This is hardly a new phenomenon; we have not suddenly begun to look to the times gone by from some sort of fin-de-siècle appreciation of our legacy, nor have we begun as an escape from the hard times of the modern world.In truth, it is human nature to be this way: even those halcyon days which we ache for were, in their time, just as oppressive and frightful as those in which we live today.I honestly cannot imagine how it must have been to be alive in the 1950s or ‘60s, or just how I should have kept my sanity.Far from being a simpler time of moral certainty or of honest patriotism and good-and-evil, those days were paranoid, dark, terrifying, and one went from day to day not knowing whether there would be a tomorrow.I think of living in those days as living in 1660s London, gripped by plague, fire, civil war, corruption, drunkenness, and unimaginable terror; I think of those days as sometime even darker than the present time, hurtling headlong towards, if left in the hands of authority, Armageddon; and if left in the hands of youth, anarchy and iniquity.Had I lived through them, I should be crazy or dead.And yet, to the current middle age, they offer nothing but fond memories and of solidarity against the great Red threat.

This is undoubtedly the result of that generation having spent its youth at that time, when everything seemed possible in the great hopeful Future.The president’s innocent and happy childhood was far removed from the time’s trouble and despair; it was a time of simple joys and pleasures, when he was instilled with an easy morality.Democracy was good, Communism was bad, and the world was split into these terms.For his generation, it was a beautiful time which it can look back to with the fondest of memories.The bad is also obliterated through time or, at the least, lessened in retrospect: nobody likes to dwell on his misfortunes, and everybody likes to bask in the memory of his happy times and good actions.

I have thought about this for some time, since I saw LucianoUmerez’s lament on today’s morally lost youth and absence of heroes and glory.It is natural that he should feel this; I do, too.However, I have realized that everybody does and that everybody has felt in this fashion: look no further than the multitudes of kids who think that modern rock is rubbish and that great music died with John Lennon.I guarantee that most of these people, had they been alive at the time, would think that John Lennon was an addled, hopelessly out-of-touch hippie, 15 years behind his time, churning out idealistic “we-are-the-world” pap, ignorant to the reality of the world around him.They would also feel that pop music was commercialized generic trash and that great music died with Charlie Parker.Most classic rockers aren’t so closed-minded as to ignore all of the genuinely great music that’s come out in the last 20 years, but they’d just as soon forget it if it meant living in 1980 and seeing their idol alive and before them.

Everyone either hates his own time or feels that it is all right, but nothing compared to what once was.I have yet to meet a person who is completely satisfied with 2004 and its culture and state of affairs; everyone thinks that either music, television, the movies, the government, the world situation, fashion, or some other minute detail is in a serious crisis and that it was all perfect in the past.More often that not, people wrap themselves in a pet epoch for some point of culture or another.

This only grows in intensity as one ages.The era when he felt that the world was rotten becomes a source of pleasure and of fond reminiscing; disillusioned youth turns to wistful maturity.The radio listener who could have strangled John Lennon in 1980 now regards him as a visionary and as one of the last great icons of popular music.He doesn’t throw away his Charlie Parker records, but sees Lennon as somehow greater: it was his own time, a legacy to call his own and that of his generation.

This is ultimately what drives the world: both the memories of what has passed and the idealistic melancholy of youth.The president sees the world as sinful beyond precedent and takes solace in the 1950s.President Eisenhower doubtlessly saw the world as troubled and headed toward despair, and looks to the glory of pure good and pure evil in World War II.Winston Churchill did the best he could, but probably had, deep down inside, a desire to go back to the Edwardian days of his youth, before world war, Communism, Fascism, and the dark underbelly of his time set in.The Edwardian was shocked at the moral, cultural, and political decay of the Empire and looks back in time to the height of Victoria, where, troubled by liberalization, secularization, and industrialization, an old vicar thinks of the Regency and the good-versus-evil fight against the brute Napoleon.Then, an old man in pigtails and powder laments the world’s moral decay and thinks of the carefree days of his youth, or perhaps to the good feelings and optimism shortly before his time, when William and Mary came to the throne.It is in the shadow of their court that a shopkeeper’s dreams are dashed and longs for Cromwell’s revolution; then, a spinster takes shelter, wishes the insurgents would let her live out her life in peace, and wishes to be surrounded by the flowering Renaissance.William Shakespeare’s sinful, pagan, and secular dramas are decried by an old man who wishes he were back in the good old days of a Church-driven society and of the plain, simple, good and evil of the Middle Ages.One could go on and on back to the Garden of Eden, but 500 years are very well enough to drive a point home.Modern life sucks: it always has.

We oughtn’t to dwell on this illusion, but we undoubtedly shall.While it is very well to be rightfully satisfied with what we’ve got, progress has been driven by the idea that somewhere, sometime, somebody was happier than we are today.Without a group of disgruntled youth wrapped up in John Locke’s works (then a good century in the grave), the American Revolution never would have taken place.Social Security owes its existence to the discontent of the 19^th-century working man.Even the Renaissance happened because the Middle Ages sucked, and because the Romans and Greeks had the world made.To come back to Reagan, the ‘80s as we know them wouldn’t have passed if the ‘70s weren’t thoroughly unsatisfactory and the ‘50s better.Likewise, the ‘60s and ‘70s wouldn’t have happened if the ‘50s weren’t oppressive and the progressive spirit of the ‘20s and ‘30s weren’t preferable.

The history of the world has taken place in shambling steps, with the left foot first leading (the ‘90s followed the ‘70s), followed by the right (the new times follow the ‘80s).I can say with some amount of certainty that the next cultural revolution will follow the pattern of the 1990s, with a certain amount of update brought about by the mistakes of the current government, and that the next will follow our own times.Although we think it inconceivable now, we are living a dream.Our times are the best that there have ever been, and are an absolutely perfect model for an American people in 2024 to follow.I am dissatisfied by the present day as much as anybody, but someday I shall look back on 2004 as among the best times there has ever been.It is only the way of human nature.

In closing, modern life is the pits, although it won’t be in 10 years.Enjoy our own time, but look fondly toward the past and the great times that have been while tossing away what is currently bad: the future of the world depends on it.But do remember that, in 50 years, some kid will sit thinking how our generation survived it all without our going insane or killing ourselves.