Koheles: On Romanticizing the Past

Artwork: Time Walk, by Chris Rahn

Koheles: On Romanticizing the Past

There's a certain category of Facebook posts that I encounter from time to time. Sometimes these posts contain reminiscences about the past. Sometimes they voice criticisms of new fads and trends. Almost all of them feature either an explicit or implicit critique of "kids these days," and almost all of them express their message in a curmudgeonly manner. Here are some examples:

Whenever I see or hear anything like this, I am reminded of a pasuk in Koheles:

אַל תֹּאמַר מֶה הָיָה שֶׁהַיָּמִים הָרִאשֹׁנִים הָיוּ טוֹבִים מֵאֵלֶּה, כִּי לֹא מֵחָכְמָה שָׁאַלְתָּ עַל זֶה:

"Do not say, 'How was it that former times were better than these?' - for you have not asked this out of wisdom" (Koheles 7:10).

The question is: What is the fallacy here? Why is it foolish to ask why the former times were better than these? 

Rav Avraham Farissol [1] offers the following answer:

It is human nature for those who are advanced in age, after they have grown old and have endured the vicissitudes of life, to make this error of degrading the present while lavishing praise and adoration on the past, [saying,] "I remember the olden days." [In truth,] it is possible that the past was worse than this! 

The reason [why these elderly people say this] is because the days of youth are perpetually sweet for all young people, whereas the days of old age are bitter.

Therefore, this chacham (i.e. Shlomo ha'Melech) warned you to avoid this [type of thinking] so that you don't become enfeebled or increase your worry as you grow old, thereby causing you to refrain from embracing that which you need to do. [2]  

He says, "for you have not asked this out of wisdom" because "if you have become wise, you have become wise for yourself" (Mishlei 9:12) to know that time is cyclical, going round and round, causing whatever happens to happen, and there is nothing which is [actually] new - only accidentally new, and new to him but not new to the earlier generations, "for that which was is that which will be" (Koheles 1:9)

According to my understanding, Rav Farissol's answer can be broken down into five points:

(1) The feeling that life was better in the olden days isn't necessarily true; some things might be better, but others might be worse.

(2) This rosy view of the past is not the result of a rigorous, objective investigation and evaluation of the quality of life in each time period; rather, it stems from a psychological tendency which is prevalent in those who are advanced in age.

(3) The cause of this psychological tendency is that the days of youth tend to be sweet, relative to the days of old age; this "sweetness" colors one's perception of the entire time period.

(4) Shlomo ha'Melech warned us about this because this type of thinking can become a stumbling block in old age, insofar as it prevents one from dealing with the present.

(5) Those who understand the way of the world recognize that there is nothing in human society which is actually new; human nature is essentially the same in every era, and the only differences are in the particulars.

To my mind, this last point is the most significant - at least, in the context of Koheles as a whole. If I had to sum up the theme of Koheles in a single sentence, it would be this: Koheles is about the futility of man's quest for yisron. The literal translation of "yisron" is "more" or "advantage" or "gain." Shlomo ha'Melech uses this as a place-holder term that refers to anything a person seeks which he believes will bring him ultimate happiness, remove his suffering, and make his life complete. When a person feels, "All I need is __________ and then I'll be happy!" or "If only I had _________ then all of my problems would be solved!" - that "blank" is yisron. 

Though it may be easy to see through the yisron fantasy in the abstract, the satan is in the details. The yisron fantasy takes on an infinite variety of forms - all of them seductive and insidious. That is why the vast majority of Koheles is devoted to "debunking" a wide variety of common yisron-fantasies. By walking us through many examples of different flavors of yisron, Shlomo ha'Melech hopes we will learn how to spot a yisron-fantasy before we become ensnared by it.

The yisron in our pasuk is especially sneaky, since it manifests itself as a longing for something in the past, rather than as a drive to obtain something in the future. Instead of feeling, "Once I get _________ then life will be great!" the old person feels, "If only I could go back to the way things were, then life would be great!"

It would seem that the key to undoing this particular yisron is to recognize the truth that Koheles states in his introduction:

Whatever has been is what will be, and whatever has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. Sometimes there is something of which one says: "Look, this is new!" - this has already existed in the ages before us. As there is no recollection of the former ones, so too, of the latter ones that are yet to be, there will be no recollection among those of a still later time (Koheles 1:9-11).

Human nature is a constant, and is the source of almost all of our problems. [3] These problems might look different than the problems of past generations, but at their core, they are the same. The trick is to see past the particulars.

Thankfully, the Internet provides no shortage of humorous examples which illustrate this point, and which counteract the examples at the beginning of this post. Here's my favorite one:

One can imagine an elderly fellow attempting to defend the inherent virtue of painted portraits over selfie sticks, but the student of Koheles will see both phenomena as expressions of the same egocentric drive for self-glorification and immortality. The same goes for all other expressions of human nature.

The past, the present, and the future are filled with the same problems. There is nothing new under the sun.

[1] Rav Avraham Farissol, Commentary on Megilas Koheles 7:10
[2] The underlined portion reflects my best attempt at understanding the author's intent. I found his switching between 2nd and 3rd person to be rather confusing.
[3] See Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam / Maimonides) Guide for the Perplexed 3:11-12 for an extensive treatment of this topic.