Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be

I wish I could take credit for this profound statement; almost, but not as much, I wish I knew who to credit for it. That adds up to, I wish I could take credit for the profound thought, and, but less importantly, to know who I would have stolen it from.

Back to the topic: nostalgia is something that has the integrity of a daydream, but is limited only to 'reflection/dream/recollection of the past in which negative lights/thoughts/facts are subtracted from the reflection/dream/recollection resulting in a reflection/dream/recollection that eliminates peripheral and precipitant events that would make the reflection/dream/recollection more historically accurate.'

The phenomenon of thought that this evokes in us is that 'the world used to be safer than it is today.' It isn't, nor is it safer today. It's just different because of time. The ultimate consequence of danger is death. If you are lucky enough to survive 'the dangers of the time in which you live,' you are entreated to dying naturally.

It has always been that way, and, as far as I can imagine/see into the future, it always will be.

What gives us the 'appearance' or 'illusion' 'that time was safer than this time' is merely that we survived that time, and, at some time, we won't survive 'this time.' Time will keep going, and people will, in the future, long for the days when we sent our young to faraway lands to die unnaturally trying to find and kill those who would cause us to die unnaturally believing 'we have the might so that makes it right,' just as we do today, and just as humankind has always done.

We may reflect nostaligically on the 1950s by removing the Cold War from the periphery and WWII as a 'precipatory/causal event.' That we may have survived doesn't mean we didn't go through 'atom bomb drills.' The 1950s would have been different had so many people in the early to mid 1940s not receive notice that their sons wouldn't be needing jobs and houses in the 1950s, and whatever children they may have had would not be born.

One day, if 'I' don't get the natural death that life promises me first, the world will be 'too dangerous for me to live in,' and 'I will be killed.' To me, personally, 'that will be the most dangerous day there ever has been or ever will be.' Maybe one of my last thoughts will be a nostalgic longing for the days that were the most dangerous days for other people, but not me.