So, I just made some disturbing connections this morning. I was surfing a website and came across this page about kids reacting to the original black and white game boy from the 90s. And people who are roughly my age, say, people in their 20s and early 30s, were basically surprised how kids today don't like technology that's about 25 years old. Essentially the kids were talking about how they would get bored with it in like 2 days and go back to their smart phones, while people closer to my age are talking about how many hours of enjoyment they got out of the things.
Nostalgia is a weird thing. I think we all experience it, and I tend to remember and enjoy a lot of the same things fellow "90s kids" did, but let's be honest. What we have now is way better. Showing a kid today an original black and white game boy is like our parents trying to get us enthused about an old black and white TV from the 50s with a snowy picture that could only pick up 3 channels. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. Kids these days are not going to appreciate the things we appreciate. They live in a different world now, for better or for worse, and in some ways, newer IS better. Going back to play many old games, sometimes they hold up fine, but revisiting old games from, like the N64 era and all, I've concluded a lot of old video games are horrible by today's standards. The graphics are horrible and low res, the game play is primitive, the controls are awkward. They're just not as good as I remember. We've seen many improvements since the 80s and 90s. Heck, we've seen many improvements compared to 10 years ago and games like Battlefield 2 and Counter Strike Source seem very outdated to me compared to Battlefield 4 and Rainbow Six Siege. Those who don't enjoy the classics have no heart, but those who want future generations to enjoy them like we do have no brain.
Now, you're probably wondering what this has to do with politics, since this is a political and philosophical blog. Well, EVERYTHING. A huge problem with our country right now is that the older generations are stuck in their own nostalgic ideas of the past, with little self awareness of how things have changed. We see republicans idolizing Reagan and democrats idolizing Bill Clinton, without recognizing that the politics of those people don't apply well to 2016. This year, we saw a third Bush try to run for president. We saw a second Clinton. People are already trying to draft Michelle Obama and Tim Kaine for a 2020 run. Donald Trump doesn't represent the ideas of the future, he represents the ideas of the past. The distant past, mind you. The guy is basically Richard Nixon's southern strategy embodied for the 21st century. His ideas aren't new. They're actually extremely old. The law and order themes in his primary. That's Richard Nixon. The "law and order candidate". His dog whistle politics, those were created in the 1970s. Once again, not new, very old.
Our whole political system is currently rehashing ideas of past glory days. Nixon, Reagan, Clinton. Those are who the ideas of our 2016 discourse largely belong to. And they're not working. As I said in my letter to the DNC, I had to make a case for why it's not the 90s any more and why we live in a post 2008 recession world with unique challenges. I blasted boomers in the aftermath of the election as well for having an out of touch view of the world.
What I'm really fearing here, in watching people my age not understand why young kids will never know the joys of playing 8 bit mario in black and white is that we are already showing signs of wanting to impose our own past on the future. The past is comfortable to us. We like the old ways. New things are scary. Or just not as good. We have these overly optimistic views of the past that are glorified, and we keep trying to relive that past.
South Park has it right this season. They have this plot theme this year about these things called "member berries". They're berries people eat so they keep remembering all the good stuff. And all during this season, the citizens are wondering how it came to this, how we have such awful candidates this election. And it really comes down to us being so into wanting to relive our pasts that we're trying to apply ideas that no longer work. They use the new star wars movie to make their analogy, how episode 7 isn't really that great, it's just a remake of episode 4 in some ways. And they're right. It's old ideas packaged in a new shiny theme. So when Trump wants to "make America great again", he's appealing to a past that never was that great to begin with, and Clinton is also appealing to the past in her own ways. South Park's message is grim. Apparently these "member berries" are so dangerous that they literally kill empires, because people just sit around remembering all the good old days that they never adapt to new threats or problems. They added into the lore that the Romans fell because of the member berries, and also, that the UK imploded themselves because of them (there's a scene in which it shows London on fire and the prime minister calls up Garrison (Trump) to warn him not to eat them. The moral of the story: get your heads out of the past. We need to focus on the future, on the problems that exist today, with a realistic approach, and we need to stop trying to "member" all the good old times when we don't live in that world any more. That's what I got out of it at least.
We're not in the past any more, we're in the present. And we need ideas that work now for this country. I am scared that my generation is going to age the way previous generations have, in which we become out of touch old farts too. Yes, the past should have a special place in our heart, but bringing back a past that won't work won't fix our problems. It will just perpetuate them. Millennials, don't become part of the problem. Keep your minds sharp. Focus on the present and the future. Address issues with reason and evidence. Don't rely on some memories of a world that no longer exists and try to impose them on future generations. It's their world too, and they will see the world differently than us. And you know what? By the time they're grown up and our age, they'll have a lot to add to the political discourse too, and we should listen to them, not dismiss them and go on about preserving a way of life of an age long gone. The worst thing we can do to the future generation is try to impose our way of seeing the world on them, especially when that concept of the world is decades out of date. We can bring our past experiences to the table, but we must apply them to modern times adequately, if we want our ideas to remain relevant. We shouldn't become so nostalgic of the 90s and stuff that we fail to understand how the world is changing and will continue to change. New times require new ideas. Being progressive is about making "progress" toward making the world better. It's an ever moving target. Nostalgia tends to be regressive and favor the past over the present and the future. It holds us back. Keep this in mind, millennials, keep this in mind.
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