The Myth of the Idealic Past

Imagine that it is 1800, somewhere in Western Europe or eastern North America. The family is gathering around the hearth in the simple timber-framed house. Father reads aloud from the Bible while mother prepares to dish out a stew of beef and onions. The baby boy is being comforted by one of his sisters and the eldest lad is pouring water from a pitcher into the earthenware mugs on the table. His elder sister is feeding the horse in the stable. Outside there is no noise of traffic, there are ...

 The Past is a Brutally Foreign Place

If the past is a foreign country, it is a shockingly violent one. It is easy to forget how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence. Cultural memory pacifies the past, leaving us with pale souvenirs whose bloody origins have been bleached away. A woman donning a cross seldom reflects that this instrument of torture was a common punishment in the ancient world; nor does a person who speaks of a whipping boy ponder the old practice of flo...

 énouement

n. the bittersweetness of having arrived here in the future, where you can finally get the answers to how things turn out in the real world—who your baby sister would become, what your friends would end up doing, where your choices would lead you, exactly when you’d lose the people you took for granted—which is priceless intel that you instinctively want to share with anybody who hadn’t already made the journey, as if there was some part of you who had volunteered to stay behind, who ...

 History Yes, Nostalgia No

mitt romney believes in cornfields and grandpas, also touchscreens and robots. okay. more cornfields and large farming equipment and old american cars. here's another mitt romney ad. it's called american optimism. it's 30 seconds long. do you see a single eperson who looks to be anything other than white? anyone? he's showing people who turn out to see him in very white states like iowa and new hampshire. that's the point. when you look back with longing at the america of yesteryear, it helps...