Decadent civilizations vs. vigorous ones (adapted from Daniel Greenfield)

 Civilizations go through three stages; barbaric, vigorous, and decadent.

Barbaric civilizations are everywhere (see middle east). Vigorous civilizations are a rarer breed. They change the world.  Unfortunately they don't last.

America used to be vigorous when it was a land that prized individual freedom, producing at record rates and becoming the world's #1 power.  Now America is rapidly becoming decadent. And decadent civilizations fall to barbarians.

Decadent societies are obsessed with laws and celebrities.  They have a million laws, but those laws are applied selectively:  The powerful are allowed to break the law without penalty, while ordinary people who do so are harshly punished.   You see this every day.

Decadents have used their sophistication to reject objective truths, so they cannot have universal laws. Instead they stuff their million laws with so many loopholes ("legalisms") that the powerful--who are connected and can afford the best lawyers--can always get off.  It's no exaggeration to say that in a decadent society, success usually depends on a person's ability to get away with breaking serious laws.

Decadent societies pass so many bizarre, obscure laws that everyone violates one or more.  There are so many that they have to be interpreted by a specialized caste.  Corruption becomes commonplace.  Judges become willing tools of the powerful. Bribes and black markets become routine. This is true in all things.

While vigorous civilizations discover new things, decadent civilizations endlessly categorize and re-categorize old things to make them conform to intellectual fads.  Thus we now have fat people (and the virtue-signalling elites) blasting anyone who doesn't embrace the "hip, cool cleverness" of being fat.  (See "Lizzo")

Vigorous civilizations understand that corruption can only be defeated by open debate.  Decadent civilizations don't permit open debate, thus ensuring that corruption flourishes and is never punished.  When the policies of a decadent society fail--as they inevitably do--no one is allowed to determine why a policy failed, or to change the policy.  Indeed, even *asking* why a policy of the ruling party failed is derided as anti-social, treason, insurrection.

The vigorous civilization is both confident and skeptical. It understands that just because a majority of "scientists" believe X is true doesn't make it so.  Citizens of vigorous societies also recognize the importance of mistakes in getting to the right result. Decadents and barbarians don't acknowledge mistakes. For both, it is a matter of honor. For decadents, admitting a mistake would show that the "leaders" were NOT omniscient--something those leaders cannot allow.

Members of decadent civilizations always believe they're smarter than those who lived before them.  Thus they constantly rewrite history to reflect their alleged wisdom.  This inevitably results in denouncing the achievements of their vigorous ancestors.  So instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, they condemn the claimed flaws of their ancestors, to obscure their own worthlessness.  

They consider trashing the achievements of their ancestors to be an achievement in and of itself.  In essence, a decadent civilization endlessly tries to tear down "Daddy."  You've seen this, with the howling demand of the "woke" mob to tear down all monuments to Washington, Jefferson and other Founders. To decadents this seems perfectly normal and reasonable.

Much of the work by the so-called "elites" of a decadent society is updating older works to make them conform to the latest politically-correct form, as when a classic character from earlier works is remade as female, black, gay--or more recently, transgender.  Classic earlier works that can't be made to conform are often banned, such as "To Kill a Mockingbird," or "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."  You know this to be true.

The decadent civilization does not have fixed truths.  Citizens are trained--literally, by the school system--that clever citizens apply "subjective morality" to situations.  So for example, in conventional thinking theft is wrong, but when couched as "reparations" not only does it become perfectly reasonable to take money from one group and give it to another for a wrong done over a century earlier, to no one still alive--and in which the group being stolen from played no part whatsoever--supporting this is seen as not only tolerable, but as a mark of a citizen's great virtue and sophisticated thinking.

Decadent societies deconstruct objective truths, processing them through a complex array of intellectual justifications. These justifications create unrecognized contradictions, which eventually create disaster.  Anyone who questions the justifications or points out the contradictions is villified as anti-social.

Every action is routed through identity politics.  Responses are emotional, ignoring rational reasoning.  Decadents are totally convinced of their own superiority and have no self-awareness of the flaws in their reasoning.

Vigorous civilizations thrive on objectivity and long term thinking.  By contrast, decadents reject objectivity, so are incapable seeing the long-term results of bad policies.  If decadent civilizations could engage in long term thinking, they wouldn't be doomed. If they could engage in objective reasoning, they wouldn't be slaves to the opinion-shaping media under a lawless tyranny.

Because vigorous civilizations valued the nuclear family, decadent civilizations overtly reject everything about it.  Thus they have fewer children, and more children out of wedlock--which produces more barbaric behavior.  Perversions multiply in decadent civilizations, and perhaps surprisingly, also among the elites, who should have enough education to know better.  And of course perverted elites spread those values through the entertainment industry, making ghastly behavior wildly popular.

One of the huge inevitable results of perversity is that the opinion-shapers are compelled to find new taboos to violate every time they succeed in making an earlier taboo socially accepted.  The attack against taboos is couched as a "struggle for civil rights."  Example: gay marriage, then when that's won, making it against the law for parents to refuse to let the school industry give their 16-year-old hormone blockers, then opposits-sex hormones.  Yes, that's already happening.

Decadents have been schooled to demand rewards without effort.  As a result, since success usually requires hard work, most decadents are constantly unhappy. Because they believe they're entitled to happiness without effort, then except for a lucky few, they blame others for their unhappiness.  They seek revenge against a cruel world that they believe deprived them of the happiness society told them they deserve.

Citizens of decadent civilizations unconsciously conclude that their society has no future--that all the great opportunities and adventures are in the past.  As a result, they become obsessed with the grave threat that will end it all--like the Chinese virus.  While vigorous civilizations boldly stride forward into the unknown, decadents are nervous and unsure.

Vigorous civilizations pursue meaningful risks. Decadent civilizations pursue meaningless ones. For a vigorous civilization, risk often brings great accomplishment.  But since few members of decadent civilizations think serious, meaningful risks are worth taking, there are fewer great accomplishments.  Example: If today's society had existed in 1960, does anyone believe congress would have appropriated money to put Americans on the moon?

A vigorous civilization rushes out to deal with threats. A decadent civilization imprisons itself out of fear.

So...as an example of all this, here's an interview by the vaunted, opinion-shaping, Trump-hating, Daddy-hating, socialism-loving New York Fucking Times, from 2015.

The British producer who calls himself [name] plugged in a laptop-size Swedish synthesizer and handed me the headphones. Then he pushed its square buttons to trigger sounds. One suggested a sped-up Ping-Pong tournament played with water droplets; another was a burst of jerkily syncopated clanks. There were the nibbling, fizzing sounds that start his 2014 single “Lemonade,” and then a whoosh rising to a hiss that ended with a sudden attack — “Like a balloon popping,” [name] said.

Sounds like those — clean, brittle, changeable, often atonal but also tinged with childish glee — go zinging and swooping through the eight songs on [name's] debut album. Yet the songs also feature perky pop vocals and neatly delineated verses and choruses. The album is a head-spinning collision of manic electronic innovation and bubblegum directness that’s both high-impact and high-concept: a glossy surface with deeper implications. For [name], the music is NOT a satire or comment on pop [really?], but a distillate of what pop could be.

The music is giddy fun, but it’s also an invitation to consider pop’s pleasures, structures and gender expectations.

This is what passes for "serious writing" in our new, decadent age.  And...wait...what's that last phrase? "An invitation to consider pop's pleasures...and gender expectations?  Does pop music actually have "gender expectations"?  How could non-verbal music convey that, exectly?  

Here's the cute twist:  just after the interview, the person the Times just lavishly praised came out as transgender.  Whereupon the pop music community...swooned.  The person was praised to the skies as a "visionary."  Listen to the "creations" and decide for yourself. 

The Times went on to call the person "a groundbreaking producer and performer whose music distilled speed, noise, melody, clarity and catchiness..."   Fawn much, Times?  

Here's NPR's version of "serious journalism":  "...melding the worlds of house, techno, trance, pop and the avant-garde into something brazenly new and undeniable."  

This is what passes for serious journalism today.  Do ya think this indicates a vigorous society, or a decadent one?

The "groundbreaking," "visionary,"  who "distilled speed and noise"

--
Adapted from "In the City of the Decadents" by Daniel Greenfield, April 13, 2016
He caught the sense of America's future--the Media's carefully orchestrated panic due to the Chinese virus scam of 2020, continuing today--with perfect accuracy.

http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2016/04/in-city-of-decadents.html