Mary Bullard: Rosy Retro-flection
With just a few bars of opening music, "Twilight Zone," the popular television series of the '50s and '60s, took us into the unknown. I can still recall some of my favorite episodes. In "Elegy," three astronauts crash their space capsule on an uncharted planet. Here, people live out their fantasies and favorite moments literally frozen in time. The men still in their spacesuits wander through a town that resembles life in the Eisenhower '50s: a band in the park, beauty pageants, children playing outside. The choice to stay is tempting.
Election hyperbole is much like "Twilight Zone’s Elegy." Politicians make promises and pledge to return us to a better time, an idyllic period of harmony and prosperity. President Harding pledged “A return to normalcy,” and President Hoover offered a “Chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” Today we are bomb-basted with Trump’s “Make America Great Again.” But were things really better in the past? Is there science behind this yen for nostalgia?
Researcher Nick Chater, Warwick Business School Professor of Behavioral Science, has several theories on how the brain selectively processes memories. When we say “things aren’t what they used to be,” we are experiencing rose-tinted memory. He called this phenomenon rosy retro-reflection.
Chater explains that over time our memory tends to neutralize the bad events. Despite historical evidence showing significant problems in the past, our brains recall the best rather than the worst. This could be because we rehearse and dwell on the good things that happened; we retell them a lot more often, reinforcing the good memories. For example, I often share stories about my first job as an elevator operator, leaving out the low pay, gender discrimination, and long hours.
Rosy retro-flection focuses on an idealized past, ignoring present progress. The idea that everything is getting worse is not new. Even ancient Athens saw itself as having fallen from a former, mythical golden age. MAGA politicians bemoan national decline, and even predict imminent collapse, but current data shows a strong economy, available jobs, and access to health care.
President Biden recently said of Trump, “He wants to take us back on Roe v. Wade, he wants to take us back on a whole range of issues that for 50-60 years, they’ve been solid American positions.”
If we rolled back time, would we want to work in unsafe workplaces, face infant mortality and shortened life spans because of lack of health care? Do we want to have our court systems bogged down because of legal maneuvers to avoid justice? Do we want to ignore climate change and the environmental issues that are adversely impacting our world?
Mr. Trump with rosy retro-flection is trying to convince us that the past was idyllic and our future dire. His flawed vision excludes equality for all races, cultures, and genders. He denies the need to support our global allies. And he throws us back into a time where schoolyard bullying, name-calling, and humiliating men, women, and even the handicapped were all too common. Let’s take off any rose-colored glasses that make these ideas acceptable.
Our "Twilight Zone" astronauts? They may have been tempted to stay in the past, but they knew their purpose and happiness was in going forward — in the final scene all three are in their space capsule headed to the future.
— Mary Bullard is a member of Stronger Together Huddle, a group engaged in supporting and promoting the common good of all. She can be reached at mcneil102@icloud.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Mary Bullard: Rosy Retro-flection
