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What is the name of the psychological tendency to idealize the past and predict the end of civilization?
Every generation has a constituency of people who feel like everything was perfect in the past and that society is quickly and irrevocably going down hill in every way possible. Some go so far as to predict the imminent end of the world within their lifetimes. Otherwise simply complain about certain aspects of society.
You know the type: the 40-something guy who thinks that music was at its apogee in the 1980's and has been nothing but crap since, as if his parents and grand-parents and great-grand-parents didn't lament about the same thing; the recluse who complains about how all marriages were perfect and all children were innocent and respectful in his day; the suburban housewife who predicts the death of American culture at the hands of ethnic and religious minorities, as if our culture were some immutable constant that had remained unchanged since 1776 only to die as foreign foods & tongues and imagined anti-Christmas sentiment proliferated.
Is there a name for this tendency?
I don't simply mean the propensity to find fault with culture and criticize existing problems; it's broader than that. It entails a holier-than-thou rejection of everything the current generation has produced and an exaggerated idealization of the past.
7 Answers
- Anonymous1 decade agoFavorite Answer
age causes senility. i believe its a physiological symptom of aging and nothing more. how many old grampas listen to Lady Sovereign? probably none unless they are dirty old men like me. ever notice there clothing stays the same too? tight black jeans and white nikes. yuk. ive dubbed this Brain Hardening Syndrome. Clap on Clap off!
- Anonymous1 decade ago
Stagnation might have something to do with it. Fear of change, resistance to change. Negativity, an inability to see what good social advances we've made and just reflect on the bad aspects. We can't bake a cake without breaking a few eggs..Mid-life identity crisis. Closed minded. As far a predicting the imminent end of the world in their lifetimes, I believe that is the ego talking, It feels as though the world will not go on when his consciousness
ends because of not coming to terms with their imminent mortality. Sound like these people are having problems adjusting to not being young anymore and are having all sorts of problems adjusting to growing older, they don't want to be left behind but are too insecure to try and catch up.
- Anonymous1 decade ago
nostalgia-worship? temporal-fetishism?
Damn... I don't know. I just can't get past the fact that this is the LONGEST question I've ever read on here that had no spelling mistakes!!! Well done!
This from someone's weblog...
Shelf 1 (of 4)
Nostalgia, in general, is an emotion that I am suspicious of. We grow by moving forward, and though sometimes that involves looking back introspectively, nostalgia is the opposite of introspection: it is the fetishism of the past. Some part of the past is thought of as good because it wells up nostalgic feelings, rather than because of anything one can qualify objectively
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- Anonymous1 decade ago
Nostra Damas predictions or writing's
- 1 decade ago
I think it is called :
AneedToFindAgoalToPourMyHeart
- AndTimeIntoAndForgetYesterday
but I'm not sure of the spelling.
