those who are best fit for what the future needs. The Common White Man is what the past needed. It's no surprise whatsoever that they would fantasize about going back to feeling fundamentally needed.
I would argue that most of your angry relatively disinfranchised white conservative males are guys that would not have been well off in the 1950's either. The best jobs have always been for the most capable and competitive - and there were less of them in the good ol' days.
Watch a movie from the 50's, not a fantasy musical, but a film about everyday American life (think "On the Watrerfront"). A lot of white men were poor and desititute then too. What they had pride in was that they were White Men. "I may be poor, but I'm a white man!"
It used to mean something, but now it means nothing. They used to get social credit for merely existing with the right skin and genitals. Now they do not (at least as much).
THAT is why they are so angry.
Not sure if I agree that it is exclusively conservative. The left does this too.
But it is more right-coded to pine for the past.
It seems perfectly coherent to believe that culture was better in the past in some ways (people less socially anxious, fewer phones, more rational political discourse) even if life is better now in other ways due to technology.
The politics of nostalgia is alluring, and I'm known to share versions of the "we walked uphill both ways!" stories with my own kids (though, honestly, they walk to school more often and in much harsher weather than I ever did). But as a historian I find it fundamentally ahistorical, often amusingly so. Gregg Easterbrook writes about this quite well in "It's Better Than It Looks."
The "That was always allowed" link is to an unavailable YouTube video
The fact that Tucker Carlson thinks “three” is a notable number of tree species to be able to identify is hilarious.