Nostalgia

I recently enjoyed dinner with a group of very nice people and the editor of this newspaper.

Okay, that's a little unfair - he's a very nice bloke. He just also happens to be a pompous ass, and I wouldn't have bothered with the arguments I maintained had I known he was the editor of The Record, which has a reputation for showing just how truly bad Catholic journalism can be.

In short, everyone sat in silence while he put forth his views on why society was in an inevitable decline towards barbarism (hint: it's apparently due to - I'm not kidding - "the fall of Rome". I wish this guy was antediluvian, but he's only pushing 50).

I was very restrained, up until the point that another of the guests, Rory, put forth a dissenting view, whereupon I decided, "screw it, if Rory is going to help out, let's give this guy a run for his money".

Which we did.

But one of the arguments which was not addressed (or neatly sidestepped by our editor friend) was with regards to the concept of nostalgia.

I suggested that was he was saying might well be true, but it's dangerous to treat history with that kind of nostalgia.

Don't get me wrong, nostalgia is fine, but unless you recognise that nostalgia is tainting your views of the past, it's not possible for you to objectively evaluate the future.

In short, I can't see how one could possibly seriously put forth the idea that the world is, on balance, worse than it used to be.
His view is that the 20th century has introduced unique evils resulting in unprecedented death and suffering - holocaust, Stalinist Russia (which he rather quaintly referred to as being Marxist).

There's a curious blindness applied in people like this - this is the second time I've come across such an attitude in a conservative Catholic - which my darling fiancé neatly summed up:

It's like high school - when you're in year 8 you remember being so respectful to the year twelves, and then in year 12, the year eights give you no respect at all. Therefore, you decide, the year eights of today are far worse than the year eights from your day.

And that is exactly the problem of nostalgia - many people are unable to come to terms with the fact that this is your worldview and is not representative of the whole.

The Catholic Church possesses - by necessity - an amazing PR machine, and it can frequently distort history to make itself look better. It's not alone in that regard, but for your conservative Catholic, you are presented with such a delicious view of the past, it's no wonder one could be disappointed in the present and despairing of the future.

If you're able to step back from yourself and acknowledge that your understanding of the past is tainted by the very fact you (or your church) were in it, then you can overcome your nostalgia.

If you can't, then you (and those around you) must be resigned to you cherry picking the good parts of history, and nitpicking the bad parts of the here and now.