Anachronistic Displacement

[Jay]

"...a psychological condition referring to an obsessive or dysfunctional belief or claim that a person "belongs" or should properly exist in another time period, and are thus unable to deal with ordinary factors in the everyday world. Senior citizens in particular can often experience feelings of anachronistic displacement if they feel the modern world has evolved to the point where they no longer "fit in" or understand their surroundings"

This is pretty much all of us here at the lounge, right? I didn't think there was a name for it until now.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

... and are thus unable to deal with ordinary factors in the everyday world.

I take exception to the "thus".

.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

We're not all disfunctional are we?!
Great,...now I have to go back to my doctor and get different meds,...:eusa_doh:

 

[Lincsong]

I fit into my surroundings. It's understanding them that I find difficult.

 

[Sefton]

" Senior citizens in particular can often experience feelings of anachronistic displacement if they feel the modern world has evolved to the point where they no longer "fit in" or understand their surroundings".

They left the de- off of evolved.

 

[Harp]

ADL

The Anachronistic Displacement Lounge.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My therapist used to tell me I had "chronological dysphoria," but I thought she was just making it up!

 

[BJonas]

I always thought it was reincarnation or deja vu that brought me to this stuff.

Is the FL like a support group now?

"Hi. I'm BJonas, and I'm anachronistically displaced."

Wow, that felt good.

 

[MrBern]

obsessive or dysfunctional? Hmm, I prefer enthusiastic.


.

 

[scotrace]

prelapsarian (pree-lap-SAYR-ee-uhn) adjective

Relating to any innocent or carefree period in the past.

 

[katiemakeup]

This makes me think of that scene in Shawshank Redemption where Brooks gets let out and has trouble adjusting to the new world. But I guess his situation was slightly different~ He didn't feel he belonged in another era, he would have felt more comfortable there~ It was like going forward in a time machine.

 

[Senator Jack]

I really don't even think about the modern world any more. It's not that I can't deal with it, but why should I? I like reading books written by authors who could write, so why should I be interested in modern literature? Why should I be interested in modern film when I have Netflix sending me 60 year old films I've never seen? Just because the world turns doesn't mean we have to like it. Sounds like some quack came up with this theory to get a grant. Horesfeathers!


Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Benny Holiday]

I tend to view it more as 'stylistic displacement'. As much as I love the Golden Era, I'm still very much a product of the times in which I grew up and of today. I love the conveniences of modern technology and the more relaxed way of life. Much as I romanticize the 30's and 40's, I think I'd get a rude shock if I found myself there: no Thai and Indian restaurants, no mobile phones, no computers, no Star Wars movies eek: ); I'd be in a world where domestic violence was tolerated and aboriginal Australians were considered akin to sub-species of humanity by the white authorities and society in general.

I just wish the styles of Art Deco and Streamline Moderne had continued on into today, that the great clothing styles for men and women had continued and the innocence and morals of the world before the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, the sexual revolution, etc still prevailed. I wish they still made new Cadillacs, Fords and Plymouths that looked exactly just like the 1940's models, only with super-efficient hydrogen fuel cell engines. But I guess you can't have everything. You can't have your Sky Captain/Flash Gordon world of the future and your modern lifestyle too!

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Merrily merrily merrily merrily

I'm already living in a dream world, where life is beautiful all the time. Or was I already living in a vintage world, thus making it easy to pretend I'm happy when I'm blue? Vintage first, I think. Even as a child. Our family farm in North Georgia didn't even have indoor plumbing until I was a teenager. I didn't even have to pretend I didn't mind, I actually preferred the old-timey ways.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

I wouldn't really want to go back and live in the past, but with all the progress we've made on this Earth, there are things that have been lost along the way that I'd like to go back and recover.

 

[Haversack]

I do not remember which science fiction author wrote that we are all time-travellers who are travelling forward through time at a rate of one day per day. I do remember it was Spider Robinson who wrote a short story about an American who had arrested in a Cantral American country in the late 1950s, very shortly after which a coup occurred, and he was effectively lost and forgotten about for 25 years. He is eventually rediscovered, released, and quietly repatriated into the early 1980s US. The story dealt with the loneliness the man felt and all the changes he encountered. Garry Trudeau also dealt with this in the early 1970s in his strip Doonesbury in which a P.O.W. just released from North Vietnam is readjusting to mid-1970s America. References to Look magazine and the Ed Sullivan Show are made. It doesn't take very long to become susceptable to ADS. (And then of course, there is the story of Rip van Winkle...)

Haversack.

 

[Elaina]

I miss the fact that when I was 7 I played outside all day long, with the neighborhood kids and I could get away from a mother suffering from depression. My 12 year old sister and I walked the mile to McDonald's for a happy meal on Saturday (paid for by her babysitting money), and I used to go visit the mean old witch half a mile down the road (who wasn't mean or a witch, just a lonely old woman who had the best cookies waiting), and my youth leader was a novice priest whom no one thought anything about the kids adoring him. And the majority of people gave Halloween candy out.

Now my 7 year old doesn't have the same kind of life. He goes outside where I have to go too, or make sure that the 2 other women are outside, can't go get his own ice cream from the tuck, because you can't let them walk by themselves to the corner. You have to make sure the other kids at the playland aren't going to beat up on him, or try to touch him (it happens, I stopped one from hurting a 2 year old recently), old people are more scared of the little kids then they are of them, everyone is suspect, and you have to drive your kids on Halloween because if you walked you're only going to be able to go to 6 houses. And that youth leaders don't get accused of something because they are a youth leader. I don't have a 7 year old child, I have a 7 year old adult.

While I don't want to go back in time and live, I certainly wish that my son had more time as an innocent before that got ripped away from him. Now I think we just accept the fact that bad things are all around us and we have to cope with it, at the expense of the children. I'm not time displaced, just modernly disgusted.

Elaina

 

[BJonas]

Amen to that, Elaina.

 

[BigSleep]

Well said Elaina.

Makes me sad for kids.

 

[skwerl-hat]

this is a fascinating thread, with the world seemingly destructing around us i expect it isnt all that odd that some are trying to look backwards for comfort and perhaps a nice hat