We are Nostalgic for a Past That Never Existed
- augustinewasef
- Aug 4
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 6
By Augustine Wasef
Objects have a sanctified quality, unlike thoughts which are abstract, or memories which appear as rock solid but instead are flawed. Objects are anchors for our consciousness.
The digital world grants the user the power to create almost anything they can imagine, see goat simulator. With this power we gradually lose our touch with reality. An infinite supply of free universes means our own becomes increasingly worthless. Without a tether to earth we become bedouins travelling the enormous reaches of our imagination, while unknowingly homeless.
This shift in our mental condition manifests itself in another form - nostalgia - think Oasis and vinyl returning from the recesses of the past.
But nostalgia isn’t the answer, searching the endless realm of our prior lives won’t propel us forward. In fact, there is a documented psychological effect where the past appears better than it actually was. That is an intoxicating and dangerous proposition for a society already grappling with a sense of not belonging.
The escape isn’t going to be easy. We are so ingrained in the digital world that it can easily become our dominant reality. It can be far more than a source of entertainment, it becomes the center of our pleasure and pain. It houses our jobs and our livelihood. You are reading this article through a screen and chances are you barely noticed. The fact that a print publication can feel overly analog is concerning, once the physical world becomes overly tactile and uncreative, we stop speaking through the lens of a person and start speaking through the lens of an addict.
But we continue to relentlessly digitize the world, this website is written digitally for example. The United States is releasing digital passports, to name another. With each of these comparatively small shifts our lives become more aligned to the axis of the digital world.
We are losing grip on reality and we know what to do.
Thank you for choosing Inflection Magazine and human authorship.
In “We Are Nostalgic for a Past That Never Existed,” Augustine Wasef attempts to explore the psychological and cultural consequences of digital immersion, but the article ultimately collapses under the weight of its own abstraction. While the premise—that nostalgia and digital escapism may distort our perception of reality—is compelling, the execution is muddled, pretentious, and structurally incoherent.
The article opens with a poetic claim: “Objects have a sanctified quality… anchors for our consciousness.” This metaphor sets the tone for a piece that leans heavily on philosophical musings but fails to ground its ideas in clear logic or evidence. Wasef’s argument meanders from vinyl records to digital passports, invoking Oasis and goat simulator with equal gravity. The lack of a coherent…
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Six seven
To logically argue the the intrinsic morality of technology is simply an insult to one's self. This is because to argue this is to go against the very existence of said technology. This is because through any lens of logic any invention is simply at the mercy of the will of the inventor; and to any inventor technology is meant as a means of furthering humanity. This means that technology with the goal of what could only be described as the serving of humanity, is just an embodiment of the pitfalls of human nature. This further extends the point that any attempt at the moralization of technology is futile and can only be treated as a moralization of the utterance…