It didn’t help stability of the Empire, in a cultural sense, when they didn’t have a believe in an Afterlife.
SO...they took what pleasures they could in their daily life (fornication, bribery, theft) in the form of anything that immediately feels good and yields immediate results.
Not a good recipe for long-term social stability, eh?
But the Romans and Byzantines did believe in an afterlife, so there is definitely more to their collapse. Some questions we can all ask ourselves: at what point do we become indifferent to the fate of the United States? At what point do we concern ourselves only with local preservation (ourselves, families, neighbors) to the exclusion of broader preservation (city, county, state, country)? At what point do we refuse to cooperate with the survival of the United States or do so minimally if compelled by force?
I think it was the Roman citizen that said it isn’t worth it anymore. Finding what drove them to that is the question that concerns me.