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Nostalgia: A Look into the Past from the Comfort of the Present
Student: Daniel Krasney
Professor: Dr. Hoffman
Assignment: 2nd Research Paper
Due Date: November 13, 2003
Reflecting about the "good old days" is human nature - we call it nostalgia. Nostalgia is an incredibly powerful force that influences both individual and group behavior. ... Nostalgia motivates many of our actions to alter the environment in an effort to recapture or reproduce the lifestyle we remember from the past. ... The societal importance, impact and effectiveness of nostalgia are explored below in reference to three classic books, Bowling Alone, Our Town, and The Celebration Chronicles. ... Nostalgia is not a new phenomenon. ... Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town in the 1930s, yet he gives us a nostalgic look into a pre-World War I era. ... It would seem that, on occasion, we all pine for a time in the past when things were "better". ... This fact, by itself, explains the pervasive attraction of our past.
People often reflect on the good times in their past and dream about “going back”. ... We can attempt to recreate a physical environment and social structure from our past (Celebration, Florida), but rarely will it provide the satisfaction we seek. ... Ross makes clear that efforts to reproduce our nostalgic recollection of the past is replete with pitfalls. Often, the recreation of the past is a pale imitation of what actually existed. ...
Even a perfectly replicated portion of our past can fail to satisfy us because we have become psychologically, physically or economically dependent on new technology or aspects of a new lifestyle. ...
Nostalgia stimulates a desire to escape into a rosy past that may never have actually existed. ... Sometimes we try to act on our nostalgia by moving back to the actual town or house in which we grew up. Time moves on, however, and the onslaught of technological and economic change virtually guarantees that the place you grew up, the campus where you went to school, and the spot where you first whispered "I love you" to your future mate does not look the same anymore. ... Many people have internalized an image of the Old West from movies, television shows and fictional cowboy books.
Approximate Word count = 1766
Approximate Pages = 7.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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