golden age myth
Idealized past belief
The golden age myth is the belief that an earlier era was superior to the present—more peaceful, prosperous, or virtuous.
The concept originates in ancient Greek and Roman poetry describing humanity's decline from an original paradise.
People invoke it skeptically: His nostalgia for the 1950s is pure golden age myth.
The pattern recurs across cultures and generations, each lamenting what came before.
- nostalgiaLonging for the past
- good old daysIdealized past era
- paradiseIdeal, blissful place
- lost paradiseRuined state of perfection
- EdenScriptural original paradise
Arcadia · utopia · innocence · decline · fall · primordial · Saturn · Cronus · fall from grace · pastoral · noble savage · idyllic · perfection · corruption · lost · pristine · abundance · harmony
- mythslegend, fable, fairy tale, folk tale, origin story
- national mythsnational origin, origin story, origin stories, national memory, founding fathers
- anti-modernismLuddism, Luddite, technophobia, technophobe, anti-technology
- ArcadiaPan, Megalopolis, shepherds, goatherds, Astros
- pastoral poetrypastoral, eclogue, idyll, bucolic, locus amoenus
golden age mythprogressivism
Philosophy advocating societal reform
utopianism · futurism · techno-utopianism · millenarianism · transhumanism
golden, gold, ageing, ageism, myth, myths, mythic, mythical, mythology