“Back in my day,” Grandpa Simpson might begin, “I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.” As many of us get older, we might hearken back to simpler times. Better times. We may look upon the present with a certain level of disdain. We might admonish “kids these days” for ruining everything from the casual dining industry to the sanctity of marriage. But, are we all just falling victim to the golden age fallacy? Were things really better back in your day?

You might remember a classic line from The Office when Andy Bernard said, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in ‘the good old days’ before you’ve actually left them.” Things were better then than they are now, so we wistfully reminisce about the past. Our current reality isn’t so rosy, but we can certainly look back through rose-tinted glasses.

Welcome to 1920s Paris

I recently watched 2011’s Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams. The trailer doesn’t really do the movie justice, but here it is.

Basically, Owen Wilson’s character Gil goes for midnight strolls in Paris. During these strolls, he somehow travels back in time to Paris in the 1920s. He views this period with great affection, seeing it as a golden age of creativity. Along the way, he befriends Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald, among others. He feels inspired as an author, surrounded by such literary and artistic greats.

His experiences further reaffirm his belief that 1920s Paris is vastly superior to 2010s California, where his character actually lives in the present. As you might suspect, toward the end of the movie (is this a spoiler?), he recognizes how he has fallen victim to the golden age fallacy. He thinks Paris in the 1920s is best. Someone from the 1920s sees La Belle Époque (1870s Paris) as the golden age. And someone from La Belle Époque thinks the Renaissance was superior.

Nostalgia Is a Powerful Drug

In Midnight in Paris, pretentious know-it-all Paul Bates (played by Michael Sheen, no relation to Charlie or Martin) explains:

Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present… the name for this fallacy is called golden age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in – it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.

I don’t know about you, but I very much feel this when it comes to pop culture. Almost everyone seems to believe that the popular entertainment of their formative years is the best. Music in the ’90s was the pinnacle, from rap to grunge. It was the golden era of music. Many of my favorite movies are from the 1990s, nothing beats a good ’90s TV sitcom, and classic video games of the ’80s and ’90s were the best. At least, that’s mostly true for me.

Ask someone a bit older, and they might say the same about the 1970s. Ask someone a bit younger, and they might say that “old people music” doesn’t compare to modern day music. Whatever the case, I think we all recognize the incredible power of nostalgia and “retro” themed products. The marketing people sure do. In the 1990s, we got That ’70s Show. More recently, we got Stranger Things, which takes place in the ’80s. It’s no coincidence.

Again, the golden age fallacy leads us to believe that things were better back then than they are right now. So, we want to revisit and re-experience the past.

A Curated History vs. An Imperfect Present

But, you see, those rose-tinted glasses give you a highly filtered perspective on the past. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, revisiting your lived experiences to some degree. On some level, it can be even more powerful if you never lived those experiences at all. What you read in the history books is curated, edited, and carefully positioned to present a particular story.

Owen Wilson’s character never actually lived in Paris during the 1920s. His perception is based on what he’s read about people like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. The character from the ’20s never lived during La Belle Epoque, just as the folks from that era never lived during the Renaissance. They all romanticize the past, because they can, focusing on the appeal and ignoring negative details… like tuberculosis.

Truly, one of the most powerful ways to battle golden age thinking is by taking more of a factfulness-based approach. The present, most assuredly, is imperfect. It’s rife with problems and challenges and struggle. But, broadly speaking, life today is better than it was 10 years ago, which was better than life 10 years before that, and so on. So, do your best to embrace your current situation, as imperfect as it might be, and stop living in the past.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find an onion for my belt.