Streams of Silver (Forgotten Realms: The Icewind Dale, #2; Legend of Drizzt, #5)

by R.A. Salvatore

Why would not the lowliest peasant desire evolution of civilization if that evolution might lead to a better life for his children?

That would seem logical, but I have seen that it is not the case, for many if not most of the short-lived humans who have passed their strongest and healthiest years, who have put their own better days behind them, accepting any change seems no easy thing.

No, so many of them clutch at the past, when the world was “simpler and better.” They rue change on a personal level, as if any improvements those coming behind them might make will shine ...

At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure.