Demon paperwork in the modern office!
Of all the contributions that historians can make to contemporary public discourse, I think that reflective skepticism about declension narratives is one of the most important. Historians define “declension narratives” as any story of change over time that trace a secular decline, decrease, or deterioration in a historical phenomenon. In other words, a declension narrative is any story we tell about something getting progressively worse (not just different) over time, in a non-cyclical way. Once you become aware of the existence of declension narrative, you’ll begin to notice that they’re everywhere in our culture. Two places I notice them all the time are in the discourse of generational change (check out ANY article about the so-called “millennials”) and in any discussion of the liberal arts in modern society.
