On another forum I have managed to illustrate decadence up to 23 pages and with many citations from many authors, above all those historians of antiquity and philosophers.
Decadence encompasses language, arts, state, food, human relations, religion, morals/customs, etc etc. In a period of 300 years all people are dead.
On the other side it is hard to find a single person on the (English speaking) Internet who even complains about this death. A combination of “carpe diem & life is progress” makes them all (including all former cultures) unconscious about what is happening to them. A guy named Spengler even wrote a book about that but without success. I admit his book isn’t the most perfect, but it is also not just a play with words.
Why are people disabled for the pessimism of strength to check the truth about decadence?
A cow finding berries tasty is being decadent, Grass is her food. All the other cows eat grass… A fish discovering that airbubbles hitting it pleases it, the other fish avoid airbubbles.Again decadence. I could go on. Many of our critter cousins indulge in decadence. It changes atmosphere.
OP seems extremely incoherent and grasps things out of thin air and jumps to conclusions.
You need to argue why society suddenly will change from a normal society to a decadent society, many upper class citezens in ancient Rome became utterly decadent, with slaves and an array of nepotists kissing their ***.
maybe there are, in fact, shallow. Maybe it is a myth that we are remotely the same.
maybe they have been trained not to react deeply, see penetratingly, explore, create. Sticks and carrots and an image of reality, if repeated enough, are pretty effective.
Cries of decadence raise the issue for me of idealization of the past. We imagine it was better than it was, and focus on a least part of the more interesting people. There is a parallel idealization of the future by many, some do both at the same time.
Historyboy:
On the other side it is hard to find a single person on the (English speaking) Internet who even complains about this death. A combination of “carpe diem & life is progress” makes them all (including all former cultures) unconscious about what is happening to them. A guy named Spengler even wrote a book about that but without success. I admit his book isn’t the most perfect, but it is also not just a play with words.
K: first of all, having read spengler, both volumes, he does’t really talk about decadence per se.
His thing is the idea of civilizations being equal and having the same type of life and death.
He felt that there were only 8 civilizations and they rose and fell the same way. He was
equating our current time with those 8 civilizations. His whole book can be summed up
with the words from the TV show “Games of thrones” “Winter is coming” Winter being the
demise of that civilization. Now as for the idea of decadence being a topic in modern society,
it is actually assumed in the culture wars of the last 30 years. Liberalism is a shorthand
form of decadence or so says the conservatives. With their claims of handouts and
entitlements for the poor, that is bringing about decadence in society. Leaving aside
the simple fact that the wealthy is the biggest group of whiners and those claiming entitlements
in america, they claim that equality in america will/is decadence and the downfall
of america. Decadence has the one of the biggest topics in america for 30 years
all you have to to listen, and you will hear it silently in the night.
As we see above, it is easier to discuss the first answer to the topic than the topic post self.
We do not idealize the past, the past was healthy, decadence is sickness, we do want to extract that what is healthy and to use that knowledge to set up a new goal in the future. Is that asked too much?
Decadence is good and evil, health is beyond good and evil: good and bad - what makes stronger, healthier is good, what makes sick, weak, decadent is bad.
End of story.
Consequently, conservatives are decadents. Christianity is decadent.
The search and quest for strength is decadence itself, when it is unnecessary for our survival.
Strength is no longer necessary for us to survive/our survival needs to be under threat for us to need strength.
No, they are not in any way related to decadence, people doesn’t own airplanes on a common basis nor does it make people decadent to own a painkiller nor croaches or a wheel chair, why it would be illogical to say that we become decadent because of these things.
Because they are for indulgence. It is not necessary to keep a human alive, we do it for emotional reasons. Flying is the same conveinence and emotional gratification.
Medicine and machines are primarily indulging emotional desires. Decadence.
What you are talking about is completely out of proportion. Only an infentessible small amount of people will endulge themselves with airplanes, and i don’t see how a tragic medical situation can lead to endulgence and decadence. The medicine industry is quite huge, and i really don’t see any endulgegence in there, other than a few instances which isn’t sufficient to say that ALL become decadent because of those few cases.
ok lets skip the airplane machine. Medicine indulges our emotional need to keep loved ones alive and healthy or ourselves. It goes against the nature of earth. Decadence flagrantly.