A concept that I'm sure most of us are familiar with. Golden Age Thinking is the protonostalgic feeling for a time before our own - a feeling of having missed out on the good old days.
It can also just be plain old nostalgia - missing the past that we remember.
It is supposedly a fallacy of thought, as its more an artefact of how our brains encode memory, than an actual reflection on the past. As time goes by, we are more likely to forget the small annoyances, and as our general memory falls away, all that stays with us are a few good times that we enjoy recalling when we catch up with old friends.
Calling nostalgic thinking a fallacy is a convenient way to dismiss people's dreams of the past, but it also seems quite unsound. Sure, overall, life has improved. On average, people are wealthier, healthier, have more access to more things, have more freedoms, etc. We aren't debating that. But often, when we fondly remember the past, we aren't recalling the entire social/racial/enocomical/political system and wanting them all to come back as one big package- we are remembering things that we used to enjoy, and wishing that those things were still as enjoyable and that we had as much time for them now as we did back then.
What I'm struggling with today, as I write this, is the thought of whether I am battling my own golden age thinking fallacy, or if I am genuinely remembering a time when certain things really were better than they are now. I can defend my opinions with a bunch of examples of ways in which games, animations, social expectations, events and gatherings have been corroded away or changed for the worse. The question is - doesn't everyone who believes the 'good old days were better' also have a bunch of excuses or reasons to use as a defence? Is it different this time, or like countless before me, am I just yet another person stuck in the past by nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses?
- Aluca Sol 