That’s an excellent question, one I think about a lot as someone who runs a section at Vox dedicated in part to covering how meaningful economic and

Your brain is lying to you about the “good old days”

submited by

Style Pass

2025-01-15 15:00:03

That’s an excellent question, one I think about a lot as someone who runs a section at Vox dedicated in part to covering how meaningful economic and scientific and social progress can and is being made.

There’s nothing new about yearning for a supposed golden age, or feeling as if the present doesn’t measure up to an imagined past. But you’re right that a hatred of the present seems particularly acute these days — and you’re right that hatred ignores all the many, many ways in which today is better than yesterday.

Much of the world is gripped by a politics of nostalgia, one grounded in the assumption that we have to turn back time to a moment when everything was better. After all, what is “Make America Great Again” but a slogan that implicitly argues that the US was great, once; is no longer great, now; and can be made great, again, by turning back the clock. It’s not just a right-wing thing — the politics of climate change is grounded in the idea that the climate of the past is the best one.

I share your frustration that so many people miss the ways in which the present has improved on the past. It’s not really our fault: Humans have memories that are both short and bad, which leads us to forget just how bad many things used to be in even the recent past, and take for granted the improvements that have been made. But let’s go deeper.