Nostalgia Wars

"Super battle droids, take 'em down!"

Nothing like children committing virtual space violence to brighten your day. 

If you were like me as a child, the proud owner of a PlayStation 2 back when you could be proud of that, than it's more than likely that you've experienced the chaotic appeal of Star Wars: Battlefront II. I can't fathom how may hours I spent shooting virtual enemies while doing a backflip off a staircase, but I know it was a lot. Like many memes, Battlefront memes have been making a quiet resurgence in the annals of Twitter and reddit, preying upon the nostalgia of man-children everywhere for the sake of being spread around. Nostalgia is a powerful force that is more than just a wistful little flashback into the past; it continues to shape our experiences and interests well into adulthood, and colors the memories of our past perhaps more than we'd like to admit. 

We all have our share of fond memories; vacations with family, hanging out with friends, absorbing the best moments from our childhood to look back on. But the past is a fickle thing. I've mentioned this in a previous post; our memories are colored by idealizations and ignorance, yearning for the good ol' days that we only every managed to glimpse. By recalling a memory, we see it as our brain has distorted it over the years, not the reality of what happened. This distorted feeling of pleasantness is known as nostalgia, and it's really quite fascinating. 

Nostalgia works by essentially keeping all the good memories and erasing the bad; we're not going to look back fondly on the death of a loved one, for example. However, nostalgia operates less on specific memories and more on specific emotions, hence the reason while powerful nostalgia tends to hit you while visiting a certain place or doing a particular activity. Research has also shown that nostalgia is linked most to a person's sense of smell, which is why we just feel good when we smell our favorite childhood foods in the kitchen. 

Nostalgia is also a collective experience; many people can express a desire to re-experience the same thing. Taking the above example, adults now wishing for the childish delight of video games, or our parents remembering the first time they saw Star Wars in a movie theater. It's a testament to our sense of empathy that we can all feel nostalgic, even when two experiences aren't similar at all. Everyone feels bad when a friend mentions a rough childhood, even if you haven't experienced it yourself. But the pull of nostalgia is just that strong; so strong, in fact, that nostalgia was considered a mental disorder during the 17th-18th centuries, with its "victims" being deemed incapable of looking forward or living in the present. 

So we can all be thankful for having nostalgia around; it makes us happy, and that's what's important. Most of us will probably remember our first taste of Creamery ice cream rather than the time we slept through our morning classes, but maybe that's for the best. And me? I'll probably remember my first meme or something equally trivial.