Presentism, shaped by availability and recency biases, leads people to view their era as unusually dangerous or consequential. Immediate, tangible threats feel more relevant because they can affect individuals directly, as seen in nuclear brinkmanship, stagflation, and the 2008 financial crash. Human cognition evolved to prioritize the near term, which aids survival but narrows perspective and impedes long-range preparation. Social change usually involves overlapping transitions rather than clean breaks: industrial and digital economies coexist, secular and religious values compete, and generational attitudes cross-pollinate. Ambiguity tolerance plays an important role in navigating these concurrent contradictions and uncertainties.
Every generation believes it is living through the most dangerous, most consequential moment in history. Public policymakers call this presentism or presentism bias: our tendency to overestimate the singularity and existential weight of our own time. Psychologists would focus more on availability heuristics and recency bias: information that is most easily recalled, and more recent events tend to seem most important.
It isn't irrational. The Prussian and the Roman empires aren't going to hurt you now. The eventual heat death of the universe isn't worth losing sleep over. Threats that feel most relevant are the ones that could affect us directly. Nuclear brinkmanship in the 1960s, stagflation in the 1970s, and the 2008 financial crash were each experienced as uniquely defining. The greater the crisis, the more it commands our attention.
Human cognition evolved to prioritize the immediate and tangible over the distant and abstract. That vigilance helps us survive, but it also narrows perspective, making it harder to see continuity with the past or to prepare for the future. History rarely moves in clean breaks. Even in times of upheaval, remnants of the old order persist. Industrial and digital economies overlap. Secular and religious values compete. Generational attitudes toward work, family, and identity clash and cross-pollinate at the same time.
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