Generational Amnesia
Phenomenon where knowledge or experiences are lost between generations due to incomplete or selective transmission, leading to a distorted or incomplete understanding of historical events or cultural practices.
Origin
Psychologist Peter Kahn at the University of Washington introduced the concept of environmental generational amnesia in the 1990s, while studying how children in Houston — one of America's most polluted cities — perceived the local environment as entirely normal. Kahn observed that each generation inherits a degraded natural environment as its baseline for "nature," invisibly normalizing cumulative decline. The concept was later linked to shifting baseline syndrome, which tracks the same drift in fisheries, ecology, and public health.