When we think about nostalgia, what comes to mind is decades nostalgia: 80’s nostalgia, 90’s nostalgia, and now it’s Y2K and 00’s turn on the cycle.

But we often lose sight of the fact nostalgia isn’t just relegated to cheap cash grabs and pop culture junk. We feel nostalgia for things not tied to consumerism. An old man can feel nostalgic for a forest he used to play in as a child, or the distinct smell of his mother’s baking.

Nostalgia is a strange feeling. Most emotions can be tied to some sort of survival utility: anger for getting large and loud when threatened, fear to run away from something, hunger to hint at getting a snack, and of course ever troublesome lust. I suppose you could construe some sort of evolutionary psych explanation about remembering past locations, but as with a most evo-psych it is a rationalizing reach.

We maybe the only creatures who experience nostalgia, since it requires having an advanced intuitive understanding of time. Elephants really never forget, but I don’t know if it would feel nostalgic for say, a ball it used to play with as a calf. Until someone hooks up an Elephant to some sort of device that can see if the same parts of its brains light up when presented with something from its past as we humans do when we hear an 80’s jingle, we can safely rule out our fellow animal kin knowing this feeling.

Nostalgia is simultaneously a joyful, yet melancholic emotion. The memory or reminder of the past has to stand in contrast to the present. And that ratio of joy and melancholy can be altered and amplified by the current present. An old man is going to have two very different experiences of nostalgia if he goes to his childhood forest and either finds it still intact, or bulldozed and replaced by a Burger King. The memory now stands in direct opposition to the present, with the present always the victor.

Or consider hearing that song you loved on the radio back in the day, but with the current fore knowledge of Ditty parties or a second Hitler crash out now hanging over. Only a few years ago you’d be fondly be reminded of your college keaggers, but now it has to coexist with thoughts of baby lotion, or black men chanting the double HH in public.

There is also an inherent psychological regressive quality to nostalgia, especially if the triggers are of feelings and scenes from childhood. Megacorps practically build their whole businesses off this, Disney and Nintendo being the largest examples. During the 2020 BLM riots when big corporate gaming social media accounts were giving their fealty to BLM, Nintendo only did so after massive backlash, because they have a strict corporate policy to never touch politics. They want you regressing back to when you were eight in front of an NES, so you don’t question why you’re preordering a Switch 2. Mixing Mario with George Floyd just jams that signal and may taint sales.

I have a strange example of something not experienced in ones past giving someone nostalgia, that being my father’s love of Blink 182. Despite being a boomer, he loves Blink 182. He told me the lyrics and overall tone of the music took him back to being an angsty teen, just wanting to be left alone in his room. The music YouTuber Coolea joked in his video about Midwest Emo that the music gives him nostalgia of growing up in a small U.S. Midwestern town, despite being British. The bittersweet nature of Midwest Emo probably contributes to this, as that music parallels the bitter sweetness of nostalgia. Returning to our old forest, even if it’s still there you never really step into the same forest twice, and your current self is always in opposition to the past self, ensuring that bittersweet feeling is still there even if the woods was not torn down for McMansions.

I mentioned before the joy-melancholic ratio inherent in nostalgia. I have a personal example of feeling nostalgia so painfully it still makes my eyes well up. I was on a walk a few months ago, and came across a man with a golden retriever puppy. This pup look just liked my boyhood dog, as it had a darker golden toned coat than most more yellowish retrievers, just like my old dog. If he had this dog on a leash, I would have instantly stopped and did the whole “OMG what a cute puppy!” routine and just started petting it. But this guy did not have this dog on a leash and was doing some sort of training with it (probably for hunting). I didn’t want to disturb this guy and interfere with the dog’s training, but I found it really, really hard not to stare. As I walked away, I just look over my shoulder and this dog looked back at me with his big dark eyes, almost staring into my soul. The memory of that puppy looking back at me may as well be a mental Polaroid.

In subcultures that are very nostalgia heavy, like Vaporwave, it’s often joked about “having nostalgia for a past you didn’t experience” both in reference to Vaporwave being a sort of surreal, dreamlike, intentional misremembering of the actual past, or the fact that many people into it weren’t even cognizant or alive during the cultural periods Vaporwave pulls from. I have an example of the opposite, just one last story before wrapping up.

I won’t forget being at a family function many years ago. My sister was there with there then husband and my nephew when he was only two or three. My nephew was dancing around to some pop music and everyone was giddy, watching the wee one bounce around, clapping giving him cheers, except my grandmother. I don’t know how to describe the look on her face. It was almost blank, she wasn’t watching him dance, she was gazing at this child like she was staring into a cavernous abyss, with almost a painful look in her eyes.

For her, this wasn’t a child, or a grandchild, but a great-great grandchild. And she managed to see one, when it’s a blessing to cheat death long enough just to see your own grandchildren. My grandmother was witnessing a future she would never know. She would pass away a few later, as grandparents like to do. The only way I can convey the look on her face is fittingly a classic Vaporwave tune.

So reader, what are somethings that trigger nostalgia for you that aren’t tied to pop culture? While I did touch on cultural nostalgia, and I will be doing a followup addressing your Transformers collection, for now I’d like to focus on those things without direct ties to the S&P500.