The Obsession with the Old

I love old songs, old films and old books. They take me to a different time and age and it’s blissful. I love old people too, their stories contain a lot to teach me the lessons of life. But it is always the new way of life that makes my life easy. The new ways definitely are evolved from the old but that by no means imply that I should cling to the old ways to have a quality life. And this is the problem I think that people tend to cling to the old ways and are reluctant to accept the change.

The society gets classified into groups on the basis of different degrees of obsession with the old. The ones who cling with the most zeal and try to impose it on others are the most lethal for the development of a society. The understanding of genders was different centuries ago than now. And the present understanding of genders is yet to replace the age-old thoughts. Similar is the case with many aspects of lives. The forceful detrimental resistance to change in understanding also flourishes equally because of the obsession with the old.

Habits evolve with time for the betterment of lives. People used many different methods to clean their teeth in the past but now most of the people use toothbrush and paste and this new method is better. But you can easily find people who believe the propaganda of old-obsessed people that diseases of teeth have increased after the invention of toothbrush! This propaganda does no good to anybody still it propagates because it gives solace to the minds of those old-obsessed people. Most of the people in villages (and many of towns and cities) of South Asia falsely believe that average life expectancy of people is decreasing day by day and that people used to live longer in the old times. Even the educated ones believe this, actually they are the ones to propagate this lie for the sake of old times!

The illustrations above are to reflect the obsession of the old. The obsessions like these do nothing positive but make life harder. And to make life harder, there are even organizations to convince people not to just love the old but to be obsessed with the old and to demand with the government the ossification of these obsessions as laws to facilitate the imposition of their views uselessly on other people. Apart from these, scientific institutions are also shamelessly challenged. It is quite funny to see astronomy being challenged by charlatans called astrologers. Even the sensitive art and science of medicine is constantly questioned by phony age old systems of medicine now considered pseudoscience and the government also supports these obsessions in the name of original culture. After all, the thoughts of the government reflect the thoughts of a nation in a democracy.