[Brother of Karl]

A lot of conservatives and reactionaries compare modern western culture to the decadence of ancient Roman civilization. Until recently, hard work and avoidance of pleasure were seen as virtues and the only path to a good life. Nowadays, social rules regarding work, sexuality, drug use are getting more lax, and TV, and internet have made entertainment even more plentiful than the Romans ever had with their coliseum and plays. Many people think that the "bread and circuses" weakened the great empire so much that it collapsed easily. Is the same collapse imminent for America and the European Union, for the same reasons?

[Cartertonian]

I don't know whether we are yet 'in the zone' for self-destructive decadence, but it does seem to me that there is a rising sense of unrestrained hedonism and pursuit of self-interest above all else, that threatens our ability to work effectively together in the furtherance of the interests of our whole species.

[Eran]

Circumstances during Roman times were different in many ways (reliance on slave labour then, rapid technological changes today, vulnerability to barbarians then, global economy today, and on).

I'd like to remind people that the Roman Empire lasted for centuries past the time at which it became distinctly decadent. We will all be ruled by intelligent computers and genetically-engineered mice well before the same time elapses.

[Goldberk]

It is my belief that we are in the midst of civilizational collapse, Liberalism has so weakened the bonds that previously tied people together that our societies are losing the ability to function coherently.

pursuit of self-interest above all else, that threatens our ability to work effectively together in the furtherance of the interests of our whole species.

This is at the core of the problem.

[Daktoria]

A lot of conservatives and reactionaries compare modern western culture to the decadence of ancient Roman civilization. Until recently, hard work and avoidance of pleasure were seen as virtues and the only path to a good life. Nowadays, social rules regarding work, sexuality, drug use are getting more lax, and TV, and internet have made entertainment even more plentiful than the Romans ever had with their coliseum and plays. Many people think that the "bread and circuses" weakened the great empire so much that it collapsed easily. Is the same collapse imminent for America and the European Union, for the same reasons?

If you understand anything about Rome, then you understand that the Empire collapsed from pagan and foreign influences, especially as the Empire expanded beyond its information technology capacity. Governor-generals became more authoritarian during the Principate and Dominate periods, and the Republic lost authority on the frontier which lead to corruption at home to balance their power. The Colosseum was a symptom of this corruption even if it self-reinforced the vicious cycle.

The problem isn't lax standards. The problem is ignoring moral hazard where people INSIST on mocking, bullying, and teasing the weak, sensitive, and thin-skinned just because there isn't someone watching over them. This is one of the advantages of religion - it persuades wise guys to remember that "God is watching".

When wise guys forget this, they become obsessed with rugged individualism, so only respect others who are physically impressive. Unfortunately, the Protestant Work Ethic resurrected this broken ideal by recognizing "total depravity", ignoring how Jesus died in the New Testament to overcome "original sin".

[Eran]

Not only are we not pursuing self-interest with a historically unusually-high focus, the contrary is the case.

Humanity has created a level of prosperity that enables more and more people to forego their immediate and self-interest in pursuit of "higher" goals. Examples include environmentalism, charity towards distant peoples and animal welfare, amongst others, all movements that didn't exist (and for a good reason) 100 years ago.

[Daktoria]

Not only are we not pursuing self-interest with a historically unusually-high focus, the contrary is the case.

Humanity has created a level of prosperity that enables more and more people to forego their immediate and self-interest in pursuit of "higher" goals. Examples include environmentalism, charity towards distant peoples and animal welfare, amongst others, all movements that didn't exist (and for a good reason) 100 years ago.

I wonder if there's a study out there about whether humanitarianism does more harm than good. One has to wonder about all the resources expended just to bring alleviation to distant lands.

The general problem with charity is it expects social rejects to take care of social rejects. It ignores how charity would be unnecessary if people weren't socially rejected in the first place. Ironically, because people prefer efficient over complete solutions, inefficiency becomes the case.

The problem is that the people who prefer efficient solutions aren't the ones experiencing inefficiency. Moral hazard strikes again.

[Eran]

It ignores how charity would be unnecessary if people weren't socially rejected in the first place.

The Asian Tsunami wouldn't have necessitated charity if people living around the Indian ocean haven't been "rejected"?

[Daktoria]

The Asian Tsunami wouldn't have necessitated charity if people living around the Indian ocean haven't been "rejected"?

If people weren't rejected, they wouldn't be living on the beach.


{edit: ...would NOT...}

[onemalehuman]

Which side of reality isn't reactionary to another pointed view of maybe people would, could, should play directed character role models than live as the lifetime they were conceived to exist with all lifetime long passing through a moment constantly balancing between contracting results expanding details within an instant where energy cannot be created or destroyed shaping and forming the shapes shaped by genetic continuation of specific ancestry creating their own specific ancestors each generation with random conceptions between male and female lifetimes each generation holding the homo sapien species.

What I am saying here is what does decadent mean? Ignoring the physical absolute that this time existing only lasts within this moment instantly here in constantly added changes of self contained matter making up the whole of the molecular makeup of this planet universally being balanced within the moment here.

If seeing is believing and out of sight is out of mind, again, what is decadent? Whom doesn't react to another society attempting to undo all the others? We are playing games of societal evolution using social justification that might(if) makes rights granted a social identity being human cannot have physically.

That is ignoring the physical how and why everything functions exactly as it does now all the time within the atmosphere of this sphere called Earth.

So the answer is NO, not any society can survive long employing misdirecting directives of supposition making sure nobody knows what real is physically. Every society acts the same way so everybody is doing the same thing.

Gee, does this make me one male human that is the only lifetime that comprehends eternity doesn't exist beyond now adding all the details history has declared exists beyond the present situation?

So will understanding the how and why physical existence is and always has been self evident, bring about the meek inheriting the Earth because they turn and walk away from political, religious, and economic leaders demanding everyone else do as they say, not as they do?

Somebody needs to take academia to court for this greatest embezzlement of ancestry in every societal exercise of trading sole exiostence for soul rewards at making fools of each genenration's ancestors of specific ancestry.

Educate programmed responses that ingore instinction reactions. Make doubts of reality sins and understanding real treason and blasphemy crimes against church and state institutions splitting a lifetime into 4 corners of ideology governing heart, mind, body, and membership to collective ideology where rank has it's self appointed privileges.

So decadence is moral and ethical as long as it saves humanity at all costs to surviving as being human? Here is the problem humanity made for human ancestry each generation of ancestors do not know how to balance themselves naturally being to busy inventing their character role as educated by the academic insititutions orchestrating class warfare within vernacular tribalism legalized by subjective theory and objective theology.

How smart is that all you brilliant intellectual psychologists creating rules of societal evolution?

[p0nder]

I hear a lot of bellyaching about "decadence", but is not the pursuit of rational self-interest (a.k.a working for the stuff you want) not the backbone of capitalism?

I suppose we could move over to some austere command system based around some lofty philosophical ideal, but I highly doubt that would result in the same kind of overall increase in wealth that people working so that they can become "decadent" will produce.

[ralfy]

It won't last due to lack of resources or other problems.

[Baff]

I don't know whether we are yet 'in the zone' for self-destructive decadence, but it does seem to me that there is a rising sense of unrestrained hedonism and pursuit of self-interest above all else, that threatens our ability to work effectively together in the furtherance of the interests of our whole species.

For me it's immigration and globalisation which have most weakened the social cohesion of peoples.
The less we are able to readily identify with those around us, the less likely we are to from co-operative to common goals we mutually share.

I don't think however that mankind has ever done more than it does now towards actions designed for the furtherance of the entire species.

The key problem here, is that this species is often in competition with itself.
It is very often true that the furtherance of the entire species is not in the best intrests of many members of it.

[Suska]

ancient Roman civilization.

Moral degeneration according to a serious definition would include the condition of disunity and lack of coordination. When you're a wealthy Roman at the height of Empire you're a gigantic target, so if you're also unable to find loyal troops - to inspire the proles to protect you come what may - You're ripe for the picking. Maybe that was inevitable though. No one was really into it after a thousand years.

The comparison to America is not a good fit in some ways, You can't actually raid a country like America and get much out of it, the land isn't the most valuable thing around anymore. Today's marauding Gauls are CEOs and statesmen and they deal in absurd bulks of potent energy sources mostly, in other words, they need the system alive.

[onemalehuman]

the land isn't the most valuable thing around anymore. Today's marauding Gauls are CEOs and statesmen and they deal in absurd bulks of potent energy sources mostly, in other words, they need the system alive.

When societal evolution becomes the state of mind, nothing real is completely understood equally by everyone living presently. Politics is a tool invented by intellect that persuades intelligence of a sole to ignore self evident and create a collective opinion real doesn't matter and playing a character role in saving humanity is all that matters.

The performing of this makes it real, but it is made to believe. Those that follow theory and theology, honor rhyme and reasons to think beyond the moment here do not want a complete "picture" of life as it exists, they want a life they can control by definitions of maybe.

That takes orchestrated means to an end game. Humanity is that game those that seek being equal have no place in significance to society saving character's rights by laws that rule and regulate the conversation protecting social justification and character's rights to join a collective opinion character matters and genders are just the host to foreign intellect that comes from beyond this moment now here.

Balance is the center of being equal, how does any generation of lifetimes learn how to balance living a game of tipping the scales in favor of one ideologue over another?

Ideologies from all directions leading in every angle working to make tomorrow's reality larger than life than yesterday. Symbolic values have no limits other than choice to believe humanity is the real lifetimes of the human species comprehending their own individual instincts equally each generation present.

Ancestry functions one lifetime at a time passing through the moment here always now, regardless what society wishes were true and compse incomplete truths in literal fiction, figurative fantasy, and playing character roles governed by hyperbole, administered with sophistry, semantics, and syllogism where anyone not playing a character role has no rights to society's staged act of collective ideologies mandating nobody know themselves while forever rescuing humantity from being human sole lifetimes.

I cannot thank you enough for showing the reason humanity never builds a society to last more than 13 generations as the same governance as when it started notions of national identity collectively thinking about serving God/Spirit/Karma, Country/state of social identity, community/family of common interests, and the ancestor that takes liberties away from the next generation by having the previous never understand that time doesn't physically change anything here.

How does anyone know what real balnce is educated from birth to ignore being self contained in this instant nothing remains the same details twice?

It blows the mind/obedience to the words, and makes the brain bleed puting all the pieces together scattered within every ideology making a male female population every regeneration of lifetimes not realizing each is their own generation of life in an adapt or become extinct moment. That is social experimentation of keeping society ignoring the real moment all the time.

That is mankind's original sin to now always physically being here on this planet self contained in perpetual universal balancing/being here now/Karma/God moment of compounding details functioning within repeated results separately as individual total sums added becoming half the next total sum arriving by conception of contracting lifetimes mating reproductive cells into one fertilized specific cell randomly as balancing here now works all the time regardless the technology, ideology, and social justification believing time rules the real moment here. Not adapt or become extinct as lifetimes individually here currently creating their own realities of societal evlution west vs east, north vs south, male vs female, those following orders never want to know the order of natural balance.

Hence, absolute power corrupts absolutely every generation human lifetimes play roles of char-actor. Char is burn with passion to not be just another sole lifetime. This is the edcuated instanity coming from those controlling what humanity evolves into politically, spiritually, and economically.

You, most everyone I read, do not see that, why? This is what divided me from my own genetic family. This is what makes my wife and children make fun of the way I think as they have society on their side of the argument. I just have me comprehending the moment my body never stays the same details within my skin the same way everything around it changes equally and as each total sum balances into now.

I was raised as a child begging not to be led into temptation and delivered from evil and all society taught me was to save the symbolic society of character's rights denying what real is all the time.

And I have Opaque Ponderations and humanity has the knowledge of words recited into reality governing what anyone can believe by contract law to play civic hearted vernacular defined tribalism honoring collective ideologies of heart, mind, body, and soul characters of societal evolution rights to rank has it's privileges by self annoitment in theory alone the stages of political theory, spiritual theology, and economic hypotheticals?

Sedition or suduction equals hope and faith real is never completely understood by anyone equally conceived into the present moment any generation ancestors transcends into becoming ancestry by the same actions they exist individually.

[septimine]

No. But i think the problem isn't so much being decadant as ignoring the very concrete things that are true for any society. You can't get away with not knowing how interdependent a society is -- everything you own comes from the cooperation of thousands of people. And the ability of people to trust each other is needed to get the systems working well enough to to get all that stuff made and shipped. It means someone must plan and someone else must make the stuff, and so on. It also means that the vast majority of people must work. welfare doesn't grow on a tree, it comes from taxes, which require that people be making money. If everyone is focused on themselves, the system fails and we go back to feudalism and warlords. But that doesn't mean you never have fun.

[onemalehuman]

If everyone is focused on themselves, the system fails and we go back to feudalism and warlords. But that doesn't mean you never have fun.

Sophistry, syllogism, and semantics making symbolism matter and substance not count is nothing more than feudalism and warlords using metaphors to cover up their intentions with words sounding like good intentions.

Science validates political theory and religion/spirituality of an afterlife is the backbone of theology/philosophy one is rewarded for eternity for their eternal efforts living in this ever present moment substance is never beyond while changing the details forever here individually as a lifetime attempts to rule generations beyond their time living in the present tense that is only existing now as an adapt or become extinct adding of compounded additions taking place universally in the substance of atoms, molecules, stable elements, solar systems, galaxies currently here changing individually as a whole.

Every lifetime needs to comprehend that physical existence is changing constantly in the present moment and the concept of time is surrendering the ability to separate real and reality gender liberty and character's rights as defined by popular opinion achieved through educating the general public to believe nobody knows what real is in theory and theology.

Which no body can know ignoring the self evident in favor of symbolism over substance tyranny societal evolution mandates metaphors be the definitive relativity to subjective and objective truths legislating morality of character role playing.

Now is constantly here physically within the physical law of energy cannot be created or destroyed as details never stay the same before or since conceived into lifetimes of ancestry replacing their own ancestors one lifetime at a time.

Conceptual contracts are after birth saving humanity's societal evolution not rescuing humans from self destruction one lifetime at a time. You are correct though about the inter-dependency of life within the food chain only present here in the moment not ideas of yesterday and tomorrow played against this balance point of everything living having just one lifetime at a time with no duplications of the same DNA twice among any species if individual compounded total sums of ancestry reproducing their own ancestors directly.

Chain of command in life, inception to the moment, conceiving another generation before dying, becoming a grandparent, becoming a great grandparent, after dying becoming a great great grandparent and as long as the next generation reproduces the chain of command continues after death but never larger than the whole species each generation present to this moment's compounding results of self contained matter universally positioned here as Earth's total sum additions to the present state of existence existing exactly as everything takes place now content of the periodic table of elements sustaining this planet's universal position.

Not so difficult to comprehend once one removes the value of societies titles of entitlement to metaphors and metaphysical maybes nothing contracts to expand the details presently changing.

Substance symbolism represents incompletely by design of language arts. Lords of war in vernacular tribalism mandating trials by fire to forge character role playing to deny being human other than an excuse that instincts are inferior to intellect and intelligence.

In physical absolutes the three(instincts, intellect, and intelligence) are equal or the body doesn't adapt to the moment well as a sole ancestor of specific ancestry of lifetimes that successfully adapted and conceived ancestry's chain of command without social title.

But how many humans have been educated about what real remains contained within the present ever changing details moment?

Both theory and theology seek to prove it doesn't remain now all the time. Lead not into temptation and deliver every body from the evil of acting beyond physical limits of the present situation.

Saving humanity isn't rescuing the human species from itself.

[septimine]

I think we might be sort of going in the same direction here. Yes we do use a lot of symbolism to hide the truth from ourselves. For example, in the realm of economics, we measure most jobs as a yearly wage. This may very well be to hide the actual wages -- a middle class wage (32K a year) is actually only about $15.30 an hour, provided that you work the standard 40 hour week. But we don't put it in those terms, and I think part of the reason is that if people were thinking of hourly wages, they might reject those wages.

The other thing we do is that we tend to use one issue as a proxy for the one we don't want to bring up. When we debate the merits of a nominee to the US supreme court, we talk about the constitution a lot, but really, that's not what the debate is about. We really want to know how the nominee would rule in an abortion case, but we don't say "Are you pro-life?" we say "are you a strict constructionist". Liberals ask other questions, but again, the whole hearing is about their stance on abortion, yet no one will ever bring up abortion and would deny that this is what is being asked about.

But the thing is that the farther you get away into the realm of proxies, the less able you are to deal with the actual problems. We can't deal with the real issue in jobs -- be it wages, or skills, or the fact that people are all choosing to work in the same types of fields while others hurt for workers. Instead, we rail about corporate this and China that, environmental problems this and 1%ers and all kinds of proxies for what is really a series of mismatches between what we provide as laborers and what the economy actually needs. Solyndra is one such thing, yes it was a boondoggle, but it's a symbol as well -- to the environmentalists, it meant future manufacturing, bringing jobs into America, but to the right it represents cronyism of the worst sort, and a sort of symbol of Obama and his idea of what will work in the future. But until you get down to the brass tacks, and deal with the actual problems -- namely figuring out why Americans are not getting hired -- we can scream about Solyndra all day and still not fix anything. But that's really the point on a lot of issues -- especially the symbolic ones -- they're a proxy because as long as we are fighting about proxy issues, we don't have to change anything hard. As long as you're pissed because "they" are holding back jobs, you don't have to look in the mirror and ask if YOU are the problem. You might have out-of-date skills, or be in a field that is more efficiently handled in India/China, or you might be a bit lazy, or be aiming for jobs that are beyond you. Those are perhaps more to the point in solving the Western economic problem -- figuring out exactly where our social expectations of work are not realistic, and what can we personally and collectively do to make our nation as interesting to job creators as as other places. Or how to persuade students to look at the economic prospects that they honestly have before they end up in $100K of debt from loans and have a degree that no employer is interested in. But no one says stuff like that, because symbolically blaming Obama and environmentalism for job loss is so much more fun than dealing with the unrealities in our system.

[stalker]

As long as you have:

(1) Economic growth (to pay for bread and games... and some heavies)

(2) No big wars requiring mass dedication and self-sacrifice;

Then yes, decadence is quite sustainable.

Of course the two above conditions don't ever last indefinitely.

[Suska]

That seems fair to say, but it's not on/off, the more decadent a people are the more their weaknesses will be exploited and the usual thing today is to call that a virtue - we're part of a network of relatively benign exploitation called globalism and that's supposed to be a happy occasion but I can point to a few people who wouldn't put it that way. The fact is they're selling a whole way of life that according to tradition is decadent and upside down and then they act like, well how can it happen that anyone's unhappy with this? And then they raid compounds and badger the drop outs etc as if the ONLY right thing to do is pursue base pleasure and to support it by some kind of para-grift or para-slavery - and you're not suppose to complain when love doesn't work quite like they say it does in the movies, and reality is not quite as fair as it seems like it ought to be...