When I was young, in university, I spent some time studying Asian Art. Much Chinese and Japanese art and painting are copies of earlier works. The assumption was that the "first" was the best, and that it was impossible to do better, and you should just attempt to make as good a copy as you could. [They also used red seals for proving authenticity]. I had a really hard time wrapping my ossified brain around the idea that the "best" art could only be copies of prior art. As I studied more history I came to see that the periods in Japan and China when this was most prevalent also seemed to coincide with periods of political stagnation and decline. I think this may be analogous to your thoughts on nostalgia weakening creativity.
While I agree that this is a bleak picture, it may not be quite as bleak as we are usually reminded, because of the selective reporting involved. If I were looking for more hopeful uses of billionaire money, I might look at what is being done by Ms. Jobs, or Ms. Bezos, people who have received money but not with the same ego investment as the "creators". I'd guess that they have done a much better job, from a societal perspective, than Musk or Zuckerberg. They just aren't seeking or receiving the same media attention.
Generative AI might be pushing culture further in the direction of nostalgia. The systems are recyclers by nature, churning up things that would have been forgotten (like books that can’t be edited!).
A lot of the content I’ve seen is just mashups of pop culture icons, imagery and ideas.
It makes you wonder whether human senescence necessarily led to creation of original art - the old generation passed on and the young had to create their own thing.
But with the internet, so many utterances are now never going to be forgotten. And AI is this huge dragnet of all the little conversations that in previous generations would been gone with the wind.
Yep, couldn’t help thinking about machine learning and generative AI while reading this piece. People will turn to Gen AI supposedly out of efficiency, but I think it’s more that point around laziness - it’s easier for someone (or something) else to do the “thinking” and output what you need, then having to imagine it up yourself. Yes, it saves time, but results in super derivative, unoriginal copy. And then that copy potentially becomes part of the training data and...so on.
In another direction, also thinking about the “good artists copy, great artists steal” quote. The idea that imitation on its own isn’t enough. You have to reimagine and recontextualize what you find inspiring and influential so the resulting work has a power (aura?) on its own.
That’s exactly my thinking! It could lead to some stagnation, not only in art, but maybe even language. Idioms that would pass out of favor as one generation ages may now stick around longer. We will see.
I honestly love reading you Kyla. This made me think a lot. I’m leading a social network and you cannot imagine all the discussions around algorithms, authenticity, and how we can help create a middle class of creators. You touched on every single aspect with this. There is so much polarisation of views due to the need of the platforms to keep us liking what we like to generate revenue. Imagine that added to the nostalgia effect you mention here, we show people every single time they go on social media only what they are most prone to like. People’s ability to make their own informed opinion disappears. And it’s also incredible how the wealth concentration has also been reproduced in the Creators Economy - these platforms reward the big numbers, creating really high barriers to be able to monetise.... anyways, loved the perspective on nostalgia and how our brains hijacks us. Thanks for everything you do.
Wow, this is awesome! Those were just some of my barely formed thoughts from a long commute this morning, and this is such an amazing dive into the topic. I don’t know how you do it! Looking forward to the next piece!
Lovely piece, thank you. Reminiscent of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, in which he sees "publicity" as central to modern society (although the term now seems quaint, and could perhaps be translated as marketing/brands).
“Publicity is, in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the past to the future. … Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred.... The interminable present of meaningless working hours is ‘balanced’ by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self.”
It can feel like the answers to everything are known but it's likely we're exposed to subsets of data, abbreviated accidentally or on purpose. The volume of sensory inputs supports an illusion of comprehension. We need diverse outlets and inputs, stuff that is totally off our radar, experiences that gouge new neural pathways. Hope lies in finding a wholly unimagined universe in a local watershed, an interesting group of humans, some new songs and stories. Relief and sometimes joy flows from finding the world to be ten million times bigger than imagined.
I love the connection you draw between nostalgia and hope and the economy — it’s connecting a lot of dots for me. I recently heard a definition of hope from clinical psychology that (I think?) also ties into your analysis nicely and has helped me understand your perspective. If you’re curious, the clinical definition of hope I heard (paraphrasing) is that hope is the state of believing both that 1. one can achieve a goal; 2. that one can articulate at least some steps that could help one achieve that goal, even if they is uncertain. I other words, hopelessness is the state of believing there is no possible path for one to get somewhere, and therefore that one will never get there. I always assumed hope was just a feeling or a form of wishful thinking e.g. “I hope I’m a billionaire someday,” but this more exact definition both helps me see it differently and aligns with your analysis in that it helps explain why e.g. a generations of Americans (Get Z and Y) are not hopeful that they'll achieve the American dream (they can articulate the erasure of the previously believable [to some] path to it: “there are no more middle class jobs” ).
In other words (still wrapping my head around this concept), for many there is a hopelessness around their ability to achieve American dream because 1. they can’t imagine any believable paths to get there, 2. therefore there is belief that they’ll ever get there; and 3. (?) people are no longer invested in imagining their own version of the American dream, so there is no alternative path to build on (bringing in your point on nostalgia)? The nostalgia/culture/supply-chain cycle constantly reaffirms the old, outdated and unattainable version of the American dream, which is what helps drive more hopelesness in the sense that people are, among many other things, not imagining alternatives. The feeling of both missing a previous state of hopfulness and not being able to experience that state is a strange place to be!
This makes me think of another way imagination and hope are tied together in the economy. I'm likely to be hopeful about a prosperous future if I am able to analyze our situation and find a path to a better future, whether I'm intelligent or not, but only those with a strong sense of imagination will be able to find hope that was inaccessible to those without imagination. Many were hopeful (clinical definition) that Dogecoin would help them magically be rich because the path to riches became articulable (buy dogecoin) and believable (Elon is rich, bought dogecoin, and is for some reason relatable, so I can get that too). It was crazy to believe dogecoin would make you rich, but people latched onto it because they weren't imagining other paths to prosperity. In other words, false hope may be a bigger driver for buying dogecoin than pessimism about the economy, or at least exist alongside it? I.e. the smarter you are, the less likely you are to get caught up in “false hopes” like Dodgecoin, but only those with imaginative intelligence can both escape the scams and imagine an articulable future that is positive enough to want to believe in. This isn't to blame people's doge losses on their lack of imagination, but to wonder out loud if it is a factor, which is what I think you're getting at?
This is maybe also why it feels like we are both nostalgic for the American dream (stability, prosperity, with a sense of optimism for the future), but also heavily critical of any nostalgia for it (“it was always a lie for most people”)?
A great comparison to all of this would be the book written by Luke Burgis, "Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life." Talks about how most of our wants and desires are based off the environment and those that surround us.
I like to think this is a major contributor to the "stuck culture" mentality. No one has there own imagination or strong enough will to have their own wants and desires. They see what the person next to them has and wants that or more. We are not building our lives based off our own intuitions, but rather based off the brands we see or the influencer we hope to be like.
I'm hopefully that people like Elon that do the hard work, that work on projects that seem almost impossible, will inspire a generation of folks to make their own path to solve hard problems and create new worlds. Great read, thanks for the newsletter!
Some people think the Musk vs Zuck cage match is a joke. But they don't understand billionaires, or their egos, or how humanity hangs in balance on the outcome of this, or logarithms, or algorithms, or how this represents the clash of two views of how to dominate the world.
I'm giving Elon "The Walrus" Musk 420 to 69 odds over Mark "Actual BJJ Competitor" Zuckerberg and predict the match will happen in Las Vegas after a 6-week training camp for Zuck and a 6-year training camp for Elon. But, more importantly, it will be broadcast on Twitter.
Thank you for the thought-provoking piece. Nostalgia is comforting ~ but so are happy memories, which can inform a better future. Sometimes I think nostalgia is demonized by the post-modern worldly sophisticated set. World building can be built on the the better things in life ~ for without comparing these moments of time, we have no anchor or foundation. I liked this thought-exercise. Imho, nostalgia is fine when it is authentic (you make the oatmeal your Mum made because it is delicious and comforting) ~ but that comfort can then be catapulted into writing your dream future or taking risks from a secure place emotionally and spiritually. In reality, there is no past and no future, only now. And yes, tech distracts us from this ultimate truth. Great piece, thank you for sharing it and making us all think.
I think you raise some great points regarding Roth's book. A few years ago I remember reading an article about how the newly rich are not patrons like many of the rich of the past. I recently finished reading Paul Strathern's the Medici and what stuck out to me was how the Medicis basically defined the early Renaissance thanks to the sponsoring of authors, artists, and scholars. Many of the greatest works of the era, including the statue of David, were thanks to the Medici. These works were accepted by the broader society not so much because they were great works of art, literature, and scholarship (which they were of course), but because the Medici said we think this is cool and you should too (and no dare disagree). Even in America, our early culture was shaped by the richest patrons, who set the tone in art, fashion, and architecture.
The concerning fact about today is of course the concentration of wealth but, as you mentioned, the unwillingness or inability for the richest individuals to create any meaningful cultural advances. In fact, the jeans and hoodies of the Silicon Valley elite seems to be an abdication of leading through culture--something we've never seen in history from our leading figures as far as I can tell.
In addition, the elite used to see it as their civic duty to bring order to society and actively participate in political leadership (i.e. actually holding positions in government). This too seems to be lost on our generation's economic leaders. As much as I champion the common man, it is those with the most who set the tempo in society (our innovations, art, politics, etc). The culmination of a lack of leadership both culturally and politically seems to have resulted in a society that is largely stagnant in both of the aforementioned categories--and I am afraid things will remain this way until someone in the billionaire class changes the norms.
This is very well said and logical...... We have all "in western culture" come to believe "I think therefore I am" when in fact it's the opposite I am therefore I think. The issue is we are all primarily driven to focus on our thoughts and not on our bodies which control the way we feel about our thoughts. The speed at which we are processing is not natural to our nature and as a result we are trying desperately to calm our minds. But it feels next to impossible as the inputs are scaled against us being able to experience the things in life that hold time still. The place we all call the zone. My only true regret in life is taking so long to understand this and that "the person who dies with the most toys wins" when said and sold to my generation was just wrong!
"I think therefore I am" Rene Descartes was the French Philosopher who is credited with establishing Science and Reason. He was wrong. Our bodies came long before our minds. Eastern philosophy has it "I am therefore I think". The difference in those two statements is fundamental to understanding we are part of not separated from the whole.
Good thoughts fly away fast, while bad ones stick. And if they stick for long enough they might leave scars.
Contrary to common believe, I see nostalgia as a mechanism for forgetting the past, not lingering to it. By doing so we leave the past at peace, not caring additional baggage that weight us down so we can focus on the future. We would ideally say “oh boy, good times” and move on.
Back in the day, we wouldn't get a strong visual stimuli of what the past looked like in the way we do today. I mean there would be stories, passed down orally, but in the end you had to imagine(do some work) and then construct an image of the past. You practiced imagination in a way so you weren't trapped in nostalgia land exclusively.
Now the past looks better, real and accurate so you prefer that world instead of the chaos of today, magnified 10x online. In a way imagination has been taken care for you, becoming a service.
This is very close to the threat in my sci-fi novel Cereus & Limnic. The antagonist creates technology that allows people to live in a fantasy world of their past memories or of their future selves.
Most accept the illusion despite it being completely fictional.
In many ways, this is already happening with today's culture. It's possible to remain locked in the perpetual past, with no care to ever see how the future plays out.
When I was young, in university, I spent some time studying Asian Art. Much Chinese and Japanese art and painting are copies of earlier works. The assumption was that the "first" was the best, and that it was impossible to do better, and you should just attempt to make as good a copy as you could. [They also used red seals for proving authenticity]. I had a really hard time wrapping my ossified brain around the idea that the "best" art could only be copies of prior art. As I studied more history I came to see that the periods in Japan and China when this was most prevalent also seemed to coincide with periods of political stagnation and decline. I think this may be analogous to your thoughts on nostalgia weakening creativity.
this is FASCINATING!
While I agree that this is a bleak picture, it may not be quite as bleak as we are usually reminded, because of the selective reporting involved. If I were looking for more hopeful uses of billionaire money, I might look at what is being done by Ms. Jobs, or Ms. Bezos, people who have received money but not with the same ego investment as the "creators". I'd guess that they have done a much better job, from a societal perspective, than Musk or Zuckerberg. They just aren't seeking or receiving the same media attention.
yeah thats why the media's attention is important and is pretty integral to overall storytelling
Generative AI might be pushing culture further in the direction of nostalgia. The systems are recyclers by nature, churning up things that would have been forgotten (like books that can’t be edited!).
A lot of the content I’ve seen is just mashups of pop culture icons, imagery and ideas.
Great post as always!
oo i like this add-on - AI enhances nostalgia because it is inherently designed to be nostalgic
It makes you wonder whether human senescence necessarily led to creation of original art - the old generation passed on and the young had to create their own thing.
But with the internet, so many utterances are now never going to be forgotten. And AI is this huge dragnet of all the little conversations that in previous generations would been gone with the wind.
Glad to see someone talking about this!
Yep, couldn’t help thinking about machine learning and generative AI while reading this piece. People will turn to Gen AI supposedly out of efficiency, but I think it’s more that point around laziness - it’s easier for someone (or something) else to do the “thinking” and output what you need, then having to imagine it up yourself. Yes, it saves time, but results in super derivative, unoriginal copy. And then that copy potentially becomes part of the training data and...so on.
In another direction, also thinking about the “good artists copy, great artists steal” quote. The idea that imitation on its own isn’t enough. You have to reimagine and recontextualize what you find inspiring and influential so the resulting work has a power (aura?) on its own.
That’s exactly my thinking! It could lead to some stagnation, not only in art, but maybe even language. Idioms that would pass out of favor as one generation ages may now stick around longer. We will see.
I honestly love reading you Kyla. This made me think a lot. I’m leading a social network and you cannot imagine all the discussions around algorithms, authenticity, and how we can help create a middle class of creators. You touched on every single aspect with this. There is so much polarisation of views due to the need of the platforms to keep us liking what we like to generate revenue. Imagine that added to the nostalgia effect you mention here, we show people every single time they go on social media only what they are most prone to like. People’s ability to make their own informed opinion disappears. And it’s also incredible how the wealth concentration has also been reproduced in the Creators Economy - these platforms reward the big numbers, creating really high barriers to be able to monetise.... anyways, loved the perspective on nostalgia and how our brains hijacks us. Thanks for everything you do.
Im really concerned about that too - how are people able to form their own opinions when they never really have to?
Exactly! we lost our ability to think - because we don't need to anymore. It's really disturbing and worrying
This is a great example of nostalgia, right there
Wow, this is awesome! Those were just some of my barely formed thoughts from a long commute this morning, and this is such an amazing dive into the topic. I don’t know how you do it! Looking forward to the next piece!
thank you for leaving such a thoughtful comment!
Lovely piece, thank you. Reminiscent of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, in which he sees "publicity" as central to modern society (although the term now seems quaint, and could perhaps be translated as marketing/brands).
“Publicity is, in essence, nostalgic. It has to sell the past to the future. … Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred.... The interminable present of meaningless working hours is ‘balanced’ by a dreamt future in which imaginary activity replaces the passivity of the moment. In his or her day-dreams the passive worker becomes the active consumer. The working self envies the consuming self.”
It can feel like the answers to everything are known but it's likely we're exposed to subsets of data, abbreviated accidentally or on purpose. The volume of sensory inputs supports an illusion of comprehension. We need diverse outlets and inputs, stuff that is totally off our radar, experiences that gouge new neural pathways. Hope lies in finding a wholly unimagined universe in a local watershed, an interesting group of humans, some new songs and stories. Relief and sometimes joy flows from finding the world to be ten million times bigger than imagined.
I love the connection you draw between nostalgia and hope and the economy — it’s connecting a lot of dots for me. I recently heard a definition of hope from clinical psychology that (I think?) also ties into your analysis nicely and has helped me understand your perspective. If you’re curious, the clinical definition of hope I heard (paraphrasing) is that hope is the state of believing both that 1. one can achieve a goal; 2. that one can articulate at least some steps that could help one achieve that goal, even if they is uncertain. I other words, hopelessness is the state of believing there is no possible path for one to get somewhere, and therefore that one will never get there. I always assumed hope was just a feeling or a form of wishful thinking e.g. “I hope I’m a billionaire someday,” but this more exact definition both helps me see it differently and aligns with your analysis in that it helps explain why e.g. a generations of Americans (Get Z and Y) are not hopeful that they'll achieve the American dream (they can articulate the erasure of the previously believable [to some] path to it: “there are no more middle class jobs” ).
In other words (still wrapping my head around this concept), for many there is a hopelessness around their ability to achieve American dream because 1. they can’t imagine any believable paths to get there, 2. therefore there is belief that they’ll ever get there; and 3. (?) people are no longer invested in imagining their own version of the American dream, so there is no alternative path to build on (bringing in your point on nostalgia)? The nostalgia/culture/supply-chain cycle constantly reaffirms the old, outdated and unattainable version of the American dream, which is what helps drive more hopelesness in the sense that people are, among many other things, not imagining alternatives. The feeling of both missing a previous state of hopfulness and not being able to experience that state is a strange place to be!
This makes me think of another way imagination and hope are tied together in the economy. I'm likely to be hopeful about a prosperous future if I am able to analyze our situation and find a path to a better future, whether I'm intelligent or not, but only those with a strong sense of imagination will be able to find hope that was inaccessible to those without imagination. Many were hopeful (clinical definition) that Dogecoin would help them magically be rich because the path to riches became articulable (buy dogecoin) and believable (Elon is rich, bought dogecoin, and is for some reason relatable, so I can get that too). It was crazy to believe dogecoin would make you rich, but people latched onto it because they weren't imagining other paths to prosperity. In other words, false hope may be a bigger driver for buying dogecoin than pessimism about the economy, or at least exist alongside it? I.e. the smarter you are, the less likely you are to get caught up in “false hopes” like Dodgecoin, but only those with imaginative intelligence can both escape the scams and imagine an articulable future that is positive enough to want to believe in. This isn't to blame people's doge losses on their lack of imagination, but to wonder out loud if it is a factor, which is what I think you're getting at?
This is maybe also why it feels like we are both nostalgic for the American dream (stability, prosperity, with a sense of optimism for the future), but also heavily critical of any nostalgia for it (“it was always a lie for most people”)?
A great comparison to all of this would be the book written by Luke Burgis, "Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life." Talks about how most of our wants and desires are based off the environment and those that surround us.
I like to think this is a major contributor to the "stuck culture" mentality. No one has there own imagination or strong enough will to have their own wants and desires. They see what the person next to them has and wants that or more. We are not building our lives based off our own intuitions, but rather based off the brands we see or the influencer we hope to be like.
I'm hopefully that people like Elon that do the hard work, that work on projects that seem almost impossible, will inspire a generation of folks to make their own path to solve hard problems and create new worlds. Great read, thanks for the newsletter!
Some people think the Musk vs Zuck cage match is a joke. But they don't understand billionaires, or their egos, or how humanity hangs in balance on the outcome of this, or logarithms, or algorithms, or how this represents the clash of two views of how to dominate the world.
I'm giving Elon "The Walrus" Musk 420 to 69 odds over Mark "Actual BJJ Competitor" Zuckerberg and predict the match will happen in Las Vegas after a 6-week training camp for Zuck and a 6-year training camp for Elon. But, more importantly, it will be broadcast on Twitter.
Mike drop.
Your posts are getting better and better; more and more intellectual! You will do amazing things, Kyla, I am sure!
Thank you for the thought-provoking piece. Nostalgia is comforting ~ but so are happy memories, which can inform a better future. Sometimes I think nostalgia is demonized by the post-modern worldly sophisticated set. World building can be built on the the better things in life ~ for without comparing these moments of time, we have no anchor or foundation. I liked this thought-exercise. Imho, nostalgia is fine when it is authentic (you make the oatmeal your Mum made because it is delicious and comforting) ~ but that comfort can then be catapulted into writing your dream future or taking risks from a secure place emotionally and spiritually. In reality, there is no past and no future, only now. And yes, tech distracts us from this ultimate truth. Great piece, thank you for sharing it and making us all think.
agree! not all nostalgia is bad, just like nothing is ever truly big-b-bad or big-g-good
I think you raise some great points regarding Roth's book. A few years ago I remember reading an article about how the newly rich are not patrons like many of the rich of the past. I recently finished reading Paul Strathern's the Medici and what stuck out to me was how the Medicis basically defined the early Renaissance thanks to the sponsoring of authors, artists, and scholars. Many of the greatest works of the era, including the statue of David, were thanks to the Medici. These works were accepted by the broader society not so much because they were great works of art, literature, and scholarship (which they were of course), but because the Medici said we think this is cool and you should too (and no dare disagree). Even in America, our early culture was shaped by the richest patrons, who set the tone in art, fashion, and architecture.
The concerning fact about today is of course the concentration of wealth but, as you mentioned, the unwillingness or inability for the richest individuals to create any meaningful cultural advances. In fact, the jeans and hoodies of the Silicon Valley elite seems to be an abdication of leading through culture--something we've never seen in history from our leading figures as far as I can tell.
In addition, the elite used to see it as their civic duty to bring order to society and actively participate in political leadership (i.e. actually holding positions in government). This too seems to be lost on our generation's economic leaders. As much as I champion the common man, it is those with the most who set the tempo in society (our innovations, art, politics, etc). The culmination of a lack of leadership both culturally and politically seems to have resulted in a society that is largely stagnant in both of the aforementioned categories--and I am afraid things will remain this way until someone in the billionaire class changes the norms.
This is very well said and logical...... We have all "in western culture" come to believe "I think therefore I am" when in fact it's the opposite I am therefore I think. The issue is we are all primarily driven to focus on our thoughts and not on our bodies which control the way we feel about our thoughts. The speed at which we are processing is not natural to our nature and as a result we are trying desperately to calm our minds. But it feels next to impossible as the inputs are scaled against us being able to experience the things in life that hold time still. The place we all call the zone. My only true regret in life is taking so long to understand this and that "the person who dies with the most toys wins" when said and sold to my generation was just wrong!
"I am therefore I think" - love that
"I think therefore I am" Rene Descartes was the French Philosopher who is credited with establishing Science and Reason. He was wrong. Our bodies came long before our minds. Eastern philosophy has it "I am therefore I think". The difference in those two statements is fundamental to understanding we are part of not separated from the whole.
Good thoughts fly away fast, while bad ones stick. And if they stick for long enough they might leave scars.
Contrary to common believe, I see nostalgia as a mechanism for forgetting the past, not lingering to it. By doing so we leave the past at peace, not caring additional baggage that weight us down so we can focus on the future. We would ideally say “oh boy, good times” and move on.
Back in the day, we wouldn't get a strong visual stimuli of what the past looked like in the way we do today. I mean there would be stories, passed down orally, but in the end you had to imagine(do some work) and then construct an image of the past. You practiced imagination in a way so you weren't trapped in nostalgia land exclusively.
Now the past looks better, real and accurate so you prefer that world instead of the chaos of today, magnified 10x online. In a way imagination has been taken care for you, becoming a service.
Great piece!
This is very close to the threat in my sci-fi novel Cereus & Limnic. The antagonist creates technology that allows people to live in a fantasy world of their past memories or of their future selves.
Most accept the illusion despite it being completely fictional.
In many ways, this is already happening with today's culture. It's possible to remain locked in the perpetual past, with no care to ever see how the future plays out.