History Is Running Backwards

Imagine seeing a photo of Tehran in the 1970s: miniskirts, swimming pools, a Paris- or L.A.-like vibe. Then, within a few years, the revolution and a return to a world that seems to have sprung from a century earlier. It sounds absurd, but this is not just an Iranian story. In fact, more and more people around the world are choosing, or at least wishing, to go back in time instead of moving forward. Here's the game-changing argument: We've always been told that history only moves forward, toward more freedom, more science, and more rights. But today, the real force driving the world is nostalgia – a longing for roots, for community, for an order that feels old-fashioned. At certain times, history truly does move backward. It's not just a feeling: from religious traditionalists to the new right, from Instagram “tradwives” to authoritarian leaders who are reviving ideas from the past, we are witnessing an organized march back to eras we thought were long gone. The protagonists of this U-turn are not only those who shout “Make America Great Again” but also intellectuals like Oswald Spengler, who, as early as 1918, wrote “The Decline of the West,” arguing that every culture, like an organism, is born, grows, ages, and dies, progressing from a creative and expansive phase to one of bureaucracy, centralization, and, ultimately, decline. Spengler called our civilization “Faustian”: always dissatisfied, always seeking something more, until it is emptied. Then there is René Guénon, the French mystic who viewed modernity as “the age of quantity,” where only numbers matter and the spiritual dimension is lost. Guénon left France, converted to Sufism, and died in Cairo, convinced that true reality was invisible to the eyes of scientists who, as he put it, are like people studying an orchestra without hearing the music. These thinkers inspired controversial figures such as Julius Evola, who was admired by Mussolini but considered too radical even for Fascism: he argued that only a “race of spiritual masters” could lead society. Today, anyone who tells the story of decline cites one or more of them. But this nostalgia isn't just for philosophers. R. R. Reno, editor of the Catholic magazine First Things, explains that after World War II, the West chose “weak truths and weak loves” to avoid new forms of fanaticism, but in doing so, it lost its sense of community: too much openness, he says, has led to the dissolution of social bonds. Paul Kingsnorth, a former radical environmentalist who has become an Orthodox Christian, speaks of the “Machine”: everything in modernity that makes us uprooted, monitored, and reduced to consumers who fill their spiritual void with objects and stimuli. For traditionalists, the solution lies in four things: roots, enchantment, moral order, and protection against the cultural invasion of progressives. Roots mean family, place, and traditions. Enchantment is the spiritual dimension that is missing in a society dominated by rationality. Moral order is the idea that good and evil are not personal opinions but natural laws written by God. Protection is resistance against those who seek to impose a uniform culture from above, through schools, the media, and experts. But beware: the defense of tradition is not just a right-wing phenomenon. Some left-wing environmentalists also share a rejection of technocracy and a desire for authentic communities. And most of the world does not think like the individualistic West: according to the World Values Survey, the vast majority of cultures place family, religion, and authority at the center. The uncomfortable question is: Are traditionalists wrong about everything? The author admits to having a certain sympathy for those who seek a “secure base” made up of bonds, community, and shared meaning. The problem is that nostalgia distorts history: there has never been a time when everyone just wanted to stay put in their own village. Humanity has always lived between two impulses: the desire for security and the desire to explore, to change, to take risks. From Homo erectus leaving Africa to the Polynesians crossing the ocean without compasses, no era has ever been truly static. The real contradiction that no tradition can resolve is precisely this: human societies have always struggled between belonging and autonomy, between rootedness and innovation. Traditionalists speak of a great rupture that supposedly destroyed a golden age, but that rupture never existed. Yet they are right about one fundamental thing: modernity has lost the ability to transmit its own moral knowledge. In our pursuit of autonomy, we have cut ourselves off from the Bible, from the great works of literature, from philosophy, and from the arts—from the humanistic culture that provided meaning and coherence. The result, the author says, is a society that is wealthy and technologically advanced but increasingly fragile, confused, and unable to think critically or to understand what truly matters. There is no need to go back to living in monasteries or to revive the culture of the 1950s, but we do need a humanistic renaissance that puts the essential questions back at the center: why do I exist, what do I owe to others, and how do I build a good life? Christopher Lasch said that the populist tradition “asks the right questions, but offers no pre-packaged answers.” Traditionalists, with all their limitations, remind us that without an ongoing dialogue with our past, the promise of progress remains empty. History does not move only forward or only backward: it advances in a zigzag pattern, between nostalgia and innovation, and the real challenge is not to lose sight of meaning as we move forward. If this historical U-turn has made you see the present through different eyes, on Lara Notes you can select I'm In: it's not a 'like'; it's a way of saying that this insight now belongs to you. And if tomorrow you find yourself talking to someone about how nostalgia is shaping politics and culture, you can tag the conversation with Shared Offline: on Lara Notes, a record remains of those conversations that change you. That was The Atlantic: you've just saved yourself over twenty minutes of reading.