American Decadence—Part 3 of 4

Civilized people have a certain look. It's a reflection of that dignity that comes from their values and their knowledge of what is and is not appropriate to human nature, that is, the kind of being a human being is—the way one dresses and presents himself is a reflection of who and what he is, of his values, and his sense of the importance of decency and integrity, of being the best he can possibly be.

If you do not think that is what civilized people look like, I agree. Then what are we to make of the fact that the last two or three generations have completely embraced this mode of "expressing" themselves, of showing the world who and what they are. It is the mark of the age to permanently mar one's skin with scars, pigments, designs, and writing and to have bits of metal piercing every imaginable part of the body, including, the ears, tongue, nose, lips, eye brows, navel, nipples, and genitals. "The average age for the first tattoo is 14. The youngest tattoo enthusiast ... encountered was eight."

The kind of savagery one expects in the uncivilized who go naked, mistaking bodily mutilation for beauty, is part and parcel of the "culture" of our present day savages. Teenagers beating and murdering the weak and helpless for entertainment, is more than a "a vile teen fad;" it is manifestation of a rotten society—these are children, 13-19, beating and killing people, like these two teen barbarians beating a homeless man, for "amusement," or because they are, "bored." There could hardly be a more glaring illustration America's cultural disintegration than the crudeness and viciousness of its youth, and there is no excuse for not seeing it—there were 185 separate newspaper articles describing 95 separate incidents of teens beating or murdering homeless people, both men and women, in every part of the country in 2006.

In 1954, a rare New England hurricane, Carol, passed through. I was a young teenager when this storm ripped through my home town, cutting off electricity for several days, destroying buildings, cars, and boats, and killing at least 65 people in New England. Carol was the most expensive hurricane to ever strike the United States up to that date (1954). Losses were nearly $500 million.($6.4 billion in 2004 dollars).

Despite the destruction and loss of power, there was no general federal or state emergency and no agencies rescuing people or property. People managed because they were resourceful--and there was something else. There were no personal assaults, no looting, no robberies—why would there be?

I lived at the end of a long dead end street. There was no power or phone service, which I remember worried my mother a great deal, because my father was at work about 10 miles away and had no way to communicate with us. He arrived home late that night, because many streets were closed because of flooding, downed trees and power lines. There were some trees blown over on my street, but otherwise there was little damage to houses or cars. The loss of power, however, was a concern.

In general, neighbors on that street were friendly, and though they would frequently chat and exchange greetings, they mostly minded their own business and went about their lives fairly independently. After the hurricane, however, they shared a common problem; everyone had refrigerators full of food that would spoil in short order if not cooked. This was New England, after all, and one thing almost everyone had in their refrigerators was fish and salt pork. There was another problem; everyone on that street had electric stoves, except my mother. She did not like electric stoves and had paid to have gas piped to our house for her "old fashioned" gas stove. She used to get teased about it.

After the hurricane, they never teased her about it again. What those resourceful people did was to bring all their fish, milk, and salt pork to our house, together with any potatoes and onions they had, and on my mother’s "old fashioned" gas stove made a huge fish chowder. There must have been at least a dozen different kinds of fish in that chowder.

For three days, until the electricity came back on, everyone on that street would gather in my yard where the neighbors had brought tables and chairs and salads and bread and any other food they might have, to enjoy the most delicious fish chowder anyone could ever remember eating. It may only have been the atmosphere created by all those decent people helping themselves by their mutual cooperation, but whatever it was, everyone agreed it was the best they'd ever had. Almost all of the adults from that neighborhood have passed on, but those I occasionally meet still remark about that wonderful chowder they'll never forget. They don't mention the hurricane at all.

In 2005 the hurricane, Katrina, struck the Gulf Coast. Like all disasters, it was the time the true character of people came out. "Saint Bernard Parish sheriff's officials'" said they had, "arrested about 50 people in some 20 cases of looting since Hurricane Katrina."

"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin "ordered 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission Wednesday night and return to the streets of the beleaguered city to stop looting that has turned increasingly hostile.

"Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, blue jeans, tennis shoes, TV sets - even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened."

If you think the fact those hurricanes were in different parts of the country matter, compare the record of Katrina with the record of Audrey that passed through the same area in 1957—there is no record of any looting, breaking and entering, or assaults related to Audrey—they were a different kind of people.

I sometimes hear the attitude expressed that what appears to be decadence is just human nature. After all there has always been prostitution, visciousness, and sexual assaults in the world—and its true, because throughout most of the world for most of its recorded history people have mostly been uncivilized, at best semi-barbarian, at worst total savages. Truly civilized society has been but a flash on the screen of history, a flash that is about to be extinguished.

Historically, every society that has achieved some level of cultural development, has ultimately reached a stage of decline and decadence that was either the immediate cause of that society's collapse, or producing a society so decayed, it had no strength to repel some invading or conquering outside power. All of the characteristics of a decayed culture and society I've described in America today is nothing new, however, it has always been a part of declining cultures. From the obsession with sex and sexuality to child prostitution, every society that has ultimately collapsed into vicious chaos has exhibited the same characteristics.

The destruction of Pompeii was a natural event, but its cultural decadence reflected the decadence that permeated Roman society, a forecast of the pending fall of Rome, four hundred years later. Pompeii's pornographic art is just like today's. [ WARNING—The following links are very explicit, and very clinical, and very offensive.] For example, this, this, or these depictions.]

The argument that Roman decadence itself declined in the 200 years preceding the sacking of Rome by the Goths in 410 A.D. simply ignores history. In spite of the attempt to Christianize Roman society, paganism and all the vile practices associated with it that dominated Roman beliefs and practices. Like Gibbons, the superstitious Romans blamed the Christians, in defense of which Augustine wrote The City of God, in which he describes the decadence that dominated that culture. "Before her shrine [Coelestis], in which her image is seen, and amidst a vast crowd ... standing closely packed together, we were intensely interested spectators of the games (shows or plays) which were going on, and saw, as we pleased to turn the eye, on this side a grand display of harlots, on the other the virgin goddess: we saw this virgin worshipped with prayer and with obscene rites. There we saw no shamefaced mimes, no actress overburdened with modesty: all that the obscene rites demanded was fully complied with. We were plainly shown what was pleasing to the virgin deity. ... And yet this licentiousness—which, if practised in one's home, could only be done there in secret—was practised as a public lesson in the temple; and if any modesty remained in men, it was occupied in marvelling that wickedness which men could not unrestrainedly commit should be part of the religious teaching of the gods." These rites, as well as the plays of the day, consisted of both actual and feigned sex acts.

If you have never heard of the Chandelas of India, it may be because no one really knows what became of them. There is lots of conjecture, but in fact, they simply disappeared sometime around 1370 A.D. However, we do know one thing about them, over a 100 year period, from 950 AD - 1050 AD, they built 85 spectacularly elaborate temples, (only 22 remain), in Khajuraho. The temples are covered with exquisitely carved statues, 10% of which are explicitly and perversely erotic. [WARNING—The following links are very explicit, and very clinical, and very offensive.] The Chandelas' obsession with sex, as illustrated in these temples and statues, is typical of all decaying cultures and societies.

Historians and commentators frequently attribute the collapse of advanced societies, at least in part, to their obsession with sex and eroticism. While the observation that the obsession is almost always part of a culture in decline, as someone has observed, the death of all advanced cultures is preceded by a, "sexual revolution," it is not so much a cause of the collapse (though it certainly contributes to the weakening of a society), but more a symptom of a much more fundamental kind of decay—the loss or corruption of the values and principles that were basis of that society's success. The so called sexual revolutions are never progress to a higher view of sex, but always a reversion to the lowest and most common views. As Theodore Dalrymple observes, "All animals have sex, only man makes love," that is, until a sexual revolution removes "love" from the formula, and all sex reverts to its lowest animal forms.

When the basis for objective abstract reasoning has been taken away, as it has in our society by postmodernist relativism and PC multiculturalism, the principles and values which are the source of meaning, purpose, and long-term objectives in human life are lost and you are left with a society comprised of men who value nothing, reverence nothing, believe in nothing, and live for nothing except the pleasures and entertainments of the moment. Such men can find no meaning in any desires or any pleasures except their immediate gratification, which is hedonism—it is why sex, in such societies, always becomes an end in itself and why they go to such extreme's attempting to give hedonistic sex meaning by calling it, "art," or, "liberation," or even, "religion." If you wonder about the commonness that pervades all so called "celebrations of sex," in such societies, when stripped of their glamorization and sentimentality, it is because they are all the same thing—sex as an end in itself can never provide, beyond the immediate physical gratification, the satisfaction of the most fundamental of human needs for meaning, purpose, and something worth living for beyond the next orgasm.

IMHO, "sexual decadence" is a symptom of cultural decay because it's indicative of a culture with nothing better to do - a society that has become the victim of the success of it's own government in making decisions for the people, and mitigating the consequences of the decisions they are allowed to make.

Thanks for the post. I missed the other installments but will go back and read them.

How many of our kids growing up today can name the Seven Deadly Sins? Whether they are mortal or not can be debated, but I am convinced that any one of them - or combination of them - can destroy a person’s life: pride, anger, envy, lust, gluttony, avarice, and sloth. Controlling them is central to the concept of individual virtue which itself is central to a civilized society.

If our Founding Fathers (or even our great-grandparents) could see us now, they would be both amazed and appalled.

I tend to agree with this author, but to some degree, I caveat that agreement. I think that people have always be obsessed with sex. Those hormones are programmed biologically to many humans do that, particularly in our youth. What society and culture does is establish morals and rules concerning human behavior. Usually the morals and rules are connected to very practical living criterion. The structure of the family is different in different cultures. The Roman culture was very Paternal. Paterfamilias, meant that the male head of the family had the right of life or death over all members of the family. In the Celtic or Nordic cultures, women were held to be more on an equal footing with men. The structure of the culture developed rules that were changed when Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe.

Gibbon felt that Christianity depleted the original martial culture of Rome that was one of its strengths. Gibbon was not an atheist, but an objective historian. He may have been right. Rome’s religion did not endure and that was a big reason for its moral decline. Compare Rome in the 3rd Century BC to Rome in the 1st Century AD, and the moral decline was huge.
I have often wondered why Christianity did not rescue Rome from its moral decline. It is a complicated subject, but Christianity did not become the official religion of Rome until Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD. It was not until the late 4th Century that Christians were in the majority in the Empire. By that time, political and military deterioration was hard to reverse, in the West. However, Christianity may have saved the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire, which endured until 1453, when it took the Muslim Turks to cause its demise.

The lesson for today. In my opinion, Christianity is declining in the West (number of true Christians). Could this be that secularism is slowly replacing Christianity?? I hope not.
People are more selfish today, less focused on honor. Also, I am a lawyer and was at a legal conference last year with several judges. One opined that the big difference from the last 30 years in terms of people in court was that more people lie.

That's simply the difference between a people who grew up knowing they had to pay their own way and a people who grew up knowing the government would pay their way.

The damage done to America by Great Society liberalism is incalculable.

Excellent point. It is hard to synopsize Gibbons multivolume “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” His work does cover from the Age of the Antiones (early 2nd Century AD until the fall of Constantinople in 1453). He had several causes for Rome’s fall.

Here are some interesting quotes from Gibbon:

“The manly pride of the Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies of ostentatious greatness. But when they lost even the semblance of those virtues which were derived from their ancient freedom, the simplicity of Roman manners was insensibly corrupted by the stately affectation of the courts of Asia. The distinctions of personal merit and influence, so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and obscure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism of the emperors; who substituted in their room a severe subordination of rank and office, from the titled slaves who were seated on the steps of the throne, to the meanest instruments of arbitrary power.” Chapter 17

“As early as the time of Cicero and Varro it was the opinion of the Roman augurs that the twelve vultures which Romulus had seen, represented the twelve centuries assigned for the fatal period of his city. This prophecy, disregarded perhaps in the season of health and prosperity, inspired the people with gloomy apprehensions when the twelfth century, clouded with disgrace and misfortune, was almost elapsed; and even posterity must acknowledge with some surprise that the arbitrary interpretation of an accidental or fabulous circumstance has been seriously verified in the downfall of the Western empire. But its fall was announced by a clearer omen than the flight of vultures: the Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects.” Chapter 35

“If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.” Chapter 35

“There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.” Chapter 31

“The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of premature and perpetual decay.” Chapter 32

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