Past Forward by Clay Routledge PhD

Author:Clay Routledge, PhD [Routledge, Clay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL000000 SELF-HELP / General, SEL031000 SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / General, SEL030000 SELF-HELP / Personal Growth / Memory Improvement
Publisher: Sounds True

Have you ever felt nostalgic for a time when you weren’t alive? Have you ever attended a costume party with a particular historical theme? Do you collect items or have hobbies that are somehow focused on a specific time in history? Do you enjoy film, music, or books about past generations?

Historical nostalgia can connect to collective nostalgia, too. One way that groups reinforce their bond across time as new members enter and old members leave is by offering a historical narrative. Going back to the example of sports, you’ve probably seen glass-case displays of trophies, medals, photos, and other artifacts at a high school or college. We can experience historical nostalgia in ways that don’t connect us to an existing group, although it can. For instance, a collector of antique dishes may engage in this activity as a purely personal hobby that doesn’t include others, or they could actively interact with other collectors. Conventions and other social events—historical reenactments, for example—bring people together who share a specific passion for the past. These gatherings illustrate how historical nostalgia can build present-day groups that engage in activities that create the content of future personal and collective nostalgia.

I like Star Trek, but I wouldn’t say that I’m a superfan. I once attended a Star Trek convention more out of curiosity than anything. An actor from one of the television series was there taking questions from the audience, and it was evident that many of the fans in attendance knew a lot more about Star Trek than the actor who was in the show. A fan asked the actor how in a particular episode the Enterprise was able to travel in a single day to a certain world even though, based on the fan’s calculations, that world would have taken much longer to reach. The actor could only respond by reminding the fan that Star Trek is a science-fiction series intended to entertain, not a documentary.

I also learned that people from all sorts of backgrounds and ages from all over the world are united as a group by a passion for Star Trek. Older fans who grew up with the original show were excited to hang out and discuss their nostalgic memories with younger fans who were only recently getting into the older shows after watching the newer shows and movies. There was a historical dimension to all of this—passing down stories about a science-fiction franchise that’s been around for more than five decades. In Star Trek fandom—as well as fandom for all sorts of pop-culture products—personal, collective, and historical nostalgia intertwine. People share old personal and group memories as well as make new ones.

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