What is ‘The Old World,’ and why is social media so obsessed with it?

Social media trends come and go like seasons. Some trends simply fly by, while others are emotionally loaded and wreak havoc like hurricanes. But somewhere between the rage bait and the fashion and beauty trends, you may have noticed the rise of the Old World aesthetic. It is a kind of nostalgia for craftsmanship, elaborate beauty, and the romance of it all.

And under these posts, you'll almost always find a comment along the lines of: "I was born in the wrong century."

For the untrained eye, a double take is often required in order to see that this beauty is about the order of things. What the artists of the Old World understood was that placing God at the top leaves us with the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Transcendence first philosophy

This concept of the Old World is characterized by a philosophy of life we have abandoned, but it is by no means exclusive to the past or out of reach in the present. The aesthetic is visually defined by cathedrals, Renaissance paintings, Gothic architecture, grainy Latin Mass footage with incense rising past the candles, castlecore boards of ivy and stone, and ballerinas. But of course, there is much more to it. Social media's algorithm has captivated a new audience and taken it on a trip across time and, perhaps most importantly, across philosophies of life.

The Old World is not about a particular era. It's about an order of life in which beauty and God, and a sense of permanence around both rule everything else. It is a way of arranging life with  everything transcendent and everlasting ranked above the temporal. In other words, what feeds the soul through beauty and love stands high above everything else. While this order gives precedence to things outside the self, it also nourishes the human person and becomes a way to acknowledge our own dignity.

Compare that to the world most of us wake up in. We live in gray apartments with gray floors. We work in glass buildings designed to be efficient, forgettable, and easily replaceable. Many of our churches look like conference centers, not for lack of design, but because practicality and efficiency overrule beauty. Beauty has become an upgrade one adds if the budget allows, and God survives as a private preference, somewhere between a hobby and a diet, rather than Almighty Creator. Almost nothing around us points to the purpose of what we do, what we build, and who we are. At least, not beyond its practicality.

Exotically homey

We are attracted to the Old World in two ways. Firstly, because it feels foreign and exotic, as if we were traveling to a far away place. Simultaneously, it feels like home. It offers a sense of belonging that brings peace in its beauty. 

So when we pause our scroll on a video of monks chanting Vespers, I don't think we do it because we want the 13th century back. We do it because we recognize the absence of that transcendent beauty in our everyday lives. This social media trend has shown many, maybe for the first time, what it looks like when a whole culture agrees that some things matter more than others. Even more so when those things are not exclusively earthly.

I don't think it is a coincidence that this philosophy of life arrived by way of visual aesthetics, because so many in my generation never had the language for it. Plenty of us sat through religious education that amounted to a coloring page and a permission slip. Something was lacking when it came to a personal relationship with the transcendent. But the Church has always taught that beauty, truth, and goodness belong together, each one pointing to the others. Of course beauty reaches us first. A good example of this is Tchaikovsky's Pas de Deux, which went viral under the caption “The moment when Tchaikovsky touched heaven.” The philosophy of the Old World is not an invention but the recognition of something as true as gravity.

That truth is still here and available to anyone seeking it. We need only enter the old theaters, churches, educational institutions, and any other place filled with meaning beyond ourselves. It isn't about worshiping the past but about the place we give it in the present. Nothing physical lasts forever, not even the grandest cathedral. What lasts is the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Creator, and the pinnacle of His creation: the human person, made in His image. So when we build, paint, or sing with eternity and Him in mind, we aren’t trying to make the work immortal. We are making it for people who are. That turns almost any art form into a service and an act of love, a way to connect with others even across generations. That is why beauty, craftsmanship, and meaning become core elements of design. 

This is a humbling, enriching experience because if beauty sits at the top, our convenience moves down. If God sits at the top, so do we.

That is the Old World.