Chronocentrism - Wikipedia

Chronocentrism is the assumption that certain time periods (typically the present) are better, more important, or a more significant frame of reference than other time periods, either past or future. The perception of more positive attributes such as morality, technology, and sophistication to one's own time could lead an individual as a member of a collectivity to impose their forms of time on others and impede the efforts towards more homogeneous temporal commons.[ 1]

Chronocentrism (from the Greek chrono- meaning "time") was coined by sociologist Jib Fowles in an article in the journal Futures in February, 1974. Fowles described chronocentrism as "the belief that one's own times are paramount, that other periods pale in comparison".[ 2] A critical view described it as the belief that only the present counts and that the past is irrelevant except to serve as a reference to a few basic assumptions about what went before.[ 3] More recently, it has been defined as "the egotism that one's own generation is poised on the very cusp of history".[ 4] The term had been used earlier in a study about attitudes to ageing in the workplace. Chronocentricity: "...only seeing the value of one's own age cohort...described the tendency for younger managers to hold negative perceptions of the abilities or other work-related competencies of older employees."[ 5] This type of discrimination is a form of ageism.

Chronocentrism as ethnocentrism is the perceiving and judging of a culture's historical values in terms of the standards of one's own time period.

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