Nostalgia: Yearning for Beautiful Memories with Dr. Clay Routledge (Part 2 of 2)

Existential psychologist Dr. Clay Routledge, Vice President of Research at the Archbridge Institute, discusses the science of nostalgia, and why our yearning for beautiful memories is not simply an escape to the past but a vital resource for innovation.

Clay is a highly cited researcher who has published more than 100 scholarly papers, co-edited three academic books, authored three books, and received numerous awards for his research and mentorship. Clay regularly advises a range of organizations, from small startups to large companies, helping them use existential psychology and behavioral science more broadly to improve their products, services, and workplace culture. His latest book is Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life.

In this second part of our conversation, Clay discusses:

• Why we are nostalgic for both good and bad times
• How nostalgia is a resource for innovation and spirituality
• Reflection exercises to harness nostalgia for personal growth

To learn more about Clay’s work, you can find him at:
 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clayroutledge/
X: https://twitter.com/clayroutledge
Human Flourishing Lab: https://humanflourishinglab.org
Personal Website: https://www.clayroutledge.com
Substack (Flourishing Friday): https://www.flourishingfriday.blog/
His latest book (Past Forward): https://www.amazon.com/Past-Forward-Nostalgia-Help-Meaningful/dp/1683648641/

Follow us on social media for more updates:

• Twitter: @brvnathan
• Instagram: @brvnathan

Subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive early access to episodes: www.beautyatwork.net

This episode is sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation (https://www.templeton.org/) and Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/).

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:02

I'm Brandon Vygonathan, and this is Beauty at Work, the podcast that seeks to expand our understanding of beauty, what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. This season of the podcast is sponsored by John Templeton Foundation and Templeton Religion Trust. This episode is the second half of my conversation with existential psychologist Clay Rutledge. Check out the first half if you haven't already. Clay is one of the world's leading experts on the science of nostalgia. In the first half of our conversation, he shared some of his key research findings. And in this episode, we're going to talk about how nostalgia can be a driver of innovation as well as a spiritual resource. And at the end of our conversation, Clay offers some tips on how to harness the power of nostalgia in your own life. Let's get started. There are a couple of stories in your in your book that really struck me that I suppose surprised me that nostalgia is not just related to memories that we cherish. And so the example of, I think there was one with with you maybe mowing the lawn when you were you were a kid, and it wasn't pleasant at the time, but it it has nostalgic connotations. And the other one, maybe more drastic, is of this group of uh folks you interviewed in Southampton, I think, who lived through the Second World War, which which sounds like it would have been a horrible experience. Yeah. What is nostalgia feature in both these kinds of negative experiences?

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Those are good examples of like how meaning is different than positive affect or you know, just positive emotions. One of the things that I really enjoyed about, so I spent a couple of years at the University of Southampton after finishing graduate school, because there was a research team there. This is in the UK, just south of London. So there's a research team there that was also starting to do some work on nostalgia, which is what I was doing in grad school. We learned about each other and they said, hey, when you finish your PhD, come over for a little while and like we'll collaborate. And one of the things that was neat there is Southampton is a city on the southern coast of England that 90% of was destroyed during World War II bombings. And at the time when I was over there, which was the early 2000s, you know, there were older British adults that remember those experiences from their from their childhood. We were going around door to door to collect, you know, you know, to get community data, knocking on doors and asking people, you know, to fill out like these nostalgic questionnaires for us. And one of the things we were doing is having them share a nostalgic memory with us, you know, and we'd have them write it or we'd record it. You know, what's neat about doing research with older people is they tend to be good research participants. They're happy to share their, you know, um share their experiences with you. And so they often give very, very rich data. Um, and what surprised us, or I guess I should say what surprised me was the number of people who shared a memory that we didn't ask them to think about any particular, we just said, you tell us, like, give us a memory that makes you this, you know, we we you know, we give them a definition of nostalgia. Nostalgia is defined as a sentimental or wistful longing for the past. Please spend a few minutes writing down a memory that makes you feel nostalgic. And what surprised me is the number of people that talked about time, the the time during the war, during World War II. And there was a lot of tragedy in these narratives. They weren't sugarcoating it, they weren't saying this was an awesome time or this was a fun time. They were saying it was a very difficult time, it was a tragic time. Families were separate, separated, fathers were sent over to um to continent to fight war. Um, kids were separated from their mothers or sent with their grandparents out to the country. Um, so there was all this. But what they the reason they shared these stories is in those stories was an appreciation for how events like that remind you of like what's important in life, like family, togetherness, like being part of something, and all the sort of things we get distracted by and get worked up about. Um you know, that kind of fades away when things get get bleak like that. And so, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of nostalgic memories like that, even then that aren't as dramatic as like being going through a war where your city's being bombed, um, but that are just you know difficult times from you that you felt like have have created your character, have you know, cultivated who you are, that have made you grow personally, that have given you a like an appreciation for life. So I think it's as meaningful. Like these are like significant memories. Now, like you know, nostalgia doesn't mean every nostalgic memory is like that. Some nostalgic memories are hey, me and my buddies went on, you know, went on a road trip. Um, like anything, there can be like a there's like an intent, you know, there's like a continuum of some memories are just kind of like lighthearted fun, and some are very, very deep. But when you ask people to share a nostalgic memory with you, they often kind of go to something that's really really important, a cultural rite of passage, an important family event, something that really changed the course of their life, or uh or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Right, right, right. I suppose it was with your example of uh mowing the lawn when you were a kid with your dad, was would would that be sort of um maybe a less intense version of something where at the time it was not pleasant, but yeah, to go back to that memory.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Absolutely, yeah. So my dad used to make me go like um mow lawns, and and um and I hated it. Like I was just like, this is this is this is this isn't great. And I remember having always trying to wash that gasoline smell off of my hands. Um and just like I just smelled that gasoline all the time. And it's weird because I didn't, it was very aversive. And now if I get that like even that little hint of like gasoline smell, like it may it triggers the nostalgia, like and and you know, smell is a powerful sensory input, like that that kind of triggers nostalgia. Typically, it's things we want to smell, like food. Yes, yeah, um but things that are attached to memories, and the reason I think that kind of stands out as a as a uh as a nostalgic memory is again, I only like came to that, like I only started thinking of that as a nostalgic memory after my dad died. And I think what it was is I was like looking for experiences I had that like my dad taught me something. He was trying to teach me work, you know, as a kid, you know, I a lot of teenagers don't work now, um, actually. Um, but when I, you know, starting from like 12 or 13, I had a paper out, my dad made me mow lawns. I mean, he was very much like, this is how you learn like to grow up and be a man. It's like you have to work and you had to be responsible and you know, save. And like, you know, so he was trying to teach me all this stuff, like financial responsibility, work ethic. And so at the time I was like, this is you know, I don't like, you know, it's summer, I'm out of school, I don't want being dragged out of bed early in the morning to go mowans. But then I looked back on it and I was like, yeah, that was really good. That contributed to sort of my work ethic today. So I think that's where you know, that's that example of yes, it was kind of a negative memory, but it was a valuable one, it helped me, and now I can kind of look back and revisit that memory with a new appreciation for yeah, not as traumatic as you know being surviving a war or anything like that, but you know, these little life experiences that we think, even if they are unpleasant or difficult, that we think somehow helped us define our sense of self.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah, um, thank you. I mean, one of the things I've been thinking about, and off reading your book too, is is the relationship between nostalgia and beauty, um, especially in it when it in in relation to memory. So when I, you know, um the past year I've been organizing a bunch of events, uh, dinners and and other kinds of conversations, and and often we we start with a question like the one I posed to you, and people share their experiences of experiences of beauty from their you know from their past. And I wonder if if would you say that all of those encounters with beauty from our past are nostalgic memories? Because there is an affective component to it. You're you're recalling something that that was um varies on some spectrum of you know being moderately pleasant to intensely sort of awe-provo-provoking, but but often uh connects to some uh experience of moral beauty, maybe maybe a grandparent or someone who you recall fondly, uh some yearning for an experience of being protected, of of of you know of peace, etc. Would all of those memories of beauty be nostalgic? Or how would you how would you see that?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, it's a good question. I I think that that that makes sense, and you know, another way of framing it might be nostalgia is about like what makes life beautiful, right? Like this, you know, our nostalgic memories are part of what makes life beautiful. And so we have a bunch of, as I noted, we have a bunch of mundane memories that are you, you know, it's not like these are useless memories. Like it's it's good to know, it's good, for instance, that I know how to drive to the grocery store and like what aisle things are on. It's like you know, you don't want it's good to have habituate, right? And to and to be able to know to have that kind of level of memory, but that's not what really enriches life and adds that that layer of color to life. And I think so, yeah, I think nostalgia memories are beautiful memories. I think that's a good way.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

That's a good way to say it. Yeah, yeah. One of the things I was struck by in your book, uh, work, I mean, a couple of findings. One, you you you I think you note that 80% of people weekly seem to experience nostalgia. Um, but also I think you had noted that people turn um to to to nostalgia, nostalgic memories when they experience negative challenges to their sense of self-continuity. And I wonder if there's any relationship. I mean, do you do you do you do you feel that, or do you do you see in your research at all that there's any kind of increase? Are people becoming more nostalgic today? Are people struggling more with their sense of continuity? Is that like what is provoking this this turn to nostalgia? Is it just a normal human operation that would that would sort of you would expect to find this distribution at all times and places, or is there something about our time today that that is driving people a bit more in this direction?

SPEAKER_00 10:09

I I think I think both are both are true. For one, it is a normal part of the human experience, and you know, so you can think of nostalgia as actually having like two classes of triggers, and so um a lot of triggers are like what we just call sensory input. So you hear that old song, um, you see an advertisement. I mean, this is what a lot of um marketing, like nostalgic marketing is about. It's like directly triggering like nostalgic feelings. And so just because we live in a world like full of these types of experiences, especially now, people spend a lot of time online, and it's a lot easier um to access nostalgic content and to promote nostalgic content that um the world does seem to be increasingly populated with nostalgic material, which has the input effect of maybe increasing nostalgia. But in addition to those kinds of triggers, um there's also what we call internal psychological triggers, and those tend to be um experiences of dissatisfaction or distress. So anxiety, loneliness, a lack of meaning, a sense of discontinuity, um, financial insecurity, anything that's going on in your life that's like distressing to you tends to increase nostalgia. So, to to your question, it is true that in times of like you know, broad-scale distress, like during the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, nostalgia at the society level increases. So, for instance, in Spotify, during the pandemic, people were listening to more music in general, but they were especially listening to nostal older music, to nostalgic music. So nostalgia does increase as a function of when society is going through difficult times. So, not surprisingly, I do think we are in a time period where there's a great amount of nostalgia because you know there's so much um political polarization, there's so much worry about artificial intelligence, social media, you know, how the world is changing. It seems like the faster the world changes, the more we have that discontinuity, the more we feel disconnected for unstable in some way from who we are and how we've tried to build our lives, which inspires us to like pull from the past and be like, no, okay, I can stabilize myself, I can find some sense of continuity. So I do think it's true that um in times that are you know perhaps more disruptive, you might say, nostalgia increases. But because our personal life, but you know, at the at the more granular level, everyone's personal lives are going at various points in time are going to different amounts of discontinuity. So in our research, we found, for instance, the more people are experiencing things like job loss, the loss of a loved one, relationship separation, or anything like that in their own lives, nostalgia increases, which helps explain why nostalgia sometimes fluctuates as a function of age. So there are periods, you know, people go through different things at different times, of course, but in general, you could say there are periods in development, like the transition from childhood to adulthood, that are disruptive. You're you're going away to university, you're moving out of your family home, you're starting or you know, starting a job, like a vocation, you're doing something new where you're not just a kid in your parents' house anymore. Nostalgia tends to go up in during that period because you're going through a new experience, and it's like you're pulling from the past as a way to stabilize yourself and to you know to find like that that confidence and motivation. Perhaps then you get things sort of figured out, you figure out your career, you you partner up, you kind of move through this period of stability, um, and then nostalgia seems to settle down, and then it starts to go back up again, probably in your like 40s and so, where it's like your kids are getting older, you're starting to think about like them, you know, them going away, empty nesting, you're making you're going starting to go through midlife. Like if you're me, your vision's getting worse, you're losing your hair, like you're your life's changing again. And so this is another period of like disruption, and you're like, you know, you're you're turning to the past for comfort. And of course, as you get older, you start to lose loved ones and so forth. Again, any of these things can happen at any point in your life, but we we do see like a small but you know, but significant quadratic effect of lifetime nostalgia, where it goes up kind of in young adulthood, kind of settles a little and then starts to go back up as you get older. That's important because if you just look at a simple correlation, you don't really see a lot. The effect of nostalgia in age is fairly small. Um and I think it's because it's not linear. Right. And which again, there's a lot of variability within that, of course. Um, because at any point in time, you can have a major life can throw you a big, a big challenge and a big hurdle, which might trigger increased nostalgia for you personally. Um, but when you scale out to like this, you know, across the lifespan and across societies, you can kind of see these broader trends of nostalgia, you know, going up or down as a function of you know, chaos, distress, uncertainty versus stability and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like around the world, you know, a lot of uh populist movements, and we're seeing you know here in the US as well, would sort of make America great again, but you know, in other countries as well, um, seem to be hearkening back to uh a kind of almost like a golden era where where things were better. Um do you do you think that that that the world is somehow getting maybe more is this the reflection of some kind of you know great growing anxiety around the world, uh you know, not not just in the US, but what's happening that's that's driving movements that seem to to want to to I guess provoke a sense of nostalgia or or that might be responding to a growing sense of nostalgia uh around the world. What's happening there?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, so to be clear, like uh, you know, I'm sure there's a lot of causes for the these types of trends, and I'm not a you know, I'm not a political scientist. I'm sure there's all sorts of other things going on. But I do think that that where where the nostalgia component comes in, where the psychological bulk component comes in, is yes, you're seeing a lot of societal change and disruption, and that's triggering this sense of like who are we? Like the desire to like solidify some sort of societal or national identity of some you know, some collective sense of self and and and looking backwards. Um, and this is you know, the tricky the tricky part about this type of nostalgia is it's not always healthy and it can be manipulated in ways. Um so for instance, and you know, I'm not saying politicians are like reading the our research on nostalgia, but notice how there's some it seems like there's an implicit understanding of of this relationship between this distress and nostalgia, because politicians don't say, don't come out and say, oh, look how awesome everything is right now. You should, you know, we should go back to the way things were. They try to provoke a sense of anxiety or fear, right? They tell you how you know the world's falling apart. And and so they manipulate it in that way. Even if things are going relatively well, like generally, the goal is to be like, no, things aren't, you know, things aren't going well. But for me, um, and then it's like they understand that like, well, things aren't going well. How do we make them better? Well, we look to the past. And there is, I mean, there is some wisdom there. Like, I don't, you know, I'm not dismissing that, but a lot of times it's done in a sort of prejudiced or unproductive, unproductive way. And it's not just like the the the right-wing populace. It's like you see this on the left too. You see, like in the environmentalist movement, you s you you see kind of this glamorizing of like a past before industrialization. And of course, that wasn't, you know, there was mass starvation and disease and all sorts of you know, sorts of problems, but you you know, you you see this on both on both sides. Like it's not just a purely right-wing thing. You you you see it in a lot of kind of left-wing movements too. But again, the idea behind it, if you want to, if instead of, you know, well, the way I try to approach it is instead of like just criticizing it, you know, I try to understand, well, what are you know, maybe they're misguided, but there's something going on here. And I think there is that, you know, they're identifying, you know, challenges, and maybe some of these are exaggerated, but they're identifying real problems. Like they're saying, oh, they're you know, we are concerned about climate change. We are concerned about you know, like um growing like violence, or you know, we are concerned about these different challenges, we are concerned about you know the potential for people to lose jobs to machines.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

And again, these aren't always rational fears. Um, a lot of times they are, or a lot of times they you know, it's a combination of there's something there, but then you know they exaggerate. Um, but then I think what you can what what's useful is to then say, okay, they're looking for something, they're looking for some guidance. And as I noted before, you know, it's not the case that people really want to go back to the past. What they want is certain elements from the past to influence how we design the future. We're moving forward no matter what. Like we don't actually have time machines, we can't go back. Like we're we're moving forward in time. That's the only direction we can go. And so what we're saying is the world I want tomorrow, maybe there's something I can borrow from this. And sometimes it's not always like I said, sometimes it's not always healthy. But I think even in even in contexts where we might not like historical nostalgia, it's better to recognize that this is a real thing, and then how can you help shape it in a more productive way? Like, you know, I've done a lot of work at the uh at the Artsbridge Institute and the Human Flourishing Lab on the concept of patriotism. Now, a lot of people you talk about patriotism and they get a little bit weird. They're like, oh, that's some like far-right thing. It's like, no, there's a lot of good evidence in social psychology that's actually really important for people to feel like they're part of a group that's larger than themselves. It promotes cooperation, it promotes collaboration, it allows it helps people, you know, sacrifice like kind of hedonic like goals to do something big, you know, to participate in something bigger than themselves, it increases social trust. There's lots of good reasons to support a healthy form of patriotism around a shared, you know, I it's some kind of shared national identity. And you can do that in a non-prejudicial way, you can do that in a very productive, healthy way that's not xenophobic, that's not prejudicial. Um, and I so I think there are ways to recognize, no, people want to be, you know, people want to feel like they're part of a country and they're proud of their country and they belong to something and they're working towards something. Not to mock or dismiss that to be no, that's important, but how do we avoid where this goes off the rails, or how do we avoid where this becomes prejudicial or harmful in some way? And so um, I think that's that's like an important way of like uh addressing some of these concerns that people have about that like you know, looking back the past is better.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah, yeah. It also seems like it's w it's worth interrogating the kinds of things we're nostalgic about, right? And because I think it's it's hard to not smuggle it in. I mean, I'm even thinking of you know, Marx's writings have they're very nostalgic in many ways, and so all these calls for revolution are embedded in some kind of nostalgia for a you know a primitive state of nature that is a kind of fiction, right? And and I think scrutinizing some of that can can be really helpful to just sort of think about well, is this the kind of future that's realistic or or possible or or worth desiring? I'm curious though as to as to what you see as the potential for nostalgia to uh to help us innovate. So is it is it a driver of innovation then?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

I think so if you when I was working on that book, you know I was talking to different artists, filmmakers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and basically all of them have a nostalgic story of what's made them passionate about what they're doing. You know so you can talk to a filmmaker and they'll talk about the movies that they saw as a kid and that movie that really is like, I want to do this. And so this at one basic level I think nostalgia fuels that passion, that desire to do something. And so that in itself is important. But then if you look at what the content on what they're doing, look at somebody who's trying to make like really cutting edge music, trying to do something really different. And you know, watch interviews with them and they'll talk about well I'm trying to do this, but I grew up listening to this and I wanted to give a nod to the you know I work in these kind of beats or do this kind of you know so you'll see people mixing genres from the past adding a modern element to it sampling things like coming up with a new version of it. You see this in fashion right um you know a lot of a lot of fashion is about like using like new materials but then doing like a some kind of not some kind of cut or something that's a nod to the past. So I think in the creative space the creative spaces where people are trying to do the freshest stuff are extremely nostalgic if you look if you look at car designs you know they're trying to make them as state of the art as possible because people want new technology they want fuel efficiency they want electric vehicles they want everything like hyper connected on there but it's like there's some kind of aesthetic or something that that that they that they're a retro aesthetic or something that they like or there's some kind of inspiration behind it. So I think um nostalgia is definitely a big part of both the like motivational like the passion kind of component of innovation and also in terms of getting getting ideas you know like taking um you know some of the most innovative ideas are the ones where they've really figured out something that's been done before and then put a new spin on it taking a new giving it a new direction that no one else thought of taking it in. And so I think that's very much part of innovation.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Yeah yeah yeah great great I wanted to that's really it for the questions I had for you but I I'm curious if if you might have any tips or recommendations for our listeners about how to harness the positive powers of nostalgia and um perhaps also anticipate some of its negative potential right uh because because it seems like like it does have the power to to to both draw us away from others or draw us simply to the past but also draw us into into social connection and and and towards um towards innovation towards a healthier self-concept and so on. So so what what might be ways in which people could could leverage its potential.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah yeah I think what I what I call intentional nostalgia is you know we can all get benefits from just a very like passive nostalgia we you know you don't have to be like real deep about it like you know people find it nice just to listen to old music it pumps them up to you know to to go to the gym um but intentional nostalgia is what I describe as really trying to like revisit a memory the the more engaging you can make it the better so if you want to journal or or do some type of create creative activity that allows you to really like set with the memory and reflect on it and and then ask you know and then ask yourself like what why is this why is this memory nostalgic to me? Why why do I feel this way about this memory what can I what challenges or issues am I going through today that there's that this can help me with and why so I think that really like that deeper um inspection and then it can help you it can also you know help prevent it going in a in a bad in in a bad direction because I think sometimes if you just do a gloss kind of a really like glossy version of uh of nostalgic oh things are so much better when you know before all of this it's like now if you sit there for a minute and you really dig into it you'll be like oh okay like this is you know this is why it wasn't necessarily all better um but then you can say well but what is it like what was special about the time and does that have any relevance for today I think it's especially helpful an especially helpful way to really get that more intentionality of it is to do it socially I mean you know to conversationally to talk to people that you shared those memories with. It's great to sit around and talk about old memories and then you can kind of you know you can kind of push each other a little bit in ways to like really unearth like the you know something that you maybe didn't you remember about that somebody else might say actually you know you I guess you forgot about this part that wasn't so great or do you really you know you wouldn't give up what you have now for that so I think that kind of um that conversational nostalgia um can be can be really helpful. But all that being said I think most of the time the way we interact with nostalgia isn't this sort of deep reflection but we just like passively make contact with it. We get that photograph on our desk of our favorite vacation or even we like you know Les I brought it before like we create that playlist on our Spotify that we like to have at the gym because it pumps us up our minds makes us feel youthful and young again. Those things are oftentimes those things are treated as like they're kind of like pointless or they're just silly fun. I think those you know those things are actually pretty useful for helping kind of energize us and inspire us. So it can be really really good to do a deeper dive into nostalgia but it's also perfectly fine and healthy and and productive just to kind of populate your your life with a little bit of nostalgia here and there.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

I don't know if you have noticed but behind me I have this arcade I wanna I was going to ask you about yeah this is definitely it yeah and it's a bit more so so so our listeners may not be able to to they'd have to tune in uh to to the to the youtube video but but maybe you could you could just describe a little bit of what what's what the the arcade machine is absolutely so I've got this old arcade machine in my office in the background that you can see on the camera if you watch the video and it's a robe it's it's a Robotron it's a game it's an old game it's like probably no one's heard of it um but I have a friend who goes around and buys old arcades that are like banged up not working anymore and then he rehabilitates them and I asked him why do you do this and he said because these were things that brought people a lot of you know a lot of joy and then they're dead like they're just being cast aside and I want to bring them back.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Like I want to you know I I think there's still more joy to be had so I think that in itself is kind of a cool thing and then he offered to do this for me and like a like a good nostalgia what it is is it's got the old cabinet and the old art and everything but it's actually a PC in there with a modern LCD screen and there's hundreds of games on this. So I think that's a good example of of like how to make nostalgia like more forward looking. It's just like yeah it's got the retro aesthetic and the controls and you know and it it's kind of fun it reminds me of arcades from back in the 80s um but it's actually like got a modern PC in it and the you know I'm kind of surprised like in some ways like my my wife let me drag that into the house and put that in my office. But I wanted to have some art you know in my home office and I was like well why not have Livy why not have like a more interactive art right so yeah I don't even really play the thing that much I turn it on every day when I'm working it's just in the background it kind of cycles through different backgrounds of games I kind of just see it you know occasionally look at it and it's just a nice little like aesthetic flair that um I find you know someone who does a lot of work in nostalgia I find useful and it's not because an arcade machine itself is personally meaningful but it reminds me of yeah I used to go I used to walk down to the convenience store with my buddies and we'd play put quarters in the arcade and we'd play and we'd hang out. So even nostalgic it turns out in our research we find even nostalgic objects consumer products people that things that people tend to think of as superficial or like materialistic the reason we're so nostalgic for them isn't for them themselves it's because they're symbolic reminders of of who we spent that time with um and so or you know so like sports memorabilia things like that they remind the the their cues for what's really about relationships I think so even the things that seem like they're the most consumeristic or materialistic often have a deeper story that involves who you engage that activity with.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

Yeah yeah it seems like then you know maybe this is my final question is that there seems to be almost a redemptive quality to to nostalgia and to nostalgic objects do do do you see nostalgia as a spiritual resource perhaps?

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yes and in fact there's some re this isn't my research but there's some research that people who are higher in spirituality are higher in dispositional nostalgia. So all of us are nostalgic at some level as you noted before people tend to be nostalgic multiple times a week in fact but that does like a lot just like everyone has a need to belong but some people are way more social than others nostalgia's like that there is an individual difference component of nostalgia that we refer to as nostalgia proneness there's a number of things that it's correlated with um that make sense in terms of sociality because nostalgia is so you know so social um but one of these is spirituality so people who are more spiritual tend to be more um tend to be more nostalgic but but yeah broadly speaking I think nostalgia because so much of it is about um even the example provided of like an ongoing relationship with with the deceased like there's so many things about um cherished memories that are are transcendent in some ways um that I think there's a very very spiritual component to them even for people who would maybe not describe it that would don't see themselves as very spiritual maybe they wouldn't describe it that way I think it captures some of those same psychological functions. And in addition to that if you think about nostalgia at a more collective level a lot of the religious practices and traditions and rites of passage and um rituals have this like have this like historical nostalgic component that gives us some sense of transcendence like that I'm part of something that was here before me. I'm getting plugged into it I'm learning about it I'm carrying it forward these traditions they will continue when I'm gone and there's something very powerful about self-continuity that's not just I want some stable sense of self in my own life but this broader collective continuity that I want to feel like I'm part of something that's was here before me and that will be here after me. And so yeah I would definitely say that um spirit the spiritual dimension of nostalgia is is very much there. And also I would say very under underappreciated understudied undervalued minus like a few studies here and there like I mentioned looking at it as a disposition that's correlated with with with nostalgia great clear this has been super insightful I've learned a lot um anything else you want to add before we before we close um no I don't think so I I think we kind of hit the high points you had great questions and yeah like I always tell people like you know it took me I don't know 15 you know I've been studying nostalgia for not quite 25 years but close um we're approaching that it probably took me 15 years before I fully realized that nostalgia is I think really a future oriented experience. Yeah it's about the past it's about memories um but really it's about it's about how we go forward in our life and so that kind of flipped the switch in me uh if that that's why I called the book Pass Forward that flipped the switch in my thinking from seeing nostalgia as like a defense mechanism or coping resource that's that's that's healthy for us to seeing it as more than that as no like it's a source of inspiration it's a source of guidance it's a source of creative energy and motivation. And so when people tell you oh nostalgia is is like getting stuck in the past or you know looking backwards it's like no nostalgia is about moving forward and you want to do that when you want to move forward you don't want to just do it aimlessly right you don't want to just be random right you want to move forward with intention and with purpose. And nostalgia is a treasure chest of cherished memories that can help you do that.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yeah fantastic the book is really great I recommend it uh and and I loved your exercises too which which uh I think can guide people to to some important self-reflection on uh nostalgic experiences in their lives and so we'll put a link in uh in the show notes um any anywhere else you want us to direct uh listeners and viewers to so they can learn more about your work um I you know sorry I recently started I joined the Substack um world and so I have a weekly newsletter called Flourishing Friday um so that you can find and you know I I don't just talk about nostalgia talk about uh lots of things related to progress the psychology of progress existential psychology um and nostalgia and things like that um otherwise like all you can find all this uh my website's just clay rutledge.com and um my employer is Archbridge Institute where I do a lot of my research and you know you can find that at YumoFlourishinglab.org. Great all right we'll throw a bunch of those links into the show notes. Thanks Clay this has been fantastic. Thank you so much Brandon it's it's been a joy. All right folks that's a wrap for this episode. If you enjoyed the episode please share it with someone who would find it of interest. Also please subscribe and leave us a review if you haven't already thanks and see you next time