As a phenomenon of postmodern culture, nostalgia is a manifestation of a deracination of both the self and culture. It arises from a deep sense of displacement, or dis-ease, with the present, and an inability to trust the future. There may well be a lurking awareness of nihilism which marks modernity. The strategy is to get ourselves "back to the garden" and this entails the construction of a 'past' which can be inhabited. Given that such a 'past' is our construction and we control it, we can be assured that it is secure. Nostalgia is a form of escape in which there is a willing suspension of our suspicion. It is not constructed out of any historical accuracy, but out of an emotional imagination, a creation that derives from our anxieties, and our need to relieve them in a place of safety and psychic warmth. Of course, such a strategy is an admission of failure, the song of an exile that has abandoned hope and therefore reconstructs an ideal homeland or Eden. This strategy is , at bottom, not a response to the challenge of nihilism, but surrender to it. (James Harvey, S.J. in Radical Orthodoxy: A Catholic Enquiry, pp.153-54.)
That's as good a definition as I've read, and it brings into high relief our current peril in a decadent era. Nostalgia is a longing for a return to the womb; it's Lot's Wife Syndrome. And in a decadent era, when we have lost our culture-wide sense of future possibility, the right appeals to a fantasy past to substitute for its loss of the future.
The nihilism at the heart of right-wing nostalgia is worse than the nihilism of the left because it is unaware of itself–it is disguised as something else. The Nazis didn't promote themselves as nihilists. They promoted a grandiose fantasy which was nihilistic through and through. By their fruits you will know them.
The neocons are cut from the same cloth. See "The Neocon Nightmare World" post for more on that. I think that the mistake a lot of decent Americans made who supported the Iraq War was based on a superficial understanding of this administration's vision and motivations. These Americans projected their own idealism onto this neocon project thinking of it as the having the same moral justification as coming to the rescue of Rwandans or Bosnians. (See here for more on that.) But it was never a humanitarian mission from the point of view of the neocons. Theirs was always a grandiose nihilistic fantasy, and by their fruits you will know them.
And so until we frame a renewed culture-wide imagination of robust future possibility, we are vulnerable to the nihilist fantasies of the Right. Fred Thompson is trading big time on this sort of thing. He saw how Reagan worked it, and now thinks, why shouldn't an empty suit like me work it in the same way? Talk about nihilistic fantasies. And if he succeeds, it will be an enormous testament to precisely what I'm describing here.
If a potent antidote is to be found in a renewed sense of future possibility, it has to be grounded in an imagination of the future that resonates as deeply true, plausible, and life-giving. In other words the culture needs to develop a "true mythos". If you think the phrase is oxymoronic, you probably won't be interested to return to this site. But that's what I'm struggling to understand–the conditions for the possibility of a true mythos. As I suggested the other day, I'll be commenting from time to time on issues of current interest, but the main thrust of what I want to do is get after the future.
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