Will we ever look back with nostalgia?

[Christinaismyperson]

I was just thinking about how the pandemic and lockdown are often compared to WW2 and I was wondering if one day we will ever look back with nostalgia? And if so what will we be nostalgic about?

It also got me thinking how strange the nostalgia for WW2 is, surely living through it would have been far worse than the pandemic? Husbands, sons and brothers being shipped overseas to fight. Rationing and going without food, the real possibility a bomb will drop on your house killing you and your children. Seems mad people look back with such fondness? Is it a survival technique or is it mainly people who were children in the war who didn’t understand or weren’t even born?

What nostalgia? I dont see anyone being nostalgic about WW2

I've heard elderly relatives discuss their childhood during it. But that's just their memories of what happened during a crisis. Food rationing, the Blitz, "loud" anti aircraft guns at the end of the street

My Grandfathers, who both fought in WW2, never talked about it and according to my parents they never discussed it in front of them either

The post war period was a time of hope, the creation of the NHS, housing programmes with slum clearance and new council estates, not an easy time, food rationing was even stricter than during the war and there was still a lot if poverty but there was also a feeling of new beginnings and hope

People who constantly bang on about other people supposedly banging on about WW2 are actually the ones who are obsessed with it

@Christinaismyperson Here is why I think they might: because they want or need to have a drastic threat ready, with which they can control the public. I think the government know there is a lot of simmering public anger, and they are secretly afraid of riots, or lots of businesses opening on one day, or lots of people partying on one day, in spite of restrictions: and let's face it, some restrictions will be around for a while yet, even in the summer. If these events happened, the police would be outnumbered: the public knows it, the government knows it, the police know it. If the public has a day of mass rebellion, the government can then say "well, you covidiot plebs spread the virus, so we'll have to lock you down again." They need to have the mechanism to do this.

It might also be that the red-hot public fury comes much later, i.e. in a year or two, when people realise just how badly they've been screwed by lockdown, financially, and with their mental health: we might then see riots happening regularly and frequently, or protests such as mass tax avoidance. They will want to be able to throw at us "the virus hasn't completely gone away, you know". I do foresee the ever-present threat of lockdown as a way of controlling public dissent. If they told us completely falsely "the NHS is getting overwhelmed again", people would believe them.

No nostalgia here.
Selfish, selfish, me me me attitudes.
Hate this country right now.

@Flaxmeadow so you’ve never heard of anyone talking positively about the “blitz spirit” and “keep calm and carry on” comedy TV shows made not long after the war making light of it such as “Allo Allo” and “Dads Army”?

I’m not saying it’s right but like it or not some people do talk fondly and make light of the war. Whether that’s because they weren’t actually born, or they were kids or they weren’t badly affected or maybe as I mentioned before it’s a coping or denial technique I don’t know. But it happens!

You can buy war time memorabilia for your kitchen from National Trust properties for gods sake!

My question is that if something as awful as WW2 can be memorialised in such a way will the same happen for the pandemic? A poster up thread mentioned “stay the fuck at home” teas towels being sold in the future and it really wouldn’t surprise me.

I’m not obsessed with WW2, just asking a question.

@wanderings it’s an interesting thought, but I tend to think that if businesses aren’t making money and taxes aren’t getting paid then ultimately the government lose out. So many of them must have interests in big businesses that it would be damaging to their own pockets to keep locking down?! Not saying they wouldn’t use it as a threat though....

@Thewiseoneincognito

We’ll be looking back to pre 2020 with nostalgia. Children will ask what was it like to go to a concert or football match and be so close to strangers. They’ll also ask how it was when people didn’t have to wear masks in stores or public spaces.

I’m not kidding, Watch.

This is the second post in a few days where you have essentially announced to people that their children only have horribly grim lives to look forward to. In the last one you spoke of the 'sterile social interaction and curbs on freedom of movement' that will apparently be the norm for them forever more.

I note in another post you stated you yourself have no children.....

@Christinaismyperson I think that’s because ultimately something positive did come out of the war. You hear people talk about those who fought for, and won us, our freedom. About the sacrifice that so many made so that others could keep their freedom. Europe could have been a very different place. I think it’s of huge importance that we never forget and that we continue to educate on it for many generations to come. Places like the national trust have a role to play in that. But I think that’s very different to looking back fondly.

Difficult to see what good will come out of this. Scientific advances maybe? Positive movement on climate change? Too early to tell really but very difficult to see any positives at the moment.

Oh I think there will be definitely! I am quite bemused by the hoards of middle aged ( I am too ) and older who have finally discovered social media, Facebook groups and Next Door and falling over each other to virtue signal how good they are and helping in the community. all good of course but quite contrived in my opinion!

One of my kids love being at home and will probably look back with some degree of nostalgia, the other one hates it though but gets nostalgic by weird things so he'll probably also look back with nostalgia particularly about his mums fantastic cooking

@JabbyMcJabface that’s true, the defeat of evil and VE Day street parties is a big part of the war nostalgia. I wonder if the pandemic will see long term celebration of the NHS? Commemorative NHS tea towel anyone?

It’s weird isn’t it? I can’t think of any other traumatic time which is memorialised with the equivalent of Lindy hop dances, victory rolls, spitfire flybys, dressing kids up as evacuees etc It does feel like we celebrate a war in which millions died and there was a genocide.

Isn't it just that, unlike WWI, the Spanish Flu and the depression, there was a victory, and a reasonably clear end to the whole horrible experience? There were years when the people living through the war didn't know what was going to happen, and then there was relief when it came to an end. The most extremely over-simplified narrative of the war would say there was danger, tragedy, adventure (for some), and then a happy ending. That's why the war featured so heavily in books and films for the decades after it.

Clearly within that there are many many different stories ranging from the tragic to the completely mundane. People had good wars and bad wars. People are having good pandemics and bad pandemics. If vaccinations can keep up with new variants and get worldwide covid rates down, then we might be more likely to look back with nostalgia on whichever aspects of the pandemic were least stressful and most memorable for us personally, because we'll feel it's ended. What the particular things people might feel nostalgic for are will be completely different for different people.

For instance, there'll doubtless be some people who look back with nostalgia on going to work through empty streets during lockdown 1, and on seeing big cities quite different from how they'd ever seen them before. That won't mean they'll be fetishising the pandemic or looking at the whole thing through rose-tinted spectacles. But that isolated experience might well be something they look back on fondly without it summing up the whole pandemic for them.

I think some of the wartime nostalgia does come from having the luxury of looking back at the drama and danger with the knowledge that it's now over, and from the fact that within the whole thing, some experiences were positive. Plus you've got the usual thing of any generation tending to look back fondly on the era when they were children or their parents were young adults, because it's the first era they've personally witnessed slipping from the present into history.

@JabbyMcJabface Certain things could come out of the pandemic, which would be pleasing to some people (but not all):

• NHS being valued more, although I think its current deification and using it to control the public is going too far.
• More videoconferencing instead of travelling, including by MPs. They might not even need second homes! (Yes, I know, I can dream on.)
• HS2 being scrapped, because there is no longer a business case for it (see above).
• Better general hygiene.
• Less air travel. There's no doubt somebody will be dusting off Greta's puppet strings, making her dance and say "it wasn't so bad, not going on holiday, was it?".

I don't think that events such as concerts and football matches have gone for ever, or people wanting to meet each other. However, I do think that the relationship between the public and the government is going to be very permanently soured. Although the government will try to spin it as having "saved" us from the virus, the people who have lost their homes will not feel "saved" from the financial ruin.

No, not at all. Although I'm sure the government would like us to.

I wonder if the pandemic will see long term celebration of the NHS Commemorative NHS tea towel anyone?

If any profit goes back into the NHS, I don't see commemorative tea towels as such a bad idea

The NHS is something to celebrate. After the war, there was post war consensus. Both sides of the political divide got behind it. The same with slum clearance and public housing programmes. I see what's happening now with Govt socialist and socially responsible policy on borrowing and spending as similar. I'm not particularly one those "take pride in your country and wave the flag" types but it is kind of something to be proud of as a nation and feeling good about it isn't such a bad thing

Less air travel. There's no doubt somebody will be dusting off Greta's puppet strings, making her dance and say "it wasn't so bad, not going on holiday, was it?"

Yeah it was. First thing I'll be doing when possible is booking a flight somewhere, anywhere. And I won't be the only one. Couldn't care less about Greta.

I've never understood why rationing got stricter after the war. Does anybody know?

Things like food production in Europe took a long time to get back to normal and we were absolutely skint, for a start.

@LakeGeneva I get that, and I've been through some pretty serious trauma myself in the past. But what I went through (and what most of us have experienced this year in terms of living through a pandemic) simply isn't comparable to the immense suffering and horror experienced by soldiers fighting in the trenches. Having a sense of perspective is important.

Wouldn't that depend a lot on what your experience was? A hcp working in ICU at the peak of pandemic could well find something very triggering that to you seems daft.

I concede that frontline medics have had a much more harrowing experience than most of us.

You can already buy NHS merch.

There is probably a tea towel.

Its for sale on Conservative HQ website (along with Boris mugs... bleurgh).
The funds raised don't go anywhere near the NHS though! The money raised from using the NHS logo goes to Tory campaign coffers. 🤮

@SquishySquirmy

You can already buy NHS merch.

There is probably a tea towel.

Its for sale on Conservative HQ website (along with Boris mugs... bleurgh).
The funds raised don't go anywhere near the NHS though! The money raised from using the NHS logo goes to Tory campaign coffers. 🤮

< not envy

Good god no it's been sheer hell.

My dad was a teenager during the war. Said it was shit, and he had to worry about his dad away fighting. He says this pandemic time is shit too and worse in many ways.

Dad’s army was made in the late 60s and early 70s and Allo Allo was in the 80s!!

It’s a strong NO!

The war isn’t glorified in my eyes, it was a time of absolute horror

Dad’s army was made in the late 60s and early 70s and Allo Allo was in the 80s!!

Only 20yrs after the war for Dads Army. It’s like making a sitcom out of 9/11 and the war that followed now. Quite shocking really!

Yes @Christinaismyperson I think denial as well as a coping strategy.

And I think the idea of WWII having a defined and positive end point is part of why its different to WWI etc and that it was so global and mainly peaceful afterward (vs WWI-Spanish Flu-wall st crash one after the other)

And I don’t know (so I’m asking!) but is that Britain was partially spared the aftermath Europe had (widespread physical destruction, huge populations displaced, collaborators Vs resistance etc etc) a bit like us saying those of us who have been spared the worst of the pandemic will be more likely to be nostalgic (as Britain is more than other countries re WWII?)

And will indulging in nostalgia make it harder for people to acknowledge and work through the trauma/easier to move into denial?

Because a lot of conflicts post WWII were linked to unresolved trauma (Balkan wars for example)

After the GFA & RUC changing to PSNI, there was a newspaper story on old RUC uniforms being bought up & used by a stripper firm - again a sort of gallows humour or comedy=trauma+time but also not what severely traumatised NI folks would have wanted and more likely to have been the next generation (my lot) rather than those who were teens/adults in the ‘60’s & ‘70’s and in the thick of it.

I hope when we move forward it is together and not by alienating any one section of society.

Similar to the challenge facing the Biden administration right now trying to juggle those relieved to be out from Trump & those who are not only nostalgic for but want a return to him.

And of course tumultuous times, as PP are saying wrt history learning, can be more memorable in and of themselves so once we are in calmer waters we can be ‘bored’ and look back at times we weren’t (even times v damaging to us) and think the grass was greener.

(This is post so long I’m not proof reading so soz for any typos)

@Christinaismyperson

Dad’s army was made in the late 60s and early 70s and Allo Allo was in the 80s!!

Only 20yrs after the war for Dads Army. It’s like making a sitcom out of 9/11 and the war that followed now. Quite shocking really!

You know the people who made Dad's Army were all adults during the war? That that generation were the 'adults in charge' during the fifties, sixties and seventies?

The war as a background to everything - children's fiction, films, books, tv - was a huge thing for decades. Of course that included humour. The war was a huge thing that had happened to the country and to people, and people did what we always do with things like that - we told ourselves stories about it, over and over again...

The games children played were based on war stories. The Nazis were THE baddies, for a long time. It didn't stop being relevant just like that. It had taken over people's lives and terrified them; it fundamentally changed civilian life for many for a few years. Even people born in the couple of decades after the war grew up in its shadow, with WWII narratives still dominant and familiar ones.

There's never going to be a single right way to talk about something like that, or to reflect it in the arts, literature, entertainment - let alone that way being only hushed, respectful and commemorative. It's too big.