When Nostalgia Was Deadly
historytoday.com
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Also toys. When the Marvel Movies started up I was mostly excited for Iron Man, a character I’d never actually seen in anything, but I had a couple different colored Iron Man’s when I was a little. It turns out that they are mostly all the same guy which is sorta boring.
Other people probably were nostalgic for the movie about the silver robot from Marvel vs Capcom.
Not what you’re talking about exactly, but it seems like a similar vibe.
BTW we got to meet the psychiatrist who coined the term, he went independant and was still practicing with a florishing business in Paris mainly targeting Japanese patients.
The strangest thing happened while I was watching Частное пионерское 2 (set in 1979, including computer printed samizdat): a song I knew came on in the background, and I had a very strong nostalgic sensation, as if I had just heard "Heart of Glass" as diegetic music — but for music I'd never heard before this century and YouTube (2005).
(It's a film noire-ish detective story set in booming postwar Los Angeles, with a mostly open world you can drive around in accurate models of period cars, and walk around.)
I didn't feel that because it was a nice social environment (it wasn't), nor did I want to be the traditional white male head of household (it was especially not-nice for POC and women), and I actually dislike cars.
I think what caused the feeling was the immersion in the prosperity, and new/recent construction, which seemed accessible to most. (While in real life living in overpriced, deteriorating old New England apartments.) I'd guess the game atmosphere like background music also contributed.
It's a persistent general feeling of curiosity tinged with melancholy while in the game, longing for something I want maybe more than I realize, but that I believe doesn't exist or is inaccessible.
See my other post on "Heimweh" vs. "Fernweh" here.
edit: weeaboo?
Maybe not as much now because of the "gun", "bad healthcare" and "expensive college" memes (in the scientific sense of the word "meme"), but it definitely used to be a thing.
* "Heimweh" (what the articles names as "Nostalgia") * "Fernweh"
The common part, "weh", means something like the english "hurt".
"Heim" means "home"
"Fern" means "abroad" or "distant".
Since Germans are VERY travel friendly (e.g. if we can pay for it, we do one holiday per year in a foreign country), we're people that have a high amount of "Fernweh". But ... "Fernweh" for us is mostly only some mild kind of yearning. If we cannot travel, e.g. due to finances or due to COVID-19, we won't die. The extreme form of "Heimweh" described in the article however is some kind of serious illness. Something that one will never attribute to "Fernweh".
It's probably not simply "home" either, it could involve periodicity, repeated activities, etc. Rosaries, doodling, shoveling shit.
As a young child I moved from an extremely urban environment, to a relatively pastoral one, and then back to an urban environment. The pastoral one is the one which "stuck" with me. I now live on enough land that there's always yard work and I keep chickens; it's repetitive but changes (with the seasons), and to me that feels like "home".
My father was a psychiatrist. An NLP practitioner turned me on to a great hack (for me) of "charging up" (by handling) some object (could be a set of keys, could be almost anything) when I'm in a setting where I'm grounded, centered, at peace, etc. etc. and then handling that object when I need to "find myself".
My father in law was an origami master. This gave him the opportunity to learn from and teach others, but the practice not only helped him maintain dexterity but I think it also helped ground him in old age.
My wife is an artist. The act of making art helps her mentally process things, helps with dexterity, etc. etc. She also teaches art at a senior center. Not only does it help with dexterity, but it helps stave off dementia. "Art therapy", at least in some form, is not a joke.
Best wishes for all of you.
I also wonder how much of it was due to the place vs the community the sufferer came from. Places aren't that special to me, at least not nearly as much as the community and the people.
Isn’t that also nostalgia? Life before “modern times” likely sucked in the same ways but then some more.
Frankly, today's hospitals are so poor in terms of infection control (because of simple things like doctors not washing their hands, or staying home when they themselves are sick) and providing patients with good nutrition - the food is basically prison quality - that you are indeed better off going home as soon as it is safe to do so.
It projects the values of 2024 coastal America on the 17th century Switzerland of all places. A country so poor and desperate its only export was young men to be canon fodder.
Because of very complicated things like needing to maintain sterile rooms too. Educating people is important, but hospitals are inherently prone to spreading infections. If everyone behaved flawlessly, they would still have this problem.
And let's not forget how incredibly stressful they are.
Honestly, I can't understand the bias from modern medicine of interning people into them.
Mental hospitals are even more unhealthy: violence, rape, threats, stress, forced submission, locked away from all comfort and familiarity, no family, no love, the vulnerable learning from completely whacko inmates (worse than YouTube LOL), trusting insane people, can't trust nurses or doctors. I try to always look after my friends and family. I would admit them into "professional" care only as a last resort: the mental health environments are dangerously toxic.
Hospitals are great places to meet people though. Deep intimacy is wonderful for getting to know people and we don't get many opportunities for knowing people properly. And usually an eclectic mixture of backgrounds - which I enjoy.