Temporary Generational Amnesia

I've always marveled at what I call temporary generational amnesia. A condition wherein people who absolutely hated their parents, society, and the world at age 20 reflect upon their parents, society, and the world at age 50 and believe that contemporary society, the current world, and their children (which they shaped) pale in comparison to the glory that was the world as it was when they were 20. It's always really unnerved me.

Then today I read this quote from Thomas Pynchon and temporary generational amnesia is all so clear:

Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it's impossible to determine warp, woof, or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which had come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are charmed by the funny-looking automobiles of the '30's, the curious fashions of the '20's, the particular moral habits of our grandpaernts. We produce and attend musicval comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of continuous tradition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see.
--V., Chapter Seven, Part I

link: Selected Quotations by Thomas Pynchon