Prime example of how our brains trick us with the rosy retrospection cognitive bias.
"Everything was better in the past."
It's also closely related to declinism.
A rather dangerous development is the right wing's favourite narrative of "everything is getting worse in our world", which is in fact the opposite of what we measure with most indicators like corruption perception index, GDP per capita, happiness index, etc.
I think cherry picking negative aspects of today's world and compare it to positive aspects of the past draws a very subjective picture of how the past was.
There is of course a classic xkcd about this [0]. I think these help a little with perspective. But my favourite is the rise in syphilis cases leading early psychologists/psychiatrists to think we were in civilizational decline because so many people would go insane from stage 4. You can read a nuanced and thoughfull take on this idea on page 6 of "The Mind Fixers" which is a pretty academic book about the history of psychiatry.
"Everything was better in the past."
It's also closely related to declinism.
A rather dangerous development is the right wing's favourite narrative of "everything is getting worse in our world", which is in fact the opposite of what we measure with most indicators like corruption perception index, GDP per capita, happiness index, etc.
I think cherry picking negative aspects of today's world and compare it to positive aspects of the past draws a very subjective picture of how the past was.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declinism
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robasghar/2020/06/20/things-kee...