Wednesday 31 March 2010

Day 34 Neg Nos

Right guys, glaze over those eyes and languorously gaze into the distance. This post is all about nostalgia.


The psychological particulars of nostalgia are surprisingly interesting. It derives from acute homesickness, yet is scientifically proven to be a mainly positive emotional tool. Nostalgia is sentimental longing… a wistful affection for the past.


Getting down to the basics, nostalgia is essentially a mental device to bridge gaps in your life. A huge part of understanding how it works is figuring out where you stand in the whole continuity or discontinuity of ‘self’ argument. I KNOW GUYS! You’ve spent most of your life pondering this little nugget of contention, trust me, I’ve been there. On one hand – you can side with the Plato’s and Hume’s of this school of thought and reject the concept of identity as a single and consistent entity over time. ALTERNATIVELY, it could be argued continuity is a presupposition of identity. Despite what happens to you and how you change, all experience is unified by the one entity ‘I’.


SO, in light of this, nostalgia could be perceived as a tool to achieve identity continuity. Great! Even better if, on the whole, it’s a positive tool. Heaps of research has found negative mood states encourage nostalgic episodes due to resultant positive feelings.


BUT… what happens when a Bad Event take place that ‘disrupts’ your identity. No matter how hard you try, you can’t muster positive nostalgia because the mother of emotional mountains blocks the road? This is what I feel and it creates a huMONGous abyss of separation between the person I used to be and the person I am now… (apparently this is diachronic disunity, but I’m already suffering Mushy Brain Syndrome).


SO now we’re dealing with negative nostalgia.


There is, of course, a considerable amount of thorough, scholarly, and scrupulous research on negative nostalgia. For now, I’m going to ignore it all because if this blog is about happiness, finding Barry Maher gave me no end of happiness...


Bearded Baz from Las Vegas is, according to his website, a “world-class” salesperson. He is also a consultant, motivational speaker, and author of such heady tomes as "Getting the Most from Your Yellow Pages Advertising" and "No Lie: Truth if the Ultimate Sales Tool.


HOWEVER!! It doesn't stop there! Oh no... I felt indescribable joy when I discovered that Baz has written (to quote again) a "mini-cult classic novel" entitled ‘Legend’. The protagonist is an archaeologist called Martin! Martin excavates a door that talks! This is, quite frankly, bordering on genius...


Near the end of a long day of site evaluation, the archaeologist discovered the door. He wasn’t surprised when it started talking; he’d often said that just as surely as primitive civilizations surrounded their cities with walls, “more advanced” peoples surrounded themselves with machines that talked. His old fingers fumbled briefly with the familiar switches on his computer before he managed to activate it and it began translating.

I know! How mean of me to tease you. If you’re currently treading water in the depths of despair, you can read the rest of Chapter One right here.

ANYHOO. Back on track, Baz warns of the perils of Negative Nostalgia. Punishing yourself with Neg Nos (like it??) will accomplish nothing. Ok, thanks Baz, that's a good point. Stop there. Now. Please stop there. OH NO...

"I don't care if you're Attila the Hun. I don't care if you're Adolph Hitler. I don't care if you're Satan. Did I state that strongly enough?"


WHOA THERE BAZ!


Then, as if that monumental statement didn't matter, it's back to


"Beating ourselves up over the past—negative nostalgia—is like any other form of nostalgia, in that it's not going to improve tomorrow, and it can divert our attention and keep us from taking advantage of what's going on around us today."


A statement I agree with. I'm all over the show with Baz, but, clutching at straws, I get his point and it's a good one. It just takes a bit of time to achieve…

1 comment:

  1. there is a special word in welsh for it which i gather doesn't have an exact equivalent in english - its called 'hiraeth' although i may not have spelt it right...

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