For quite some time, I have been contemplating why we, as people, seem to overvalue the past more than the present. This tendency appears almost everywhere. Whether the discussion is about football, music, science, literature, cinema, or even everyday life, comparisons between past and present usually end in the same way. The past is almost automatically assumed to be superior, while the present is expected to prove itself.
A young footballer is compared with an established legend, a new singer with an icon from decades ago, or a contemporary writer with Shakespeare. Sometimes we don't even accept comparisons of strong contemporary figures with historical figures of equivalent stature.
Curious about this bias, I turned to psychological literature and found a study by Carey K. Morewedge of Carnegie Mellon University, published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. Rather than asking whether the past was better, Morewedge investigated why people believe it was.
Across three experiments, participants evaluated television shows and films from different eras. In the first, participants rated past television decades higher than recent ones. Yet when asked to recall specific shows, they remembered outstanding programmes regardless of the decade. The difference lay in interpretation: participants viewed great shows from the past as representative of that entire era, while treating great contemporary shows as rare exceptions.
The second experiment ruled out the possibility that certain eras were genuinely superior. Participants compared films from their high school graduation year with recent releases. Regardless of when they graduated, participants consistently favoured their own era's films, applying the same logic: assuming past favourites represented an entire decade while treating current hits as outliers.
The third experiment evaluated both the best and worst television shows. Participants rated the top shows across eras similarly. However, they believed even the worst past shows were better than the worst shows today. They remembered the entire past as being closer to its peak achievements than it actually was.
Morewedge concluded that memory acts like a record store: it stocks the hits of the past alongside both the hits and stinkers of the present. Because we assume past hits represent their entire era, we develop nostalgic preferences.
While memory explains how we idealise the past, I doubt it acts alone. Social dynamics also shape these biased comparisons.
While I found this explanation compelling, I was still not convinced that memory alone is responsible for these biased preferences.
Let me first make one thing clear: this is not an argument against the greatness of historical figures. Lionel Messi, Michael Jackson, Shakespeare, and countless others earned their place through extraordinary achievements. Their reputations are well deserved. My concern lies elsewhere — with our tendency to reject comparisons before we even consider them. Suggesting that Lamine Yamal might one day belong in the same conversation as Messi, or that a contemporary singer could rival Michael Jackson, is often dismissed almost instinctively. The discussion, therefore, ends before it has had the opportunity to begin.
This made me wonder whether historical figures and contemporary figures reach us in fundamentally different ways.
The first conclusion I reached is that we watch or “witness” contemporary figures perform every day, week, month, or year. We witness their brilliance, but we also witness their mistakes, their inconsistency, their worst moments, and the criticism directed toward them. Our opinions develop gradually through direct observation.
Historical figures rarely reach us this way. Before we ever see their work, we hear about them from parents, teachers, documentaries, and commentators. By the time we encounter their legacy, we evaluate them through a framework built on decades of built-up acclaim.
While the present is judged through personal experience, the past is judged through inherited experience. Memory preserves exceptional moments, but society preserves the consensus surrounding them. Every generation passes down its heroes with such authority that questioning them feels almost inappropriate. Over time, these figures stop being mere individuals and become benchmarks.
The primary obstacle for contemporary figures is not simply matching the achievements of legends — it is overcoming the structural privilege history grants to those who arrived first.
Ahmed Al Saadi
The writer works at UTAS as a part-time English lecturer
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