Tuesday, August 2, 2016

A Good Discussion on Nostalgia


I am very interested in the psychology and philosophy of tradition, and the psychology and philosophy of nostalgia-- perhaps I might say the phenomenology of both. I am always looking for anything anybody has written or said on this subject, but it's difficult.

I found this interesting radio discussion, one of whose participants is editor of Nostalgia Digest. They have lots of interesting things to say on the subject.

I also find the actual dynamics of the conversation interesting, for several reasons. I always take a pleasure in listening to two people who are on the same wavelength, and especially two people who know what they are talking about.

I also take pleasure in listening to an open-ended conversation. I'm fascinated by them. In most conversations, at some point one person will respond to a remark in a way that seems a little bit point-missing. There are several possible ways to respond to this. One is to pull the conversation back: "No, that's not really what I meant..." Another is to pretend the response was directly relevant, subtly changing or broadening its meaning, or the meaning of one's original comment. A third possibility is to just go with the change of subject, or of focus. I admire people who can just go with it, and this seems to happen a lot in this conversation.

The effectively infinite open-endedness of life is endlessly fascinating to me, and the effecitvely infinite open-endness of conversation is one facet of that.

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