Co-sign all of that. A big part of articulating a vision for the future I think involves understanding what was great about the past. I love Wendell Berry for this, but when I mention him in this context, people generally think I'm advocating a regression, not an advance. But I don't think Berry is merely nostalgic. I think he had a vision for life that was mostly unrealized, even in the past. The nostalgia we have for the past is in many ways the same as our hope for the future, because the past we remember never actually existed. But it could exist (in some form completely different from what we expect) in the future.