The "Good Old Days" were for dinosaurs

I don't think I've mentioned this before but I've always been very suspect of nostalgia. Mostly, I hate that "good old days" shit because no matter what era, the good old days mostly means "knuckle dragging barbarism of the recent past."  But I have a very specific hate on for the sort of nostalgia embodied in mindless-completionist-object-worship.

I'm sure you know this conversation:

Book-tool: I can't loan you that book because it's special.
Victim: Ah, it's a favourite story, is it?
Book-tool: Nope. The story was crap, actually.
Victim: Oh, then it must be especially nicely bound or illustrated?
Book-tool: <exasperated> Nooooo. It's a paperback from the local bookstore!
Victim: A special gift?  From a special someone?
Book-tool: <beyond-the-edge-of-sanity angry> NO! It's a BOOOOOOOOOOOOK!

Any of the actual reasons you might want to keep the book, tossed to the winds in favour of worshipping the mere object.

I know, I should quit being a bully because everyone has become some sort of collector at some point in their lives.

Like my friend Marc.  He plays rock n roll bass guitar and he loves him some bass guitars. He has enough now they can be counted by the dozen.  The thing is, Marc doesn't just have them "because BASSES!"  He has them because as a bassist he loves playing the bass or the sound of the bass or because bass players get laid more often.  I see it in his eyes.  How that particular bass looks - that colour, those shapes. How it feels in his hands - the heft of it, the balance or lack of balance. It's the beautiful sounds such a shit looking instrument can make. Or how such a beautiful piece of craftsmanship can sound like a dog barking in a metal trashcan.

To keep a thing without merit or relevance is the road to an early old age. It's living in the past and not moving onward. Like generations before us we've watched new generations rise.  Like generations before us we've ridiculed their newness, their innovations and their fresh demands for justice on issues for which we took to the street.  Like generations before us we are using the past to beat down new generations with our meaningless nostalgia, leading them to believe nothing will ever be as good as back then, they'll never be as tough and hardy as we were back then, and like all the generations before them they are consigned to a future where the lessons of the past are never learned and we're destined to cling to the Good Old Days.

The past decade or so has seen wicked-fast and magical changes unprecedented in human history.  It's been a time where either the best or the worst is yet to come. Whatever is left for me in those ahead-times, I don't want to miss it, pining for the "knuckle dragging barbarism of the recent past."

So, I've been purging all winter like a Spartan. I've been sifting through everything trying to attach each item to a treasured memory.  If that can't be done then it is a mere object whose clutter is in the way of experiencing true memories captured by objects of true meaning.

If you are honest with yourself and committed to the purge I think you can be surprised at how much junk is pressing in on your from all sides.  It's like two days after you host the big party and you have finally got through all those dishes.  You look around the cleared off counters and suddenly the kitchen looks three times bigger and you feel you could do *anything* there and it would be so fucking fantastic!  It's a great example of how physical and mental clutter is so tightly intertwined.

Although less junk also means more room to acquire new junk, I'm building the sort of filters that will greatly reduce the mindless-completionist-object-worship in my life.

Thus, the stage is set to bury the old and out-dated and to safely pasture the new ideas of new generations.  I'd rather ride that horse into the ahead-times always learning, always seeking. I'd rather my third act not be a long, quiet, lonely descent into darkness as taken by that plastic bag they recently found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.