If you use Facebook, you will have seen many of the memes about how things used to be better in the old days. It’s a pretty standard thing. You share something, often a list of random subjects, which asks a question along the lines of, “Aren’t you glad growing up like this and not like this?”, which will accompany a picture of muddy children and another picture of a group of children staring at their mobile telephones. If you are of a certain age, you will be inclined to share this, feeling all smug about how much better it was back then and what shit lives young people have today. But how much better was it?
Do younger people spend half their lives on their mobiles? I have no idea. They certainly spend plenty of time on them, but then so do I. Indeed, so do many people droning on about the good old days who will then share hundreds of photos of them having a great time all taken with their mobile phones, of course. Hmm.
Was it really better when it was more socially acceptable for some parents to strike their children in anger and frustration than try real parenting? Was life so much more fulfilling when there were only two TV channels and only four radio stations? Was the quality of our lives really that great when people routinely died from conditions and illnesses that are easily treated today? And of course that old favourite that exams today are so much easier in the old days and that the kids have it easy. From the father of two desperately talented and intelligent children, I just say, “speak for yourself”.
There is, naturally, a place for nostalgia because if we don’t learn from the mistakes of the past, we are doomed to repeat them over and over again. And it is nice, from time to time, to listen to old music and classic TV shows. So much of our lives are based around nostalgia, from retro music festivals to Brexit where many people believed Britain would be so much better if things could be like they were in the old days when, perhaps, there weren’t so many ghastly foreign people, like for example my mother and grandfather.
I would not want to be without my computer and other gadgets, especially not my mobile telephone. I would not want to return to a life of two TV channels and four radio stations. I would not want to be without the opportunities technology has given us. I would not want to go back to pre supermarket days. I would not like to return to a time when only the wealthiest people could travel abroad. I would not want to return to a time when only the wealthiest young people could go to university. And I would not want to go back to a world where children were sent up chimneys so clean them.
If our children are not living the kinds of lives we believe they should be, then perhaps we should be telling them what our lives were like and whether they would like to swap. As time loves a hero, it sometimes encourages others to believe that everything today is shit and everything back then was great. Everything today isn’t shit, although thanks to a large part of the older generation it is headed that way, and everything in the old days wasn’t great. One thing is for sure: nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.
