No, change is not always good

I recently saw someone being interviewed on TV, who had written some kind of book about his sociopolitical theory about how "nostalgia" affects people's political opinions and voting preferences, especially towards conservatism. This author comments that in the modern world a lot of sociopolitical changes are happening extremely fast, and many people are uncomfortable with this rapid change in society, and how they long for the more familiar and safer near past, and thus they often tend to listen to the more conservative politicians who advocate for the strengths and benefits of older systems and customs, rather than embrace quick societal change.

There was quite a critical tone against this kind of conservatism and resistance to (societal) change. A bit of the like of "they are just afraid of change".

The implication seemed to be that all societal change is good and desirable, and that getting stuck in the past stifles and slows down societal progress, prolonging societal problems and hindering solutions to these problems to be implemented.

There is, indeed, a somewhat widespread notion, especially on the far (and even not so far) left side of the political spectrum, that existing old customs and traditions are antiquated and obsolete, and change is always good. That conservatism is just stubborn resistance to progress at best, prejudiced bigotry at worst.

This is most definitely not always so.

Some changes are good, of course. For example, it wasn't even so long ago that homosexuality was considered a crime in some European countries (you don't even have to go back over a hundred years to find that). Completely regardless of what you think about homosexuality, I hope you at least agree that it should not be considered a crime, punishable by law. Criminalizing it can quite arguably be considered inhumane, and getting rid of such ridiculous laws has definitely been a sociopolitical change for the better. True sociopolitical progress. And there are, of course, numerous similar examples, just in the past hundred years.

But that doesn't mean that all change is good.

For example, in many countries the sociopolitical zeitgeist is rapidly changing more and more towards the direction of limiting and restricting freedom of speech, from what it was just a couple of decades ago. In some countries it has already gone so far that actual legislation has been passed criminalizing previously unpunishable speech. "Hate speech" laws are the most obvious example.

It is, in fact, a bit hard to imagine that it wasn't even so long ago, just like 30 or 40 years, that most European countries actually heavily opposed any "hate speech" laws (proposals of such are not a recent phenomenon), because they heavily contradicted constitutional freedom of speech. The whole concept was pretty much unthinkable.

Today, however, that has changed. More and more European countries, as well as some other western countries, are adopting more and more "hate speech" laws, or at least seriously considering them.

This is not a change for the better. This is a change for worse. This is a change away from individual freedoms and towards totalitarianism. This is a change towards censorship, which is the hallmark of tyrannical regimes, and has never resulted in anything good.

Nowadays far-leftist activists consider it absolutely OK to ruin someone's entire life because of that person's opinions. Sometimes even just very tame and relatively innocuous opinions, if they happen to contradict the far-leftist narrative. The scary thing is that these far-leftist activists have gained an enormous amount of power in society and can actually enact these measures and ruin people's lives. It goes beyond just angry noise, to real actions, and real lives being completely ruined, often for very innocuous expression of opinion.

This is not a change for the better. This is most definitely a change for the worse. This is a change towards tyranny, discrimination and oppression. When such zealots get into power, the end result is usually catastrophic. Sometimes the death count can be in the millions.

Not all traditional values are bad. There are reasons why they became traditional values, and sometimes those reasons are very valid.

So no, nostalgia for the better times is not always bad. When tyranny is arising, the longing for the better past is completely justified, and worth fighting for. Preserving the good things of the past is worth fighting for.