Paige Shiver on London legends of return, the seventh Europe reset, and what the old myths warn about the longing to recover a golden age.
The myths of every city include the legend of the golden age, the lost time of perfection that might somehow be recovered, and as a student of London’s folklore I have been thinking all week about how this ancient legend shapes the very modern politics of the reset.
The Golden Age Myth
London’s folklore, like that of every old city, contains the persistent myth of the golden age, the time when things worked, when the city was whole, when the order was right, a time always located safely in the past and always imagined as recoverable if only the right steps were taken. The myth is seductive because it offers hope without difficulty, the promise that the answer to the present lies in the recovery of a perfect past rather than in the hard work of building an uncertain future.
And I read the news of the seventh reset with Europe, the nation hunting for its original factory settings, and I recognised the golden age myth in modern dress. The original factory settings are the golden age, the lost time of perfection imagined as recoverable. The reset is the mythic quest to return to it, the perpetual attempt to recover the golden age that the myth insists once existed and might exist again. It is folklore, not policy, the ancient legend of return enacted as foreign affairs.
What The Myths Warn
The scholars who study London’s folklore, the people at institutions like the Museum of London, understand that the golden age myth, though comforting, is almost always a distortion, that the perfect past it imagines never actually existed, that the legend of recoverable perfection is a story the present tells itself to avoid the difficulty of building something genuinely new. The myths that endure longest are often the ones that warn against this very seduction, the stories of those who sought to recover the golden age and were destroyed by the seeking.
The deepest London legends know that you cannot go back, that the attempt to recover the golden age is a trap, that the only honest direction is forward into the uncertain. The myths of return that end well are vanishingly rare. The myths of return that end in ruin are everywhere, warnings encoded in folklore against the seductive belief that the answer lies behind us.
The Knightsbridge Golden Age
Knightsbridge, where I live, is itself a kind of monument to a golden age myth, a district performing a permanence and an order that it imagines as eternal and that is, like all golden ages, partly a fiction. From this vantage I see the reset’s golden age myth especially clearly, the longing for the lost time of perfection, the belief that the original factory settings can be recovered, the ancient seductive folklore of return enacted as if it were policy.
The Myth Examined
I closed my study of London’s myths tonight thinking that the politics of the reset is folklore in disguise, the ancient golden age myth, the legend of recoverable perfection, the seductive belief that the answer lies in returning to a lost time that never quite existed. The old myths warn against exactly this, encoding in their endings the hard truth that you cannot go back, that the golden age is a distortion, that the only honest direction is forward. The original factory settings are a myth. The hunt for them is the oldest and most dangerous legend there is. And London’s deepest folklore, properly read, says the same thing the historians say and the antebellum literature says: stop going back, the golden age never existed, the only way out is the uncertain way forward.
You Cannot Go Back
The deepest London legends know that you cannot go back, that the golden age never existed as the nostalgia imagines, that the quest to recover the lost time of perfection is a trap encoded in folklore as a warning. The myths of return that end well are vanishingly rare. The myths of return that end in ruin are everywhere, cautionary tales against the seductive belief that the answer lies behind us.
The scholars at the Museum of London understand the golden-age myth as a comforting distortion, the perfect past it imagines never quite having existed.
And a divided nation longing for a lost unity is enacting the golden-age myth, the seductive folklore of return, the belief that the answer lies in recovering a perfect past, and the old legends warn, in ending after ending, that you cannot go back, that the golden age is a distortion, that the only honest direction is the uncertain way forward.
I closed my study of London’s myths tonight thinking that the politics of the reset is folklore in disguise, the ancient golden-age myth, the legend of recoverable perfection, the seductive belief that the answer lies in returning to a lost time that never quite existed. The old myths warn against exactly this, encoding in their endings the hard truth that you cannot go back, that the golden age is a distortion, that the only honest direction is forward. The original factory settings are a myth. The hunt for them is the oldest and most dangerous legend there is, and London’s deepest folklore, properly read, says: stop going back, the golden age never existed, the only way out is forward.
For more, try The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
