Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
Politics and Religion
Decadence

Decadence

Last updated on: June 16, 2022 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

0 Comments

Decadence 2022-06-11T14:53:11-04:00 Gene Veith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

After the life leaves the body, it decays. The same could be said when the life leaves a culture. It rots and decomposes. Hence the concept of “decadence.”

Ross Douthat, the New York Times‘ token conservative, has brought that term back in his book The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Here is the editorial description on Amazon:

Today the Western world seems to be in crisis. But beneath our social media frenzy and reality television politics, the deeper reality is one of drift, repetition, and dead ends. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of “sustainable decadence,” a civilizational languor that could endure for longer than we think.

Ranging from our grounded space shuttles to our Silicon Valley villains, from our blandly recycled film and television—a new Star Wars saga, another Star Trek series, the fifth Terminator sequel—to the escapism we’re furiously chasing through drug use and virtual reality, Ross Douthat argues that many of today’s discontents and derangements reflect a sense of futility and disappointment—a feeling that the future was not what was promised, that the frontiers have all been closed, and that the paths forward lead only to the grave.

In this environment we fear catastrophe, but in a certain way we also pine for it—because the alternative is to accept that we are permanently decadent: aging, comfortable and stuck, cut off from the past and no longer confident in the future, spurning both memory and ambition while we wait for some saving innovation or revelations, growing old unhappily together in the glowing light of tiny screens.

In an interview about the book, Douthat gives his definition:

Basically, a decadent society manifests forms of economic stagnation, institutional sclerosis, and cultural repetition at a high stage of wealth and technological proficiency and civilizational development. So it’s a society that, by definition, has succeeded in a lot of ways and may actually give the appearance of great energy.

Today’s Hollywood keeps making the same movies over and over and over. The same can be said of our artists and our thinkers, repeating the same ideas without getting anywhere. We landed on the moon, but then lost interest in space travel. Our politics, both from the right and the left, gets people excited, but it is mainly “performative,” a matter of identity and virtue-signaling, while getting hardly anything done. Unlike the countercultural 1960s or the Reaganite 1980s, or pretty much any decade in our history, there is no sense that we are going somewhere. To be sure, we live in a time of transformative technology, but it has not transformed us as much as we expected and it has channeled our interests into virtual reality, as opposed to actual reality.

Douthat has chapters on stagnation, sterility, sclerosis, and repetition. He makes clear that he is not using “decadence” in its dictionary definition of self-indulgence, luxury, and excessive pursuit of pleasure, with connotations of sexual depravity. He has much to say about economics, politics, and the “closing of the frontier,” applying Frederick Turner’s thesis about what happened to America when the continent was settled to the dashed hopes upon the realization that space travel is not really feasible.

But other treatments of decadent societies–such as that of the Roman Empire and the Weimar Republic–did bring up the Roman orgies and the blossoming of homosexuality in the Weimar Republic.

“Sterility” is a hallmark of decadence in Douthat’s book, but it is used here as a metaphor for lifelessness. But the word carries the sexual association. “Sterility” literally refers to the inability to have children. In decadent societies, sex is made sterile. People are mad for sex, but they want sex without any connection to conceiving children. Douthat doesn’t say much about homosexuality or transgenderism, but he does discuss the decline of the birthrate in the West, pornography, and abortion.

Douthat says that decadent societies can last a long time, as the Roman Empire did. But, I would add, the Weimar Republic, with its cynicism about democracy, its uncontrolled inflation, and its transvestite cabarets proved to be a petri dish for Nazism, which was both a symptom of decadence and a reaction against it. Decadence is dangerous.

What can deliver us from the hopelessness and the cultural deadend of decadence? Douthat closes his book with three chapters on catastrophe, renaissance, and providence. A catastrophe–I am thinking of what might happen if Putin nukes America–can lead to a cultural reset. So can a renaissance, a rebirth, of cultural ideals. But, to his credit, Douthat, a Catholic Christian, puts most of his hope on God.

In his last chapter, he notes that “no civilization–not ours, not any–has thrived without a confidence that there was more to the human story than just the material world as we understand it” [his italics]. Citing G. K. Chesterton, Douthat observes that Rome’s decadence demonstrated the need for a Messiah–that God in His providence allowed human human civilization to hit a peak of wealth and political efficiency and culture, and then to experience a fallen world’s limitations at precisely the moment when He sent His son to save that world from itself.”

He concludes, “if this were the age when some divine intervention happened, whether long prophesied or completely unforeseen, there would be, in hindsight, a case that we should have seen it coming.”

Image by Monsterkoi from Pixabay

Previous Post

June 15, 2022

"Just Wars" vs. "Wars of Necessity"

Next Post

June 17, 2022 Open Thread

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"I know wired earbuds are making a comeback (I never stopped using them as I ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

"VCRs, tape decks, and cassette players are all having a revival among a segment of ..."

Tom Hering

Luther on Tools

"As a (retired) lawyer I see potential liability from sharing things like power or sharp ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

"I am not sure the items you mentioned, though disused, discontinued, discarded, could be considered ..."

reg

Luther on Tools

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category America Apologetics Art baseball Bible Blog Christ Church crime Culture Economics Education Ethics Family Food Football Government History Holidays Holy Week Humor International Islam Language Law Life Issues Literature Media Medicine Movies Music Nature News Personal Philosophy Politics psychology Reformation Religions Sacraments Science sex Social Science Sports technology television terrorism Theology Uncategorized Vocation war

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I include truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, and the Spirit. What am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The armor of God The breastplate of righteousness The shield of faith Spiritual weapons

Books by This Author Books by Gene Veith

See All Titles »