A survey of Decadence, Part I: Overview

When one hears the word 'decadence' these days, the initial image that comes to mind is of hot fudge dripping across the top of a ball of ice cream resting on a bed of warm brownies. That is because most dessert menus feature such an item and call it ‘Chocolate Decadence’ or something like that. As such, ‘decadence’ can not be mentioned without that delicious chocolate thing flashing through one’s mind. It has extended to encompass other rich or dense foods like an omelet with heaps of cheese in it but it usually implies something sweet and fatty that would be self-indulgent to eat. It is a surprise to most, then, that the word ‘decadence’ has nothing to do with dessert and is actually a rather bitter concept. The true definition is a ‘falling away from’ or ‘falling apart’ (decay) as in a society falling away from its cultural roots, a definition that isn’t very appetizing at all. Most ironically, no one would go to a restaurant to decay, but they’d definitely go for decadence.

How did ‘decadence’ go from meaning a deteriorating culture to meaning a chocolate sundae? It cannot be known for sure, of course, but we might be able to deduce. Today, it seems like a word can mean anything a majority of people want it to mean. If restaurants started calling their desserts ‘chocolate ignominy’ or ‘chocolate annihilation,’ those formerly obscure words would also become synonymous with desserts. Of course, the connection between sundaes and decadence is not totally random. There is a link even if it requires a stretch. The link would go something like this: chocolate sundaes are delicious, but not very healthy. Even though they are bad for you, sometimes one just can’t resist. It is a temptation one gives into when one is morally weak and admittedly so.

Therein lies the link. When historians started using the word ‘decadence’ in the 19C, it was to describe the decline of Rome, which, it was said, was brought on by a moral and mental weakness of its people. Since the word’s inception, the concepts of how Rome got to be weak and what it was before decadence have been lost and the period of decline is witnessed independent from its roots. Perceiving it as such, one sees a country that, for some reason or other, had a lot of power and was able to use that power to enjoy life. Romans enjoyed life by indulging in luxuries and extravagant services, lavish feasts, and of course the infamous orgies. Above all else, the aim was to delight the senses, which for some reason or other had a negative effect on morals.

To the modern observer, this is what Roman decadence consisted in, and consequently modern decadence retains the same meaning. It is the state of seeking pleasure in spite of some (unknown) downsides. Since the downsides are unknown, they can be easily neglected and so decadence becomes a static, uncomplicated thing, something one can pick up every once in a while if he wants a treat, like a chocolate sundae.

But complexity is what makes decadence what it is. It is the process of falling away from something, so there must be a ‘something’ in the first place and movement away from it. There is discord in decadence and that fact cannot be neglected when considering it. We think that their hedonistic self-indulgence is what made Romans decadent, but it only made them decadent because it was directly contrary to what had made Rome great in the first place—stoic confidence and ambition. Ultimately, decadence was the conflict that was going on between Rome and its past.

Looking at decadence this way allows us to be objective. That is, we do not have to use our own standards to determine if a culture is deteriorating, we simply use the standards of the culture we are looking at. If a society is fighting its cultural roots, the objective conclusion is that the culture is decadent; no argument is needed. Objectivity is integral in making the survey impersonal, which is helpful because we won’t have to worry that calling any given culture decadent (including our own) is a personal or emotional attack. It is a matter of fact; it is cut-and-dry.

This also means that decadence can take many forms depending on what the original culture was made of. If the original culture was made up of a love for nature, for instance, decadence would consist in an anti-nature sentiment or at least absent-mindedness when it comes to the natural environment and the life-giving processes. Simply discover what a culture consisted in and if the attitudes of its people contradict those sentiments, then the culture is decadent.

Of course, cultures are rarely made up of a single attribute such as a love for nature and so decadence cannot be described simply as the contradiction of a single attribute. On the contrary, civilizations like Rome are made up of several, even dozens of characteristic aims and so decadence means that several, even dozens of characteristic aims are contradicted. Rome was not simply a culture of stoic confidence and ambition, it was a culture of law and justice, politics and a civil duty that was reflected in the Roman’s fidelity to their leaders. It was a culture of martial excellence (centurion, legion), inventiveness (iron working), and expansionist ethos. It was a religious people well before Christianity took hold and it was an artistic people especially in the fields of architecture and oratory. Roman decadence, then, would mean contradicting all of these endeavors, not just one or two as hedonistic self-indulgence did. Decadence would include lawlessness and injustice, and an aversion to politics and civil duty. It would include apathy toward the military, invention, and expansion. It would include disdain for religion and art.

Decadence is as complex as culture is because it is the reversal of a given culture. The number of components must be equal in both. The open-eyed reader will note, however, that complexity does not imply inconsistency. There is cohesion in the endeavors of a culture and, in turn, there is also consistency in its decline. Several Roman endeavors meshed quite well and were united even if they were not uniform. This was especially true with oratory and politics. Those two faculties supported and directed one another and so it makes sense that the culture would feature them together. And this cohesiveness ran throughout Roman culture. Architecture may seem to be unrelated to expansionism, for instance, but architecture, especially the very stately and monumental Roman style of architecture, is a powerful expression of physical presence, which is crucial for any society hoping to expand and influence others.

Even the endeavors that appear to contradict one another—most notably, religion and martial excellence—fit together to make the culture whole and solid. The reason they seem to contradict each other is because we are using our own perception of the two, not that of the Romans. To us, religion is a love for fellow men while war is a hatred for and destruction of fellow men. In very direct ways, the two clash. To Romans, though, religion was a way of interacting with and proving oneself to the powers that be and war was an expression of capability and physical prowess, something that was wanted by all and respected by even one’s opponents in an age of physicality such as Rome’s. Using the latter perspective, one might well conclude that religion and martial excellence could exist together. Indeed, since they are both a manifestation of man’s significance, they can be seen as one in the same endeavor.

This fact is the key to understanding a culture and its decadence. Two disparate endeavors like religion and martial excellence can work together if a society regards them as relating to man in the same way. They work together because they both reiterate man’s significance—they are two ways of fulfilling man. Ultimately, that is what culture is for; culture is the way a group of people fulfill the innate instincts in themselves. Religion and martial excellence are prime examples of such a broad undertaking. Expanding the scope, one can see that this is the purpose of all Rome’s cultural endeavors: oratory, architecture, expansion, invention, civil duty, politics, justice, and law were all directed at the fulfillment of man. Expanding it further, one can see that all cultural endeavors, no matter what age or region of the world they take place in, are directed at the same end. Throughout the world and history, all cultures in existence were and are based in the single fundamental goal of fulfilling man.

It is a challenging concept, especially to one who is quite aware that cultures clash throughout the world today and those that have always clashed throughout history. Islam and Christianity are pillars in culture in their own ways and seem to always have conflicted. How can it be that these two ways of life share the single aim of fulfilling man? The answer is that man is seen as something different in each culture and so the fulfillment of man in one culture would not necessarily agree with doing the same in the other. The raw premise is the same for Christians and Muslims—we are all human beings with the same instincts and capacities—but due to unique environments and experiences, we learn to view ourselves as something other than that natural man. We are no longer simply thinking, feeling beings with passions and desires, we are beef-eaters or berry-eaters with a god who naturally looks and speaks like us. Looking at ourselves this way, we can learn easier and live more efficiently, but, once we affiliate ourselves with what surrounds us, we can no longer relate to those who do not share our surroundings. Lacking unity, clashes befall.

One could speculate that such clashes are avoidable if those people who make up the cultures can change their perspective back to a simpler, more basic view of what man is. If they did, all would regard man the same and the things we do for fulfillment would benefit everyone mutually. Man will always have a fundamental core that can unite everyone and so we retain the possibility of such an outcome. It is only matter for speculation, though, because it is our nature to regard things through our senses and, as such, our physical, tangible surroundings inevitably play a role in who we think we are. It is possible to view life from another perspective, but it is extremely difficult. And so we can assume that societies will view mankind differently from others, cultures will be built differently, and they will likely clash with other cultures.

The intent for either civilization is not necessarily to hinder the other’s fulfillment, but rather to secure their own. Since its fulfillment doesn’t mean the fulfillment of all men, only their own kind of men, other societies are discounted. The clash often results in the two cultures simply staying away from one another, but if they require the same resources for fulfillment, for instance, if two bordering cultures require the same plot of land for religious worship, it is probable that the two sides go to war. In order to secure its own fulfillment, a society must destroy another.

This human condition is also the reason for a clash between a society and its own culture—decadence. An environment can change in time as much as it does in space, and when it does, a society’s perception of man may change with it, rendering its culture ineffectual. The old culture fulfilled a different kind of man and so it is no longer useful to the society. The clash may result in the new man ignoring the old culture, but for good reason, it most often results in a compulsion to destroy the culture. The culture is lodged on top of the society and its institutions blanket it, so during decadence the culture is automatically oppressive and burdensome; it automatically challenges the society for resources. In order for the new man to be fulfilled, he must overthrow the old culture.

And he doesn’t do so piecemeal; he goes at it with all his effort. Oppression is the least acceptable state for man and he will do anything to escape from it. So his whole life is devoted to destroying the culture. In his fervor, he destroys all that is old and traditional, not discerning whether some components can still be used. The organizations and institutions that make up a culture are interlocked anyway, having been born of the same intent and so removing the most immediately oppressive ones necessitates removing them all.

Unlike the culture clash that happens between two separate societies, this clash consists in one single group of people that uses one set of organizations and institutions. As such, all the rebelling party has to use to destroy the culture is the culture itself. Its institutions are deprecated by use of its traditions; its infrastructure destroyed by its technology; its politicians are denounced by its arts and its arts are condemned by its religion. Among other things, this paradox makes decadence limited and inefficient, the outcome of which is a tedious, often aimless and self-defeating process. Indeed, self-defeat is a direct result of decadence since the culture being destroyed is one’s own.

In a more general sense, self-defeat is the essence of decadence. Since culture is the fulfillment of mankind, decadence must be the opposite of that fulfillment. In the process of tearing down a culture’s institutions and traditions, acute decadents will dig to the heart of the old culture to find out what drives it. Overturning that driving force will overturn the culture more effectively. The heart of the old culture is one variation or other of man’s fulfillment and so overturning the culture means frustrating and obstructing mankind. Decadents carry on despite the fact that the process entails harming fellow citizens and most likely themselves. The culture is old and oppressive and it must be destroyed no matter what it takes.

It is clear that the world is topographically and climatically diverse. Deserts border jungles and mountains border plains. We know, then, that two neighboring civilizations can develop in radically different environments leading each to view man in radically different ways, this being the source of clashes between two cultures. The source of clashes within a single culture is more difficult to uncover. That is because the climate and topography a civilization develops in don’t change to a significant degree in the time it takes that culture to develop. They change, but the process take several thousands of years or more so and no civilization can be said to have lasted that long. Since the climate and topography stay the same, one would reason that the people should maintain a consistent view of what man is and cultures should not decay. But they do decay as if it is a part of their nature. There must be another reason for the shift in perspective. That reason is the culture itself.

With the addition of technologies, sciences, systems, governments, institutions, and organizations, the environment around a given people changes and, in turn, its perspective of man is also bound to change. With a new perspective, a society realizes that it requires something new for fulfillment and decadence of the old culture ensues. In this paradoxical way, a society’s culture is the source of its own demise. It is tragic because the aim of culture is the fulfillment of man and it seemingly cannot help but to create a situation of self-destruction. But culture is an abstraction because it is a physical, tangible way of accomplishing a non-physical, non-tangible aim in the fulfillment of man, and any time there is an abstraction, the chances are that the idea will be lost and possibly reversed somewhere along the way. When a society builds a culture, the aim of fulfilling mankind is first and foremost, but after time, that culture grows in size, additions are made, and it becomes a living thing in itself that outshines the initial goal. Focus is turned toward the institutions and technologies that make up the culture and they become the goal instead. When attention has been diverted away from fulfilling man, the former goal can be neglected and subsequent efforts begin to go against it.

The phenomenon can be illustrated with a specific example of modern technology, the stoplight. The device was invented to help facilitate what would otherwise be a chaotic interchange of automobile traffic. With it, cars go in turn, making an intersection a more organized process and reducing the risk of collision manifold. The flow of traffic is an integral component of the modern city and so anything that can help improve that flow will be profitable to the city as a whole. In this way, the stoplight is a cultural tool aimed at fulfilling mankind and for this reason, we have installed stoplights at just about every intersection in every American city. But not all intersections are busy enough for stoplights to be necessary. They would be better suited with a stop sign or a yield sign. Other intersections are quite busy during rush hour but are not busy at all in the middle of the night. In either instance, stoplights don’t assist the flow of traffic—they debilitate it. Because of this malfunctioning system, a car can be stopped for a minute or more even if there is no cross traffic. I commonly witness a situation where twenty or thirty cars are halted on one street with no cross traffic in sight. The waste will rightly outrage anyone productive and revolt is tempting.

From facilitation to encumbrance, the stoplight can be seen as an emblem of cultural cycles. The reason it seems like an encumbrance these days is because we no longer have the perspective of traffic as chaotic and dangerous. Things designed for our safety, then, like stoplights aren’t seen as beneficial to us. They stop our progress and so they are tedious things that we have to put up with. And so we defy stoplights, grunting at them if we are halted and sometimes running through them illegally if fed up. We do this, despite the irony that, in large part, stoplights helped us get to the point of control and safety that we take them for granted.

Culture does not shift and grow as easily as its society does, so when a society does develop, the culture inevitably becomes unfitting. Decadence, then, is a necessary consequence given the nature of societies and cultures. Rome presents a clear example of this. The civilization was built on the notion that a people must have stoic confidence and ambition to thrive in the world. Rome’s politics, religion, and arts all emphasized that premise and so Rome was built on unparalleled vigor and drive. As Rome became the greatest power in the world, stoic confidence and ambition was no longer necessary for success—Rome was going to be successful no matter what the people did. And so the people sought fulfillment elsewhere. Finding it in physical indulgence, the Romans fell into decadence.

Roman decadence was said to have spanned from around the time of Julius Caesar through to the empire’s fall in the 5C AD when barbarian hordes pounded incessantly and ultimately sacked Rome. The fall and all the destruction that resulted from it came not as an independent event, but as a direct result of decadence. It was because the people of Rome were weak that made them vulnerable to the barbarian invasions. Rome was no longer a country of proud and ambitious people, but rather of a vulgar and exhausted population almost eager for their own defeat. And it was because they were weak that Rome’s influence on neighboring clans diminished, thence propelling the barbarians to attack. The great city-state was no longer a beacon of protection and sustenance that shone in the eyes of other peoples in nearby lands, but rather a spoiled and burdensome populace that demanded upheaval.

It is quite possible the barbarians were right to sack Rome when they did. Indeed, many influential Romans welcomed the empire’s dissolution. They knew, like the barbarians had felt, that Rome was failing to live up to its ideals. What has also become apparent is that Rome was the last holdout of a larger and more general kind of social organization in the city-state, a social organization that had begun to lose effectiveness in the time of Greece and only continued as a result of Rome’s great charisma. For hundreds of years, the size of cities and density of the population had changed so much that the city-state form of civilization had become insufficient, giving more impetus for the great fall.

As the representative of such vast social changes, Roman decadence is said to have represented the end of the ancient era. Nothing new was ready to take the place of the city-state and that is why it took so long for the Roman Empire to disintegrate. Even after the vision of Christendom took hold of the early medieval mind, it took some hundred years to begin implementing it. Falling away from a culture is a long and tedious process in which the people involved take advantage of every opportunity available to gratify themselves in resistance. The decadent condition allows for great freedom and the remnants of the fallen culture are nutritive, so the potential for new ideas is high, but the talented and progressive who promise a way out of the bleak situation are wasted in the aim of self-indulgence or destroyed by others striving for their own gratification.

Eventually, though, a solid idea defeats its suppressors and influences enough of the society to become the central foundation of civilization, pulling people together and providing support for them. This new culture holds until society’s makeup changes again, at which time the culture will decay once more. When the Roman Empire disintegrated, it was followed by Medieval Christendom, which served as a dominant and suitable structure for society in the Middle Ages. Toward the end of the 15C, thanks to the Renaissance, life had changed dramatically once again and soon enough, Christendom and its feudal system were no longer appropriate and had become as morally reprehensible as the late Roman Empire had been. Once again, a new system was to be installed and, with it, a new culture. That new culture, so-called the Modern Era by historians of the 16 and 17C, with its secularized nation-state and devotion to liberty and equality, lasted from around 1500 AD to the present, having completed its own deterioration in the last few decades.

With regard to this terse history, it can be said that culture goes through a cycle. It is a succession of rising and falling with the culture thriving when it fits society and disintegrating when it no longer does so. The cultural cycle is dependent on society because it is made of, for, and by the people in that society and since people and societies are growing, changing things, it only makes sense that a culture cannot persist forever. As such, old cultures must be shed and new ones instated. It is a fact of social nature and the best one can do during periods of transition is to realize what is going on and adjust mindfully.

The cultures that are shed during decadence are often regarded as evil or corrupt for the simple reason that they do not fit the emerging society. This is unfortunate because the old cultures did fit past societies and they were always aimed at the good. When one considers Rome at its highest, one sees that the people aimed for the virtuous and productive ends of valor and nobility, statesmanship and law. Those ends should be considered good no matter what means the age provides for them because they suggest the fulfillment of man’s potential. Just because a society cannot live up to those aims does not mean that the original aims are rotten. We should still seek to fulfill man’s potential; we’ll just need to do so in another way. Referencing old cultures helps us do this. The new society must figure out how the old aims fulfilled man’s potential, the practice of which will help illustrate how to do the same in their own condition.

A society in transition is not unlike a growing child who must replace his wardrobe so that his clothes fit a larger body. When he starts growing, the clothes become too tight and awkward. A parent then buys clothes to fit him at that stage and most likely will have to replace those as the child keeps moving toward adulthood. The cleaver parent might buy clothes that are too big for the child in order to skip having multiple purchases, but the clothes don’t fit in that case either. In any case, the adolescent is going to be awkward because of the unfitness. It is a natural condition of puberty and certainly not limited to the wardrobe. Nothing fits during adolescence especially when it comes to the early teenager’s body. Bones start expanding disproportionately, muscles start stretching and filling in, hormones and fluids start pumping, and hair mysteriously appears where it shouldn’t. Puberty is an absolute mess of unfitness and it is a wonder how teenagers survive the spurt.

Of course, they do survive and after it is all complete, they are left with a fully-functioning adult body, much more capable than the child’s. This is the reward of the transition and is well worth the pain that one must go through to achieve it. Things fit for an adult, clothes look good on them, bones and muscles match each other and together match the athletic aims of the person. Everything has a use, especially the hormones and fluids, which become facilitate the most important functions of adulthood.

All forms of decadence promise a similar reward. As a result of cultural decadence, societies become free to create a new culture that better fits how the society is shaped at the time. Once that is achieved, cultural institutions will work correctly and as intended. Everything will have a use, things will be accomplished efficiently, and, as a function of the newly expanded society, greater accomplishments will be possible. In this way, progress is very much a reality of the culture cycle and the growing pains of decadence are just necessary evils in the process.

Societies and cultures are complex and so their cycles are complex as well. To grasp the whole of any historical transition requires much more space than was granted here. Generally, though, it is enough to say that cultures rise and fall and what dictates the cycle is fitness. Cultures rise when they fit the society and they fall when they no longer do. When looking at our current state, it is important to keep this concept in mind. Fitness, or rather unfitness, is what brings about decadence in the first place as the old culture no longer fits the society and it is emphasized during decadence as a society must destroy itself to overthrow the old culture. A survey of our deteriorating culture, then, is nothing more than an examination of how the various institutions that make up our culture do not fit our society and how the actions of decadents don’t fit human beings.