It seems to me that if we have an experience of something, even if we don’t remember it, it still leaves a residue that makes it easier for us to respond to and to believe something that resonates with the original experience. I was thinking about the Garden of Eden the other day and how it serves as a metaphor for a loss of something very important. I began to list the different experiences in the individual and the species that could contribute to a sense of “Things used to be better”. Here are some items from that list in roughly chronological order.

There was the development of language and awareness of self as separate from the other animals. This was a conceptual fall that accompanied the bigger and more sophisticated brains developed by our ancestors. A real loss of innocence.

Along with the development of language, we became aware of our own mortality and could anticipate our own death. The impact on the individual and on the group must have been enormous, another loss of innocence.

There was a massive volcanic eruption about 70,000 years ago. The climate changed in Africa, the original home of humanity. One of the results was the exodus of some humans from Africa into the wider world.

From about 70,000 years ago to about 40,000 years ago, there was a warm spell between ice ages. Then the ice returned. But the memory of the warm and lush landscape was persevered in myths and legends.

When the hunter gatherers became farmers, they must have missed the casual nomadic life and preserved the memory in myths and legends. This may be the Garden that we were banished from.

When villages became cities, life was more interesting but much more complex. In the tribal villages, everyone worked together for survival. There was an intimacy and immediacy that disappeared when cities were born. Now people could not personally know everyone in the village, they had to rely on stereo types. No longer would feedback from friends and family guide behavior, there now had to be laws and enforcers. Villagers moving into the city would remember the simplicity and intimacy of the village life with nostalgia.

Archeology of the Middle East records some of first walled cities, weapons, evidence of slavery and other unsavory aspects of the ancient world. There is also evidence of repeated and severe climate change. It is not too difficult to see that when the rain fall dropped and the sun burned the earth, times got tough. And you built walls, forged weapons and killed or subjugated others to survive. The image of the flaming sword at the gates of Eden may have been a memory of the merciless sun that accompanied the drought. Of course, the survivors would lament the passing of the rain and the verdant landscape of yesterday.

Many civilizations have risen and fallen. Those who survived the collapse of a civilization would pass stories of the sophisticated and rich society that was gone to those born after the collapse. These stories would continue to be passed down from generation to generation as part of a nearly universal myth of the vanished Golden Age.

Before birth, life is good. Everything is provided and there are no demands for effort. The womb is flooded with endorphins. Somewhere at the base of our experience of self is the imprint of that wonderful time before expulsion from paradise into this world.

After childhood, when we have to work to survive, we remember the carefree days of youth.

As time passes, we tend to remember the positive events in our lives and to forget the negative events. This results in seeing the past as “better” than the present.

And as we get older, our senses fade and the world becomes less intense. We mellow emotionally. We recall the intensity and positive experiences of old. We mourn the loss of our own personal “Golden Age”.

So there are many reasons both for our species and ourselves to feel that “Things used to be better”.