Quarantine Reflections Archives - Page 3 of 4

Quarantine Reflections – Nostalgia Part (3)

George April 26, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 0 Comments

This post is the the third nostalgia post in the Quarantine Reflections series. You read the first two HERE and HERE.

My foray into nostalgia has been enlightening. Being largely ignorant of much that is going on in the younger generation’s everyday world, I was reminded by my millennial grandson of the popular and irreverent show “South Park” 20th season production based on nostalgia and its influence politics and culture. If you are not familiar with “‘member berries” he is a short clip from the show.

Seems like we may still be indulging in “‘member berries” .

Acquisitive Nostalgia

This post focuses on nostalgia and marketing. I would dare say there is no more ubiquitous presence of nostalgia than in the marketing arena. I believe nostalgia found in marketing is a separate category . In addition to restorative and reflective, I suggest adding “acquisitive nostalgia”. I define acquisitive nostalgia as: An amalgamation of restorative and reflective nostalgia impulses that promises fulfillment through acquisition.
Acquisitive nostalgia is the fool’s gold of a consumeristic culture, it is worth virtually nothing, but has an appearance that “fools” people into believing that it is gold.
Acquisitive and restorative nostalgia are fueled by the illusion that the past can be recreated. Both have potential for dire consequences and both ultimately fail to deliver.

Acquisitive nostalgia is the more dangerous and predominates in our culture for two reasons, 1) consumers believe that life can fulfilled by possessions. 2) Most of us have the resources to acquire things we believe will bring fulfillment.

The marketing industry understands the power of nostalgia and cleverly presents products in a way that makes us believe they will satisfy our longings. It is important to remember, marketing industry is not just the stereotypical corporate ad agency, it is every person and organization that has a product to sell.

Consider some excerpts from a marketing newsletter on the value of nostalgia as a marketing strategy:

The past will always have more emotional appeal than the present.

Marketing always leans on the warm memories of generations long past, with brand equity often built on historic credentials. Now, in our uncertain times, nostalgia- fuelled marketing is more popular than ever.

Nostalgic marketing taps into two consumer needs that overlap but are subtly different: a yearning for a time past and the fondness attached to personal childhood memories.

Our current political, social and economic landscape creates a perfect storm to whip up nostalgic fervour. Fears over terrorism, global warming and financial collapse, plus nuclear war once again, don’t exactly encourage people to look forward to the future. Instead, they retreat to the past.Brands that tap into this successfully can earn an emotional connection that is priceless.

Life was much better as a kid, right? No responsibilities. No troublesome bosses. No worries about paying the rent. It makes sense people want to revisit this nirvana. And, ironically, it’s the shiny, new(ish) internet that makes it easy to live in the past.

It’s worth pointing out … people only cherry pick the good stuff to remember and cherish. Childhood can be fraught with difficult experiences and previous generations were troubled with wars, poverty, terrorism, inequality and working conditions that make 2017 look heavenly. Marketers play to this and do what they always do: joyously focus on the positives and quietly downplay the negatives.

https://www.marketingmag.com.au/hubs-c/past-masters-power-nostalgic-marketing/

I feel as if I may have hit “the tar baby” (a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it) with nostalgia. I thought this post would conclude the Nostalgia segment of Quarantine Reflections, but, alas there appears to be another on the horizon. In addition to the graphics below, I will conclude this post with a summary of thoughts and questions that have arisen in the course of my encounter with nostalgia.

This exercise has deepen my appreciation for nostalgia and its therapeutic benefits, especially in this stressful time.
I think nostalgia is an important factor in maintaining emotional healthiness, particularly for senior adults, memories are precious. To demean or rob a person of their memories is cruel punishment. All will sing Precious memories , sooner or later.
Nostalgia is akin to other pleasurable human experiences i.e. …sex… eating, when they become an end rather than a means, their virtue is lost and they become a commodity to satisfy our consumeristic appetites.
The misuse/abuse of nostalgia in our culture is facilitated by a propensity to default to simplistic solutions to complex and difficult issues and circumstances, avoiding the hard work of self-awareness and discernment.
The power and peril of nostalgia cannot be understated, but because of its compelling nature, I’m not optimistic about any FDA ” nostalgia warnings” appearing on products anytime soon.
The only antidote for harmful nostalgia is wisdom, discernment and self-awareness.
Questions I’m pondering:
Does Christianity get a pass on employing nostalgia to market the Gospel?
Related to the previous, Is remembrance, a foundation of Christian faith, nostalgia? If not, how is remembrance for Christians different and why?
Finally, I’m wondering how many think all this is just a tempest in a teapot?
What do you think?

This one nearly got me. I had a Razr many years ago.Then I checked the price. Nostalgia does have its limits.

Although we may look like a big church, Clays Mill Baptist Church is a warm, friendly, family-oriented church. It is a church that preaches and teaches the old-time religion, sings the old-fashioned hymns of the faith, and believes only in the King James Bible.

Quarantine Reflections – Nostalgia (2)

George April 22, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 1 Comment

When the world around us changes rapidly, and beyond recognition, it helps if we can hold on to something familiar. These days though, our world has become strange and unfamiliar and the landscape around us

Reading the quote above this morning, I was further convinced that nostalgia (reflective) is a readily available, cheap and effective balm in the midst of this pandemic and attendant social distancing. Not in an addictive way, but, perhaps more akin to a cup of coffee in the morning, only better. (Apologies to my non-coffee friends). I highly recommend both, nostalgia and coffee.

I digress, back to the business at hand. Picking up from Part (1). Perhaps you listened to Shaun Casey’ s lecture.If not, it is available here: https://youtu.be/ukrGmEC5ZzA

So the question is, why is Casey in such a twit about nostalgia? I took it a bit personally, since I count myself as one who thinks nostalgia is good thing. In fairness, I lifted his comments on nostalgia from a speech of which the subject is much broader than nostalgia. If he had used the term “restorative nostalgia” as previously defined, instead of simply nostalgia, I think that would have gone along way in clarifying and justifying his concern. (I could be helpful to re-read my citation of his remarks and insert restorative before nostalgia)

Nostalgia is powerful. Nostalgic moments produce feelings that are rarely replicated in other experiences. Unfortunately, it does not matter whether memory is manufactured, misbegotten or real, the emotional and motivational impact is the same. Given the pleasurable experience of nostalgia, available at no cost and little effort, there is little incentive to discriminate between good and harmful nostalgia. However, the consequences of indiscriminate nostalgic indulgence can be harmful, or, even catastrophic.

In Casey’s speech, he understands and rejects Evangelical Christianity’s response to the rage against violence and injustice in our society that is shaped by a restorative nostalgic ideal of “Traditional Christianity”. I think he contends correctly, such response has not and will not make our society healthier, much less more “Christian”.

It is a restorative nostalgic impulse fuels “Make America Great Again”. That same impulse motivated and sustained the Restoration movement of my religious heritage and countless other religious restoration movements, all …” pursuits of that which never was in the pursuit of addressing some perceived current malady.“

Restorative nostalgia is a not a virtuous recollection of the past. Rather, it is an intellectually lazy and dishonest reliance on unreliable memory. It is naive and enables avoidance of daunting and complicated realities and the hard work necessary for solutions. It is enabled by our enlightenment ethos that believes whatever one perceives, is truth for them. Therefore, it is non-partisan, neither the left nor right’s “good ole days” hold the answer.; “Truth” cannot be compromised, gridlock prevails.

There is a temptation to ascribe restorative nostalgia to others and exempt ourselves.
Be careful, you may be a “restorative nostalgic” if: you are saying things like: “I wish we could just get back to the basics.” … “Just give me that old-time religion”…”We didn’t have these problems when ____” … “They just don’t make them like they used to,” et al.

I am not implying there are not valuable lessons to be learned and remembered from the past. We cannot recreate the past, neither can we ignore it. As one author observed, “Good” and “bad” nostalgia are defined by our expectations about what those memories can do for us. It is not the past itself, but rather our attitude toward the past, that makes all the difference. Restorative nostalgia is based on unrealistic and /or irrational expectations and therefore will always disappoint.

I think I better understand why Shaun Casey was in such a twit over nostalgia. First, I owe him an apology for reducing his ardent passion to twit. What I am able see now is Casey’s outrage at people who, by virtue of their faith in Christ, bear responsibility to reflect His image in the world around them but choose restorative nostalgia rather than grappling with reality. Put simply, they spin fairy tales and proclaim them to be truth.

Nostalgia is analogous to opioids, and should be treated as a controlled substance. Administered in proper doses (reflective) it is a wonderful and powerful treatment that heals. Abuse of nostalgia (restorative) is additive and destructive. One is led to a false sense of reality that restrains healthy and productive lives. Unfortunately, the FDA does not recognize nostalgia as a controlled substance. Each of us can dispense it at will.

Hopefully, these posts have stimulated some thought about the value and peril of nostalgia. I plan on one final post which will address nostalgia and marketing. Thanks for reading

Quarantine Reflections – Nostalgia (1)

George April 17, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 2 Comments

This post continues my quarantine reflections. As mentioned in my previous post, quarantine has provided opportunity to clean out. Among some random notes I came across were notations from a speech by Shaun Casey at the Christian Scholars Conference at Lipscomb University in 2017. The subject of my notes was nostalgia. They are thought provoking and obviously caught my attention listening to the lecture. The title of Casey’s lecture was ” Rage, Nostalgia and the Forgetfulness of God”. Prompted to re-listen to the lecture I was surprised to find that my notes were generated by a brief segment in the latter portion of a one hour + lecture. Those notes seem to be even more relevant 3 years later and worthy of sharing.
Excerpts on nostalgia:

I now want to turn to a troubling but all too common Christian response to rage and that is nostalgia. I’m trying here to answer the question why are so many American Christians attracted to nostalgia today.

I also hear the voice of my 23 year old daughter who responds to any declaration I make and “Dad what is wrong with that?”. So to the people who think nostalgia is a good thing, I’m trying to address you if you’re here today.

I’m trying to argue that nostalgia is not a Christian virtue. That more often than not nostalgia masks darker impulses. While explicitly marketing certain forms of virtue that delude and misdirect Christian theology while purporting to restore some lost theology or practice.

Nostalgia is a misbegotten form of memory. It is the pursuit of that which never was in the pursuit of addressing some perceived current malady.

Nostalgia needs a narrative of failure and loss to be attractive and to be intellectually or psychologically effective. All nostalgic narrative have a golden era.

Something from the past has disappeared or it’s currently existentially threatened, in order to make the appeal to restoring what has been lost persuasive.

Ironically, what is lost often proved to be imaginary and not real. Nevertheless memory manufactured or misbegotten can be as powerful is memory of real events and we need to be able to separate the two.
Traditional Christianity is a nostalgic construct.

After reading my notes, I was again thrown in to a state of cognitive dissonance (Oh no, not again). On the one hand, Casey was playing to my choir. I perceive much of the divisive rhetoric I hear, political and religious, is based on a nostalgic construct that fits Casey’s description: Nostalgia is a misbegotten form of memory. It is the pursuit of that which never was in the pursuit of addressing some perceived current malady.
On the other hand, I am eaten up with nostalgia. In the longer view, it is probably a natural consequence of aging. As life gets shorter, looking in the rear view mirror becomes more appealing, for good or ill. More immediately, redoing my office and cleaning has revealed my nostalgic impulses. (See sample below)

Nostalgia is a pleasure I’m unwilling to give up.
…nostalgizing helps people relate their past experiences to their present lives in order to make greater meaning of it all.
“Nostalgia makes people feel loved and valued and increases perceptions of social support when people are lonely.”
While I have no illusion about nostalgia as a Christian virtue, I understand it as human experience endowed by our Creator.
A bit of research on nostalgia produced some helpful insights.

Svetlana Boym identifies two distinct types of nostalgia: “restorative” nostalgia and “reflective” nostalgia.

These two types of nostalgia represent fundamentally different attitudes toward the past, and it is this difference that largely determines whether our memories of those happy days of yore will evoke feelings of joy or of sadness. Restorative nostalgia, involving a desire to “rebuild the lost home,” views the past with an eye toward recreating it—a desire to relive those special moments. It is what spurs us to pull out our phone at 1 a. m. and call up an old boyfriend or girlfriend because we just heard “our song” on the radio.
Reflective nostalgia, on the other hand, accepts the fact that the past is, in fact, past, and rather than trying to recreate a special past experience, savors the emotions evoked by its recollection. This acknowledgment of the irretrievability of our autobiographical past provides an aesthetic distance that allows us to enjoy a memory in the same way that we enjoy a movie or a good book. If “our song” were to come on the radio at 1 a.m., reflective nostalgia would be more likely to make us reach for an old photograph than for our phone, evoking in us a momentary sense of emotional pleasure rather than a restless urge to recreate a special moment from our past, and a sense of sadness when we realize the futility of that desire, that special moment, as it was lived, being forever sealed off from the present we inhabit. With reflective nostalgia, it is the very fact that an experience is sealed off from the present that makes it a source of pleasure. Like a favorite movie or book, it possesses an aesthetic wholeness that allows us to savor it again and again with no nagging uncertainty about how it will turn out.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/time-travelling-apollo/201606/the-two-faces-nostalgia

Though I’ve had occasions of restorative nostalgia, wishing to recreate a “special” moment, they always proved to be a disappointment. As it’s been said, “You can’t go back”. Memories are tricky, often misbegotten. I am reminded of how shockingly small the roomy house I grew up in was when revisited as an adult.

It is reflective nostalgia, sealed off from the present, that brings deep pleasure. As the writer above observed, …it possesses an aesthetic wholeness that allows us to savor it again and again with no nagging uncertainty about how it will turn out.
I would suggest that reflective nostalgia may be counted as a Christian virtue. I’ll have to think on that some more.

There is a lot more to to consider, not the least of which is why Casey is in such twit over nostalgia? Part (2) will address that question and some other aspects of nostalgia.

If you are interested (I know you have the time), you can watch Casey’s entire hour long lecture below.

Quarantine Reflections: Hospitality

George April 12, 2020 Quarantine Reflections 0 Comments

The Coronavirus quarantine has provided opportunity to clean-up, clean-out and and take on a few projects. I refurbished my office and in the process I “discovered” numerous notes from classes, readings, sermons, lessons and such. I found several I thought worthy of sharing. This post is the first in a new category “Quarantine Reflections”.

The following are notations on hospitality. My original notes have no date or source. I am certain they are not original to me. They are not intended as definitive, just opportunity to reflect and ponder.

A shared meal is the activity most closely tied to the reality of God’s Kingdom, just as it is the most basic expression of hospitality.

Seeing Jesus in every guest reduces the inclination to try to calculate the importance of one guest over another.

“The tasks aren’t what hospitality is about, hospitality is giving yourself.” If hospitality involves sharing your life and sharing in the life of others, guests/strangers are not first defined by their need.

(Meal time) is the time when hospitality looks like spiritual service.

Simple acts of respect, appreciation, presence are indispensable parts of the affirmation of human personhood.

…the pinnacle of lovelessness is not our unwillingness to be neighbor to someone, but our unwillingness to allow them to be a neighbor to us… (Alan Boesak)

The greatest lie of this broken universe is that God cannot be trusted and we have to take care of ourselves.

Nothing we as believers do together will ever make up for our own relationship with God.When we put the church in that place we make it an idol and others will always end up disappointing us.

Still on the journey…

SAY WHAT?

George November 23, 2019 Quarantine Reflections 1 Comment

I am very excited. Today I want to share an important announcement. For some time I have being working on a revolutionary new app. Since it is in a pre-beta release stage, I’m a little reluctant unveil it now, but I cannot resist.

My new app called “Say What?” Is being created out my desperation with the polarization ,division and increasing hatred that characterize our society. I believe the source of our condition is unfiltered rhetoric and the vehicle by which it is delivered is primarily social media, facebook, twitter, instagram, et al. These mediums provide little or no filter for speech while providing encouragement and protection of impersonal connections.

My initial idea was to create a movement to legislate control, or better eliminate, the social media culprits. For obvious reasons, that didn’t get much traction. Then, in an epiphany, the idea of “SAY WHAT?” was born. Two premises are the foundation of “SAY WHAT?” development: 1) Most of today’s rhetoric contains some truth. 2) The inflammatory quality of the rhetoric is generated by the indiscriminate use of hyperbole, exaggeration, ALL CAPS, ” ” , misquotes, half-truths, unreliable data, demagoguery and hateful expressions, to name a few.

Based on those premises, the goal of “SAT WHAT?” is two fold: Censor all inflammatory aspects of rhetoric produced in social media contexts. Restate each communication so that it clearly communicates any inherent ruth.

The technological challenges of our goal are daunting. Progress on an algorithm that identifies and eliminates inflammatory words, phrases, memes, et al , is slow. We have discovered that “SAY WHAT?”, to be effective it must function in both transmit and receive modes. Our initial design was intended for smart phones so incoming social media posts would be filtered to achieve our intended goal. We have had reasonable success but addressing transmission has led to the necessity of a heretofore unheard of solution.

Currently an implantable microchip is being developed to interface with the brain of its host and filter all outgoing rhetoric similar to “SAY WHAT?”. We are optimistic but cautious. The team believes our microchip, code named “emmanuel” may well be the solution to not only our current condition but the future as well. “Emmanuel” appears to be an elegant solution which could also eliminate “SAY WHAT?”. The next generation will also filter all incoming communications of its host, making “SAT WHAT?” redundant. In anticipation of “Emmanuel” release, legislation is being written to require a pilot program for implantation in all participants in social media.

I am seeking serious investors in this amazing opportunity. To get in on this, once in a lifetime, groundbreaking, revolutionary solution, PM me and we can discuss how you can join us.

Here is an example of how “SAY WHAT?” works: (No offense is intended in using a President Tump tweet as example, it just happen to be the most convenient, there is no absence of examples.)

Original Tweet

.@SecAzar and I will soon release a plan to let Florida and other States import prescription drugs that are MUCH CHEAPER than what we have now! Hard-working Americans don’t deserve to pay such high prices for the drugs they need. We are fighting DAILY to make sure this HAPPENS… ..Pelosi and her Do Nothing Democrats drug pricing bill doesn’t do the trick. FEWER cures! FEWER treatments! Time for the Democrats to get serious about bipartisan solutions to lowering prescription drug prices for families… …House Republicans are showing real LEADERSHIP and prepared to enact bipartisan solutions for drug prices. Do Nothing Democrats are playing partisan politics with YOUR drug prices! We are READY to work together if they actually want to get something done!

SAY WHAT? Revision

.@SecAzar and I will soon release a plan to let Florida and other States import prescription drugs that are cheaper than what we have now. Americans should not have to pay unreasonable prices for the drugs they need. We are working daily to make sure this happens. Speaker Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues’ drug pricing bill is not adequate. Now is the time for the Democrats to join with us get bipartisan solutions to lower prescription drug prices for our families… …We are READY to work together and get this done.

Category: Quarantine Reflections