Declinism
The belief that society or an institution is in irreversible decline. Often more a mood than a fact — every generation tends to think the best days are behind them.
EverydayConcepts.io
Origin
Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1918–1922) elevated civilisational pessimism into a full philosophical system. The word "declinism" itself is traced by the OED to 1922. Political scientist Samuel Huntington gave it its modern analytical framing in a 1988 Foreign Affairs essay cataloguing successive waves of declinist thinking about American power. The underlying cognitive driver — rosy retrospection — was formally studied by Terence Mitchell and Leigh Thompson in 1994.
Updated February 22, 2026