Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film Inception tells the story of Dom Cobb, a con artist turned dream thief who is dogged by guilt from his wife’s tragic death. It’s only when he lets go of his obsession with keeping his wife alive via his memories of her and chooses to embrace real life that he’s able to achieve what he’s been chasing throughout the film — the chance to see his children’s faces again.
Cobb’s desire for things to be the way they once were – a desire that can never be fulfilled – holds him back from living fully in the present. He tries to bring back his old life by returning again and again to a few carefully curated moments from his time with his wife, but in the end, he realizes that his dream version of his wife is only a hollow shell of her true self.
He can’t go back to the way things used to be. But once he lets go of his obsession with the past, he can move forward and try to build a better life, for himself and for his children.
In a way, Cobb’s dilemma is very similar to that which the conservative movement faces today. Many conservatives, especially those of older generations, long for the days when Americans celebrated traditional values and family came first. Baby boomers might look to the 1950s, the decade of post-war prosperity and happy suburban family life. Members of Gen X point to the Reagan Revolution and the conservative counterculture of the 1980s. Millennials recall the national unity following the tragedies of 9/11. If only we could go back, they say.
The problem with this mindset lies in the difference between nostalgia and tradition. Merriam-Webster defines nostalgia as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Tradition, on the other hand, is “an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior.”
Nostalgia paralyzes, while tradition pushes forward. Nostalgia is passive. Tradition leads to action.
Those who suffer from nostalgia are constantly looking back, regretting lost moments and desiring to return to them. Tradition considers the past, but it does so by considering how it should affect the future, seeking a new generation who will take up the torch and in turn pass it down to their own children.
Without action, tradition will die out.
Nostalgia is individualistic, while tradition is inherently communal. Nostalgia is concerned with the experience of the individual, as a person looks back on a period or event in their own life that they wish they could return to. Because nostalgia is a feeling, no two people will ever experience it in the exact same way, even if they are looking back at the same thing.
Tradition, on the other hand, requires the participation of at least two parties: one to teach and pass along the tradition and one to take it up and carry it on. Without a younger generation that can learn the ways of their elders and in turn pass these ways down to their own children, the traditions of the past will be lost.
Another distinction between nostalgia and tradition lies in what they seek to preserve or bring back. Nostalgia is, at its worst, often little more than a desire for aesthetic transplantation. Conservatives who suffer from nostalgia seem to believe that if we merely restore the external trappings of bygone eras, the principles that guided those externals will automatically resurface.
The tradwife trend on social media is a notable example of this sort of aesthetic transplanting. Women caught up in the movement become so focused on externals like wearing floral dresses or making their own sourdough bread that they lose sight of the biblical principles that are at play in traditional roles for men and women in the home.
If we could only get all the women out of the workplace and back into the home again, they believe, American society would flourish again. They fail to understand that without the revival of gospel truths in the hearts of American women, changing their setting will do nothing towards restoring a standard for biblical femininity.
To recreate the externals without the principles that guided them will create only a hollow shell, without real usefulness or meaning.
Ironically, much of the conservative world seems to have forgotten the intrinsic connection between conservatism and tradition. After all, the second of Russell Kirk’s “Ten Conservative Principles” is that “the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.”
Conservatism, at its heart, desires to preserve traditions of order, justice, liberty, and peace, traditions that have been handed down from generation to generation, stretching back for millennia.
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” This idea lies at the heart of this battle between nostalgia and tradition.
Simply restoring the aesthetics of past eras will do nothing to restore America to its heritage. We must rediscover the traditions of our forefathers, traditions forged from the flames of Western civilization and preserved through the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands.
Too many conservatives today have lost sight of this nuance, and this is a costly oversight. If we give nostalgia the place that tradition ought to hold, it will spell the death of conservatism.
We must let go of our obsession with “the way things used to be” just like Cobb had to do to move forward.
Instead, let us hold fast to the guiding principles that have been a part of Western civilization for millennia, seeking to preserve and pass on a legacy by which our children and grandchildren may live, in peace and freedom.
