Nostalgia

"The younger generation is losing their sense of values" I heard from my elders when I was growing up (of course I was a "good boy" and wasn't the direct recipient of such complaints, usually!). When I went to work I heard conversations around the same subject. And wondered if this was a "generation gap" thing (one day I intend writing about the workplace Generation gap). 

I visited places I had grown up in and always found they had changed for the worse!! People told about how nice life was when they were growing up and I could identify with that, now that I was growing up (i.e. getting older and grumpy).  We all enjoyed the nostalgia and were unhappy, even upset by the present state of affairs.

So the question is, do we like to live in the past and curse the present, while hoping for a better future (or become more cynical). The short answer is probably yes. I must say I have been tempted to curse the next generation for its loss of values. But stopped short and wondered if this would be right. And if there is a need to blame some one, who should we be blaming in the first place. 

My parents and their generation had powerful role models, freedom fighters, soldiers, leaders and martyrs.  It was a time of major strife, world wars, social turmoil, and revolutions.  Stories of heroes both local and global were easy to come by, ordinary people were doing extra-ordinary stuff.  And there was much more religion in our lives, where we heard about great deeds and spiritual achievement. More importantly, the greatness of such people was publicised through books, scriptures, movies and story-telling. 

So there were role models to emulate or at least aspire to emulate. Looking around today we seems to have grown out of quite a few of these situations.  Wars and revolutions are far away from our world in different continents and the stories emerging from there are usually about bad practise than good. Poor decisions by leaders, human suffering and a general paucity of good ideas or deeds.  The rise of so many new methods of story-telling has resulted in positive stories being discarded as boring. We are therefore inundated by sleaze and bad role models.  No wonder many of us know what we don't want to be, and are confused about what we want to be. I recently came across David Bornstein's "How to change the world: Social Entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas" who also starts of with a similar notion.

So I think the world is changing, just as it has been changing since the world began. And we will continue to understand it in our context and be nostalgic about it. Each generation will feel that it was better earlier and so it shall be. 

Nostalgia is not what it used to be!! said Simone Signoret noted French actress. Think about it, being nostalgic about nostalgia.