We can’t embrace the future if we’re longing for the past | Rafael Behr

In these troubled times the urge is to seek comfort in false memories. But that instinct is misguided

A consoling thought for turbulent times: these are the good old days - or they will be eventually. All but the very worst days improve with age. Memory edits and blurs with a sepia wash. The most banal features of the past acquire value by virtue of being the irrecoverable experience of our younger selves. So it will be with 2015. Remember when hipster men wore beards like skinny young Father Christmases, Nadia won Bake Off and we all danced to Uptown Funk? Those were the days.

Nostalgia is a cultural and a cognitive phenomenon, and common memories are the glue that holds a society together in shared endeavour. Agreeing to look fondly on where we have been together makes it easier to travel onward without rancour. But our brains collude by adjusting our past to make it a neater fit with the present.

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