I just heard a new word today, from Clarence Page:Ostalgia, sometimes spelled Ostalgie - an odd reluctance to let go of the bad old days. It is a portmanteu of Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia), and the word refers to the nostalgia before for life before the fall of the East Berlin wall.
Never underestimate the capacity of people to hold ridiculous, contradictory, and absurd beliefs. Many people do not like change. There are Russians who are nostalgic about the Stalin years which I find inconceivable.
I have always liked Clarence Page. Though he is liberal in perspective, he often connects with conservatives, too. It was his explanation that made me at least understand Ostalgia.
quote:
Maybe I am over-identifying, but I don't think so. As a black American old enough to remember legal racial segregation in the early 1960s, I understand the emotional losses that come as an unexpected price of freedom.
"Negro-stalgia" could describe the way my generation and our elders sometimes romanticize the black community's "unity" and self-sufficiency before the civil rights revolution dropped the walls of jim-crow segregation and redlining.
"Families stuck together," we recall. "The whole community looked out for one another and made sure that the kids behaved."
We romanticize our oppression not only to relive the glories of our youth but also to own our history, memorialize our struggles and confirm that our lives, even at their worst, meant something.
Understanding German "ostalgia" gave me insight into the hesitation I later encountered among young Cubans in Havana at the prospect of life after the Castros.
Eager as they may be to see an end to the Castro regime, many also worry about the loss of community and the other cultural shocks that inevitably follow if democracy and commercialism are thrust upon them too quickly. Who can blame them? They don't want to lose the good parts of the lives they live now, even as they yearn for the benefits of freedom.
