Identity - Tartans, Kilts and Zombies

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were,” wrote Marcel Proust, and he was correct.We often see this kind of phenomenon in how many pressing for political reform embrace democracy’s past.  They imagine a simpler time, a kind of small community functionality, where citizens got together at a local assembly hall and determined their future – a Norman Rockwell existence.  This was indeed reality in many rural communities, but in larger cities and in federal jurisdictions decisions were pursued and confirmed at the rarified levels of political backrooms.  By and large, citizens were pawns in an elitist chess match that were merely permitted their own say every few years when there was an election.There never was such a simple time in the majority of our politics, yet we continue to hear of a more activist era – a place to which we must return if we are to find renewal.  Well, that’s just not on because it never was.Reimagining history provides us comfort during troubling times.  I was raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, and there continues to be this enduring rural legend that Scottish clans each had their own tartans way back in the mists of Scottish history, say during the turbulent days of the 13^th century exemplified in the movie Braveheart.  The trouble is that such tartan insignia didn’t come into play until some 500 years later, when Queen Victoria’s popularity caused Scottish cloth manufacturers to design and market numerous tartans to expand their markets.  The same is true of the famous Scottish kilts, which remain a more modern invention.  Yet many take the values represented by such things as tartans, cloth and kilts and push them deeper into the past in the search for more enduring meaning.Often our collective identities suffer from a similar malady.  When England adopted its national anthem in the mid-18^th century there was a sudden rush from other countries to produce their own.  Desiring to capture their own uniqueness in their anthems, many participating countries came up with their own versions.  One difficulty was that they used the melody from England’s theme, despite using different lyrics.  Denmark and Holland were the first to adopt the British melody.  To this day, Switzerland still sings its Ruft die, mein Vaterland to the strains of God Save the King.  Until 1931, when the American Congress adopted a new anthem, US citizens sang My Country ‘Tis of Thee to the same melody.All this history is just another way of reminding us that the path to where we are at present often isn’t what we presumed.  One of the key reasons why nostalgia becomes so prominent in difficult times is because we need to reach back to something that can infuse our spirits with a sense of meaning, of belonging.  Sometimes there is no greater sorrow than reflecting back on what we believed were happier times when we are so troubled.Ironically this is where the origin of the word “nostalgia” comes from.  The Greek word for “return” is nostos, while algos means “suffering.”  Nostalgia – nostos algos -  is the suffering caused by the wish to return to a past when we can’t.  In our yearning for better times we often embellish the historical record to make it fit our longings.Along with the penchant for sentimentalizing the past comes the urge to traumatize the present.  Perhaps this explains our current hankering for anything to do with zombies – they are everywhere.  Clemson University professor Sarah Lauro believes that this is only natural and forms part of a historical pattern that reflects society’s dissatisfaction with the troubled economic and social times we live in.  She’s likely right, when you consider the zombie, mummy and alien movies and books that flourished during the Depression and Second World War.These have been prolonged and difficult days for most citizens around the world, Canadians included.  We continue to hear calls to “return” to our more democratic past, along with the doom and gloom that comes in dealing with the economic and political failures of the present.  Again and again we permit ourselves to be defined by a public mood that looks kindly on the nostalgic past and deprecatingly on the present.  It’s hard to imagine a future when we remain bracketed by these two preoccupations.  Yet imagine we must, for our future depends on it.  “Imagination is the voice of daring,” someone once said and it is now time to rise to our challenges.Democracy was never really our's as citizens to manage, but more of an estate granted to us by overseers.  Those guardians now appear defenseless against those obstacles standing between progress and ourselves.  Alas, the democratic state has fallen into the hands for whom it was initially designed – citizens.  We clamor for it, but are we ready for its rigors, its expectations?  It’s time we ceased permitting ourselves to be defined by tartans and zombies and concentrated instead on the task at hand of rebuilding democracy from the ground up?  But are we up for it?  For if we aren’t, we will forever be identified by nostalgia and fear.