5 ms·

When Nostalgia Was Deadly

62 points by Petiver 3y ago

baerrie 3y ago
I feel nostalgia most strongly for my grandmother’s house I used to live in and for Japan where I lived for a year. In both cases I believe the feeling is most acute because these are places I can’t return to or in the case of Japan, am afraid I won’t return. It’s like grieving a loss of a loved one
paulryanrogers 3y ago
By the modern definition I'm prone to nostalgia. And I moved a few times during adolescence. Yet I can't imagine it being fatal unless the circumstances were completely outside my control, such as a serving during a war. 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.
- okr 3y ago
  When you take elders into care and move them to places, that are closer to you, i am sure, that it disrupts their life in a way, that could incur nostalgia. Ambiguous. Modern life sucks in many ways.
  - _w1tm 3y ago
    > Modern life sucks in many ways. Isn’t that also nostalgia? Life before “modern times” likely sucked in the same ways but then some more.
    - okr 3y ago
      I agree.
aidog 3y ago
As Swiss abroad in far away Japan "Kühreihen" didn't make me deadly nostalgic. I guess the soldiers lived in the alps. I miss my family more than mountains.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
That's not homesickenss. 1700s medicine was doing more harm than good and when she was sent home and they were no longer filling her with what was likely poisonous she recovered. 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.
- ctrw 3y ago
  The whole article is nothing but presentism. 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.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  > because of simple things like doctors not washing their hands 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.
  - robocat 3y ago
    Hospitals are terribly unhealthy places to be: stress, broken sleep, weird temperature and queer air, noise, light, sedentary, theft, viruses and bacteria, removal of choice, domineering doctors and nurses, drugging, and worse. A necessary evil, but much of the system is more evil than necessary. 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.
m3047 3y ago
I think this still happens today, except that people are so denatured that they can't even articulate: "I want to go home" because they don't know where home is or what it is, and it would seem ridiculous even to them to say "I want to go home but I don't even know what that means!". Don't wanna be thought mental. It's probably not simply "home" either, it could involve periodicity, repeated activities, etc. Rosaries, doodling, shoveling shit.
- m3047 3y ago
  I am deeply touched by the expression of a need for actual "home". I hope everyone can figure out what home is and find it. It is in some way related to self. 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.
- ErigmolCt 3y ago
  I am sometimes so scared to imagine myself as a person without a home or without an understanding of what home is
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
    I've always had a house but I can't remember a strong sense of feeling at home. I don't really like my family. In college I spent 3 years waiting for life to happen, and by the time I started to enjoy it I had to move out. Then I spent about 10 years just saving money at the first job that made me an offer. I've lived a very privileged and sheltered life but I'm in my 30s and never really lived anywhere on purpose or thought "ah I'm home". Even the house I live in now I hate. My next move will at least have a little intention to it.
bdowling 3y ago
Is there a term for nostalgia for a time and place that one never experienced? Triggered by music or movies or reading about history, some people experience a kind of nostalgia for life in times they never lived and places they've never been to. (A popular one is Japan during the economic boom of the 1980's.)
- rightbyte 3y ago
  There should be a term for it. A couple of people I know seem nostalgic for Marvel movies but I know they did not read Marvel comics when young at all. Some kind of manufactured nostalgia.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I didn’t read their comics, but there were Xmen cartoons, plus Spider-Man, when I was a kid. Also the Justice League which of course is different but hey when you are 8 you don’t know that. 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.
- schneems 3y ago
  Reminds me of “Paris syndrome” where people fall in love with the idea of a thing/place and the disillusionment of experiencing the real thing can be so violent that people can have panic attacks. Not what you’re talking about exactly, but it seems like a similar vibe.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome 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.
- 3y ago
deepsun 3y ago
I was thinking of all the refugees from early ussr, who were lured back home by fairy tales of socialism, only to get sent to far north (government knew they would get disillusioned quickly, and tried to isolate from the rest), and the ones wanted to flee again got jailed and tortured.
HPsquared 3y ago
[flagged]
binary132 3y ago
Ah, so that’s what I’ve been experiencing. I suppose if I don’t make a hasty return to Windows 98 at 1280x800 it’s probably over for me.
- rokkitmensch 3y ago
  For me the equivalent is provisioning Gentoo workstations without systemd.

62 points by Petiver 3y ago

I feel nostalgia most strongly for my grandmother’s house I used to live in and for Japan where I lived for a year. In both cases I believe the feeling is most acute because these are places I can’t return to or in the case of Japan, am afraid I won’t return. It’s like grieving a loss of a loved one

paulryanrogers 3y ago

By the modern definition I'm prone to nostalgia. And I moved a few times during adolescence. Yet I can't imagine it being fatal unless the circumstances were completely outside my control, such as a serving during a war. 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.

okr 3y ago
When you take elders into care and move them to places, that are closer to you, i am sure, that it disrupts their life in a way, that could incur nostalgia. Ambiguous. Modern life sucks in many ways.
- _w1tm 3y ago
  > Modern life sucks in many ways. Isn’t that also nostalgia? Life before “modern times” likely sucked in the same ways but then some more.
  - okr 3y ago
    I agree.

aidog 3y ago

As Swiss abroad in far away Japan "Kühreihen" didn't make me deadly nostalgic. I guess the soldiers lived in the alps. I miss my family more than mountains.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

That's not homesickenss. 1700s medicine was doing more harm than good and when she was sent home and they were no longer filling her with what was likely poisonous she recovered. 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.

ctrw 3y ago
The whole article is nothing but presentism. 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.
marcosdumay 3y ago
> because of simple things like doctors not washing their hands 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.
- robocat 3y ago
  Hospitals are terribly unhealthy places to be: stress, broken sleep, weird temperature and queer air, noise, light, sedentary, theft, viruses and bacteria, removal of choice, domineering doctors and nurses, drugging, and worse. A necessary evil, but much of the system is more evil than necessary. 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.

m3047 3y ago

I think this still happens today, except that people are so denatured that they can't even articulate: "I want to go home" because they don't know where home is or what it is, and it would seem ridiculous even to them to say "I want to go home but I don't even know what that means!". Don't wanna be thought mental. It's probably not simply "home" either, it could involve periodicity, repeated activities, etc. Rosaries, doodling, shoveling shit.

m3047 3y ago
I am deeply touched by the expression of a need for actual "home". I hope everyone can figure out what home is and find it. It is in some way related to self. 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.
ErigmolCt 3y ago
I am sometimes so scared to imagine myself as a person without a home or without an understanding of what home is
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  I've always had a house but I can't remember a strong sense of feeling at home. I don't really like my family. In college I spent 3 years waiting for life to happen, and by the time I started to enjoy it I had to move out. Then I spent about 10 years just saving money at the first job that made me an offer. I've lived a very privileged and sheltered life but I'm in my 30s and never really lived anywhere on purpose or thought "ah I'm home". Even the house I live in now I hate. My next move will at least have a little intention to it.

bdowling 3y ago

Is there a term for nostalgia for a time and place that one never experienced? Triggered by music or movies or reading about history, some people experience a kind of nostalgia for life in times they never lived and places they've never been to. (A popular one is Japan during the economic boom of the 1980's.)

rightbyte 3y ago
There should be a term for it. A couple of people I know seem nostalgic for Marvel movies but I know they did not read Marvel comics when young at all. Some kind of manufactured nostalgia.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I didn’t read their comics, but there were Xmen cartoons, plus Spider-Man, when I was a kid. Also the Justice League which of course is different but hey when you are 8 you don’t know that. 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.
schneems 3y ago
Reminds me of “Paris syndrome” where people fall in love with the idea of a thing/place and the disillusionment of experiencing the real thing can be so violent that people can have panic attacks. Not what you’re talking about exactly, but it seems like a similar vibe.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome 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.
3y ago

deepsun 3y ago

I was thinking of all the refugees from early ussr, who were lured back home by fairy tales of socialism, only to get sent to far north (government knew they would get disillusioned quickly, and tried to isolate from the rest), and the ones wanted to flee again got jailed and tortured.

HPsquared 3y ago

[flagged]

binary132 3y ago

Ah, so that’s what I’ve been experiencing. I suppose if I don’t make a hasty return to Windows 98 at 1280x800 it’s probably over for me.

rokkitmensch 3y ago
For me the equivalent is provisioning Gentoo workstations without systemd.