cultural pessimism

English

cultural pessimism (uncountable)

An attitude that sees sociocultural changes (in general or in the present situation) as predominantly tending towards a less moral, less constructive, or generally worse state of affairs; particularly, the idea that at some point civilizations and cultures reach a peak after which they must inevitably decline.
- 2001 August 27, Madeleine Bunting, “The end is nigh: pessimism rules”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:
  One obvious consequence of our cultural pessimism is its paralysing grip on politics, since the first thing a successful politician has to sell is an optimistic vision of a better future.
- 2015 January 18, Timothy Garton Ash, “Germany’s anti-Islamic movement Pegida is a vampire we must slay”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:
  But the word Abendland is a strikingly old-fashioned one, meaning literally “evening land” (ie where the sun sets). It was used by Oswald Spengler in his monumental post-first world war tract of German cultural pessimism, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, only weakly translated as The Decline of the West.