presentist

From present +‎ -ist.

presentist (comparative more presentist, superlative most presentist)

1. Of or pertaining to presentism; viewing the past with a perspective limited to present-day attitudes and beliefs.
   • 2004, Barry Wellman, Bernie Hogan, “The Immanent Internet”, in Johnston McKay, editor, Netting Citizens: Exploring Citizenship in a Digital Age, Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, pages 54–80:

     Many people lost their perspective in their euphoria and became parochial and presentist.

   • 2009 December 14, John McWhorter, “The Entertainer: Louis Armstrong's Underrated Legacy”, in The New Yorker, page 89:

     To read him as defensively fashioning what we now call a "black identity" is presentist.

   • 2018 January 1, Conor Friedersdorf, “Exploring 1968 and the Making of Modern America”, in The Atlantic‎^[1], archived from the original on 1 January 2018:

     One aspiration is to mark a particularly momentous year in American history. Another is to combat the presentist bias that harms our ability to see clearly today.

   • 2018, Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, New Haven: Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 70:

     Industrial processes like these ignore the distinctive demands of local culture and practices and rely fundamentally on the elimination of existing farming cultures as the essence of agriculture. While purportedly forward-looking, this approach is profoundly presentist and placeless.

   • 2023 March 17, David Wallace-Wells, “America Has Decided It Went Overboard on Covid-19”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN, archived from the original on 18 March 2023:

     Most of the time, no one really seems to notice that presentist legerdemain, perhaps because so few of us actually remember the experience of 2020 all that clearly and are clinging to hastily imposed narratives instead.

presentist (plural presentists)

1. A follower of presentism.

• persistent, pin setters, pin-setters, pinsetters, prettiness, serpentist