Two kinds of decadence

Why, at a time when people say and the media reports that people are voting their values do we have the most corrupt, aggressive and destructive government in our history? The answer, I believe, lies in a cultural area so heavily glossed by prejudice that it escapes notice.

It is frequently alleged by Christian fundamentalists, the people who have made values a political issue, that contemporary American society is decadent and hence devoid of all moral values. It is difficult not to agree that the charge of decadence is well taken, When amusement so pervasively infiltrates every aspect of our lives, even the news programs; when every effort of Madison Avenue is used to divert attention from underlying realities; when ‘reality shows’ are staged; when, as recently charged, You Tube, MySpace, etc. are turning teenagers into a mass of narcissistic bubbleheads; when despite impending oil shortages this country produces the largest vehicles in its history; when, but one could go on and on. To this the religious right opposes their religion and its values, often called ‘family’ values to gloss their origin and claim extended ‘value’ territory. But does the apposition exist? I will argue that it does not. Fundamentalist religion is as much a part of decadence as the above mentioned cultural characteristics. Decadence is not merely a focus on material things. That has always been the case in American culture. We call it getting ahead.

Jacques Barzun in his book From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life gives the following definition of decadence. "When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.” I think this reveals a little deeper understanding of decadence than is normally the case. This is a culture that has lost its intellectual curiosity and its attachment to reality. It indicates a society devoid of purpose and thought. This is in contrast to the America of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries when, despite gross inequalities, racism, and women as second class citizens, there was a belief in progress and in the science that obviously made it possible. A decadent society is at great risk, because among other things, it is into this morass that fundamentalism introduces its message of certainty and values of black and white. In contrast to the element of doubt involved in all science and in dealing with reality, fundamentalism offers certainty justified by faith, which is to say certainty supported by nothing more than a belief in certainty. There is no search for understanding or confidence in science as an instrument for investigating reality. Indeed, there is a dispensing with the motion of reality itself in favor of a satisfying myth. This ossifies a culture as it did in the Dark Ages. Decadence and fundamentalism are just two sides of the same coin of giving up. Neville Shute identified this human response to futility in his novel On the Beach. In the novel World War III has taken place and as a result of the nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States has generated an enormous nuclear cloud that is encircling the globe as it is carried by the jet stream. As it progresses eastward communications from the areas in its path begin to go silent. The Australia/New Zealand area will be the last to be destroyed. The final scene in this progress of futility is a gathering of two groups of people on the beach. One group is holding a massive party the other is warning of the immanence of God’s wrath. Both, in terms of reality are futile. The only difference is that one is honest.

This search for certainty at any cost is why values replace knowledge as a societal determinant. Values do not require evidence. They are articulated in terms of absolutes. This is why a society that pursues values at any cost generates absolutist government. Such a society must turn to oppression and violence to impose its values on a world in constant flux. What they wind up with is a society just as decadent as the one they fled, but now dominated by an arbitrary and dictatorial government. A case in point is the banal art of the Nazi regime. This vacuity of a decadent society is one of the major causes of this America’s disastrous adventure into imperialism in the Mideast and the increasing domestic totalitarianism. This adventure was not forced upon us. I submit we accepted it in the profound absence of any other pressing or motivating societal purpose. At root we had nothing else of importance to do. The fundamentalist antidote to decadence is simply another form of decadence compounded by dictatorial rigidity and the human suffering that flows from it.

Bob Newhard