Matthew Continetti: Why are Americans gripped by nostalgia?

Matthew Continetti writes:

Chuck Klosterman asks, “What if the feeling we like to call ‘nostalgia’ is simply the byproduct of accidental repetition?” He has listened to Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark at the Moon “more than all the other Ozzy solo albums combined,” he says, for the sole reason that “I had only six cassettes” as a teenager. (…)

Stranger Things, by this logic, satisfies our nostalgia craving because it’s an excuse to share our knowledge of all the Stephen King books we have read, all the Spielberg and Carpenter movies we have watched. “What seems like ‘nostalgia’ might be a form of low-grade expertise that amplifies the value of the listening event.”