cultural pessimism
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.96 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
17
Letters
4
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
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.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."