Is Nostalgia Against Creativity?
A question many people are asking in the contemporary era is, weather nostalgia kill creativity or is it a form of it.
By Alvand Khaleghi, Amira Ali Azadi, Emin Aroutounians
Many people love relieving the comforting memoirs from the past by scrolling through old photos or videos, but there can actually be downsides to too much reminiscing. While nostalgia can be a great antidote to stress and anxiety, if it goes on for too long it can make someone feel worse.
There are two types of nostalgia according to psychologists. Collective nostalgia which is a person’s experience as part of a larger group and their understanding of the past within the context. For example, the great times spent with the high school basketball team.
The other is Personal nostalgia which is the yearning for the past in regards to one’s individual experiences which is looking back at how great times he or she has had during a certain year or age. These memories can be triggered by certain items or events such as conversations, smells, tastes and etc, … which are known as set off nostalgia.
This leads to the problem of many companies using nostalgia in order to have an advantage over their particular set of audience instead of working towards coming up with new and creative ideas. In 2020 we saw announcements for 55 updates of old favorites. In 2021 we saw over 25 reboots of nostalgic franchises.
Although they are very successful in the short term and will provide an abundant amount of profit for the company, in the long term the profit wont turn out the way it was before and it will ultimately collapse.
Nostalgia can be very soothing as calming to think about the perfect times one has had however, it can also be dangerous as it can detach a person from the reality in which he is living in and ultimately lead him or her down a path, where daydreaming has taken over, and life is no longer the main priority.
So, we can finally conclude that reminiscing is a perfect feeling, especially when it brings upon lovely and enjoyable past memories and companies use that to their advantage however, it is not a matter that is much so healthy if trifled with as it can lead to more misery.
