“Still, if you know when to get off, there’s nothing wrong with youthful day-trips to Decadence. It’s one of those things, like love bites and Maoism, which you can indulge in when young and pretty, but look rather sad trying to sustain into middle age. Worst of all, it can make you profoundly boring. Its 19th-century adherents went on to embrace everything from Catholicism to anarchy.”
Yes, quite. Decadence is still a wonderfully freeing thing as long as you have a homebase or firm principles to return to after the party. Human souls need some kind of compass to be complete. I guess losing that for too long will make you sad and bereft.
But – if you turn that dress inside out – too much holding onto rigid principles is also an express ticket to boring-old-fartness. Everyone needs a naughty sortie every now and then 😉
I was going to make the same remark, the article reminds me of John Betjeman’s ‘Song of a Night Club Proprietress” Only Julie’s decadence was much more extreme. This setting by Madeline Dring is good:
Funny that you should say that. I watched a documentary on the band some years ago. An ex girlfriend said something to the effect that …..and then the underage girls came along and the boys could not get enough of them. I have no idea whether there was any truth in the statement but it was made
Michael Whittock
3 years ago
Decadence is invariably a sign and symptom of the terminal decline of empires, nations and cultures. The only cure is spiritual revival, cultural renewal and moral reform. To paraphrase the article a lot of authentic Christianity and a bit of volunteer work would be a good start.
Saul D
3 years ago
There is something of roaring 20s and Weimar Republik in current times. Extraordinarily rich media stars and hedge fund moguls partying via private jets to private islands, surrounded by pretty hangers-on, and glitzed up luxury brands and Instagram, while telling the rest of the world to consume less and stay home; awash with money and walk-in ice-cream freezers and Nxivm-like cults. All while censoring and de-platforming critics, and telling the plebian classes, who are burning through savings and trapped without work, that there is no other way.
The Capitol is on its way to becoming the Capitol of the Hunger Games. Sealed in to protect it from the population of the Precincts. Impeachment as its sport, with over-dramatised melodrama acting as infotainment for the paper-drudges and non-working masses. Who will be the targets in 2022?
Intriguing article. “…what will suddenly spring up to wash away the dirt of today’s Augean Stables”? I don’t see anything washing it away in my life time (I’m 47). But I hope that it is eventually washed away by the very same faith that you say brought down the Roman Empire. Don’t underestimate the growth of evangelicals, even in the West. But even if that doesn’t happen contraception, abortion and a general dislike of the restrictions and duties of parenthood could massively reduce the number of Westerners who are raised in a way to be open to it in generations to come.
In the estimation of many historians, the Methodist revival (aka Great Awakening) of the 18th century was why Britain had no revolution (a la Francaise). So many Christians are praying for a new revival. There is another possibility, however. Perhaps we are approaching the end of the age, the return of Jesus Christ and the final judgment. God alone knows.
Except that they are both monotheistic, and even believe in the same God.
Additionally both carry a huge amount of sexually neurotic baggage, probably based on their desert origins ie: too much sand, and not much water, and rather hot.
‘ I hope that it is eventually washed away by the very same faith that you say brought down the Roman Empire. Don’t underestimate the growth of evangelicals,’
I’m glad I’m too old to be washed away by the religious nutters – whatever their denomination.I’ll be pushing up daisies long before then. Apres moi le deluge.
That depends greatly on your point of view and your personal experiences. Most religions are based not on evidence and reason, but the need to find or imagine the heart of a heartless world, as Uncle Karl said. In any case, Rome lasted an impressive 2200 years, counting from the foundation of the city to the fall of Byzantium, and was not due to decadence of the popular sort but the fact that it had become politically obsolete. The most decadent eras of its civilization were probably also its time of maximum power. In spite of Mr. Gibbon, Christianity neither cleaned up nor doomed Rome, and at least in America, Evangelicals seem to be a corruptible and crazy as everyone else.
Fall of Constantinople, formerly known as Byzantium, please.
However you are correct about decadence, probably at its zenith in what we now call the first century before Christ. The age of Lucretius among many other devotees.
“Occ est vivere!”
ewan.sinclair
3 years ago
That’s all very droll, but doesn’t really get to the essence of decadence. A solipsistic personal morality is just the symptom of what is a societal malaise. Decadence is when a society stops producing and starts consuming itself, when it decides to live on its capital to the impoverishment of the majority. As Joseph Taitner would put; when the cost of complexity outstrips the gain of specialisation. The private codes of morality that come with this condition are the cultural expression of a civilisation that knows it can’t justify itself.
Yes. Like so many before, she spoiled an important thesis trying to be cute.
Dionysia, Jerry Lee Lewis to our “Rap Artists”, however annoying and vulgar, is adolescent not decadent; and, flaneurs, merely narcissists. The imagists, Baudelaire, Mallarme, & Rambo, signified a true culture of despair, the all-shattering death of God, …the unrelenting deconstruction of all cultural value and diminution of Man to an insignificant speck floating momently in a vastness of Nihil. As Trump would say -“Whaddaya got to lose?”
That all sounds very impressive. Not sure it means very much though. Why can’t our civilisation ‘justify itself’, exactly?
David Morley
3 years ago
Well she may be older, wiser, and less objectionable, but Julie still writes like she’s having fun doing so.
there’s a serious question in there though. Why do we forgive Bowie but not Saville? Talent? Should a huge stash of brilliant poetry by Saville be discovered, will his sins be forgiven?
or if we find that Bowie and Saville took part in a threesome with an underage girl (yuk, I know) will Bowie be forgiven but not Saville? Why?
Literally no evidence has been offered for that. Allegations, yes. but not evidence.
Saville was a deeply unpleasant man, but there is something almost as unattractive in the state taking it upon itself to loot his estate on the basis not of criminal convictions, but a lot of allegations, large numbers of which were either preposterous or impossible.
I agree that we need to stop reflexively assuming everyone is guilty until proven innocent when it comes to accusations of sexual abuse, no matter how unsavory and unlikeable we find the men accused. What bugs me is we do know, for a fact, that a member of the Rolling Stones had a sexual relationship with a girl that started when she was 13. But he hasn’t been disgraced, while celebs like Saville and Woody Allen have. Is it just because the victim in this case never thought of it as sexual abuse, but as a consensual relationship? But I thought that’s supposed to be irrelevant, when we’re talking about a child?
The theme is not middle-class morality, LGBTQP liberation, or PC. And neither is it adolescent rebellion. Children, even superannuated, are simply incapable of decadence.
“ Still, if you know when to get off, there’s nothing wrong with youthful day-trips to Decadence.”
I suppose it depends who pays the price. If it’s simply a case of a severe hangover after “a bit of a night”, it’s probably not a bad thing. But what about the underage girls that Bowie took an interest in? I wonder what price some of them will have paid.
greg waggett
3 years ago
Agree very much with the broad point summed up in the last two sentences and the earlier comment, ‘The Age of Excuses.’ the way society conducts itself isn’t sustainable. It’s in plain sight.
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago
One thing truly decadent people are not (I don’t know about Hunter Biden) is determined to force a political or moral view on others. One could hardly call Hitler or Mao decadent, or Stalin in his seminary or Pol Pot in his monastery. The danger of decadence is that it opens the door to such people. Yet it cannot be a simple choice. The world is a mesh of structures. If decadence entails taking much from them and giving little back then the resources have to be present to begin with. Lines of least resistance are seldom sustainable and hit bottom soonest, so it is not surprising that at least some of those once entranced by a papier-mache paradise clamber back up to find something more secure, even if no more firmly rooted in reality.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
How does one indulge in Maoism, even on one of those day trips? That’s quite a leap from wanton s e x or being drunk.
andydavies
3 years ago
Isn’t it just growing old we no longer have the energy, appetite, constitution or levels of hormones to sustain decadence. We grow older and we grow up and realise there are more interesting ways to sustain and enhance life.
Daisy D
3 years ago
Only in a country drunken w/decadence disguised as virtue could we get a – quite literally decaying – person like Biden elected President.
I wish I’d been decadent- I’m now 62 and hoping to be The Oldest Swinger in Town! I have no time for moralists, especially PC ones – my ideal was Errol Flynn. He did what he bloody well wanted to do!
yeah – but he died at 50 doing what he bloody well wanted to do – no one younger 60 even remembers who he was but I assume he had a lot of fun before fading into obscurity and would no doubt make the same choices given the chance.
Flynn is no more obscure decades after his death than say, you and I are while we still living, and I’ll bet that he had more fun than the both of us put together. Seriously how can you try to tie Flynn’s Decadent lifestyle to the fact that he is relatively obscure to the youth of today. Pretty much any cinema star of his time is obscure to youth of today.
His autobio “My Wicked, Wicked Ways” tells a lot more about his ‘larger than life’ life than most are probably aware of sans reading it.
Last Jacobin
3 years ago
Isn’t this more of a Sunday Mail magazine column?
Karen Lindquist
3 years ago
“Not many words take in both the fall of the Roman Empire and a chocolate ganache.” Fun read. Thank you. And I wholeheartedly agree. Been there, done that, and now my only unreasonable and out of control indulgence is gardening for food and helping others do the same.
mike otter
3 years ago
According to a lot of the pundits i read the youth are turning away from earthly pleasures in general and decadence in particular. Certainly seems true of my kids and their friends who are way more grown up that we were in our teens and 20s especially as far as intoxication is concerned.
But more anxious and care-worn too. Many adults believe that with the correct kind of education system many of the world’s ills can be fixed. In that capacity, we offload all our problems on to the young and except them to fix everything when they grow up.
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Is decadence a fashion?
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Oddly enough I have just this minute read, in an essay by Roger Scruton on Skryabin and Szymanovski, some of Scruton’s thoughts on decadence as they relate to the source of the music under discussion. I will not quote at length, and it is this sentence that seems most apposite here:
‘What is decadent cannot be truly felt; it exists as dream and illusion, as self-intoxication, but not as a warm response’.
David McKee
3 years ago
I’ve always thought that decadence was such a waste of time. With my own little indulgence (weed), I am knocked out for hours. Oh, it’s very pleasant, which is why I do it. Still, the time factor is why I restrict it to special occasions, when I think I’ve earned a little time off. High days and holy days, you might say.
George Lake
3 years ago
“By any standards, one of the most decadent people who ever lived was the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, a cross-dressing, sex-mad tyrant who ruled between the ages of 14 and 18”.
I’m afraid not, there were plenty of others, centuries before, for example Caligula and Nero. The idea that decadence did for the Roman Empire is frankly, tosh.
It a prurient Christian myth that originates with their sexually neurotic,Semitic origins in the wasteland of the Judean desert.
The great Bath Houses, (Thermae), had echoed for centuries with such cries as “ bring me another boy, this one has split” and such like, without any serious impairment of the fabled Pax Romana.
Civil War, fiscal collapse, increased bureaucracy, Christianity, pressure from Teutonic thugs to the North, and Sassanian barbarians to the East, and later Arabs to the south, these were the real culprits, who finally overthrew the greatest Empire the World has ever seen, or probably ever will see.
Well and their political opponents calumniating them in hit-job biographies purporting to be ‘fair and balanced’.
Really human nature and society have changed far less than people want to imagine beneath the public-facing attitudes.
Po-faced moralism was always a minority sport, although people felt much more need to hide it (and thus from the historical record) and it is true it had more cultural purchase in the past. The collapse of that owed more to the general economic flattening that the second industrial revolution bought about and the economic independence and agency of swathes of the formerly impotent working classes who, as Orwell noted on his essay on Ghandi, the vast majority never really took to asceticism or moralising and thus no longer wanted to be told what to do by an overweening elite, which of course has come back to assert its powers over the masses since the third industrialisation re-centralised the wealth in the population again. And read Dostoyevsky’s impressions of Victorian London for a taste of the reality of the time.
Last edited 3 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit
rick stubbs
3 years ago
“they had the deadly serious Joris-Karl Huysmans”. Yes, his progress from decadent french novelist in Le Rebours to his chillingly narrated scared straight engagement with French satanism (Las Bas) is worth a look. What is more decadent than satanism? Huysmans slowly changes direction in En route and becomes a medieval mystic in La Cathédrale. The latter was repurposed as an english travel guide for Chartres.
John Kozakiewicz
3 years ago
That cynical little phrase, “Yeah, right,” speaks volumes, Ms. Burchill! “Of course, it goes without saying that I am worldly and street-smart and could never be naïve enough to be drunk on virtue.”
David Ford
3 years ago
You won’t find much more historically decadent than the Christian faith and that hasn’t changed. Evangelical Christianity in the modern age is littered with moral hypocrisy. Do what I say rather than what I do. Nope. If you’re looking for a saviour from decadence then something like radical Islam would be the answer. Like the Fremen in Dune. Of course that would usher in a new Dark Age. Perhaps Julie should be careful what she wishes for.
And where exactly did he claim he was pro-woke?
Not all opinions exist in some kind of manichean struggle. There are a great many atheists and anti-religious rationalists who see the moral panics of the last few years as actually having far more to do with the logical endpoint Christian culture assumptions than an anti-religious movement.
Last edited 3 years ago by Ferrusian Gambit
Jonathan Barker
3 years ago
Meanwhile the decadence described and pointed to in this essay is very much alive in the person of Donald Trump who reeks of such decadence.
Even more so if you take into account the fact that prominent and influential so called conservative Christians pretended that the Donald was “God’s” chosen vehicle to re-Christianize America – whatever that could possible mean or signify!
Trump does not drink and has probably never taken recreational drugs. As far as we can tell he is not remotely religious. Yes, his golden staircases and toilets or whatever could be described as ‘decadent’ but in truth it’s probably just bad taste. If you’re looking for decadence, check out Hunter Biden.
and yet those who would forgive Bowie would not forgive DT, who discovered, and said openly, what Bowie discovered and exploited. That if you are a star you can grab em ….. and in Bowie’s case, much more.
-and too they embrace the “right-thinking” pols like Kennedy, Dodd, Biden, Clinton-all proven to have gone far beyond talking about it. Perhaps we should discuss the decadence of the partisan twisting of facts, ethics and judgement to fit a political goal.
Because Bowie never presented himself for political leadership. That’s not to morally excuse him, only it doesn’t seem bizarre that people hold those who want to hold the terrible power of the state over people’s head to a higher standard of moral virtue.
Agreeing with a man’s (actually, many people’s) politics does not signify an “attachment”. Many saw the alternative of the deeply corrupt Clinton family, and then the increasingly obviously corrupt Biden family, as a continuation of the feather bedding and self-serving that is fast corroding the republic.
isn’t one of the characteristics of modern youth (at least, the posh SJW wing) that it is indeed drunk with virtue.
of which it can never get enough.
“Still, if you know when to get off, there’s nothing wrong with youthful day-trips to Decadence. It’s one of those things, like love bites and Maoism, which you can indulge in when young and pretty, but look rather sad trying to sustain into middle age. Worst of all, it can make you profoundly boring. Its 19th-century adherents went on to embrace everything from Catholicism to anarchy.”
Yes, quite. Decadence is still a wonderfully freeing thing as long as you have a homebase or firm principles to return to after the party. Human souls need some kind of compass to be complete. I guess losing that for too long will make you sad and bereft.
But – if you turn that dress inside out – too much holding onto rigid principles is also an express ticket to boring-old-fartness. Everyone needs a naughty sortie every now and then 😉
Salvation through menopause?
I was going to make the same remark, the article reminds me of John Betjeman’s ‘Song of a Night Club Proprietress” Only Julie’s decadence was much more extreme. This setting by Madeline Dring is good:
https://youtu.be/XGbGmHwUeUs
Julie’s remark about David Bowie reminds me of a question I often ask myself – why has Jagger got a knighthood and Rolf Harris is in the Clink?
You can add a lot of 60s icons to that list. A lot my have to do with buyer’s remorse. If the icon is still cool then where’s the shame
Cool – now there’s an interesting legal term….
What does legal have to do with it?
did jagger abuse children ?
Sex with under-age girls. Not abuse?
Also, the Led Zeppelin guys.
Funny that you should say that. I watched a documentary on the band some years ago. An ex girlfriend said something to the effect that …..and then the underage girls came along and the boys could not get enough of them. I have no idea whether there was any truth in the statement but it was made
Decadence is invariably a sign and symptom of the terminal decline of empires, nations and cultures. The only cure is spiritual revival, cultural renewal and moral reform. To paraphrase the article a lot of authentic Christianity and a bit of volunteer work would be a good start.
There is something of roaring 20s and Weimar Republik in current times. Extraordinarily rich media stars and hedge fund moguls partying via private jets to private islands, surrounded by pretty hangers-on, and glitzed up luxury brands and Instagram, while telling the rest of the world to consume less and stay home; awash with money and walk-in ice-cream freezers and Nxivm-like cults. All while censoring and de-platforming critics, and telling the plebian classes, who are burning through savings and trapped without work, that there is no other way.
The Capitol is on its way to becoming the Capitol of the Hunger Games. Sealed in to protect it from the population of the Precincts. Impeachment as its sport, with over-dramatised melodrama acting as infotainment for the paper-drudges and non-working masses. Who will be the targets in 2022?
Right on
Intriguing article. “…what will suddenly spring up to wash away the dirt of today’s Augean Stables”? I don’t see anything washing it away in my life time (I’m 47). But I hope that it is eventually washed away by the very same faith that you say brought down the Roman Empire. Don’t underestimate the growth of evangelicals, even in the West. But even if that doesn’t happen contraception, abortion and a general dislike of the restrictions and duties of parenthood could massively reduce the number of Westerners who are raised in a way to be open to it in generations to come.
Now you’re really scaring me!
would you be equally happy if the “cleaning” job was done by radical islamists?
Well I’m a Christian, so, no.
In the estimation of many historians, the Methodist revival (aka Great Awakening) of the 18th century was why Britain had no revolution (a la Francaise). So many Christians are praying for a new revival. There is another possibility, however. Perhaps we are approaching the end of the age, the return of Jesus Christ and the final judgment. God alone knows.
I think you’ll find that Islam and Christianity bear almost no resemblance, if you can be bothered to look into both properly.
Except that they are both monotheistic, and even believe in the same God.
Additionally both carry a huge amount of sexually neurotic baggage, probably based on their desert origins ie: too much sand, and not much water, and rather hot.
Imagining that they believe in the same god is a primary school level error
Without going back centuries, in what way are Christians’ actions comparable to radical Islamists?
‘ I hope that it is eventually washed away by the very same faith that you say brought down the Roman Empire. Don’t underestimate the growth of evangelicals,’
I’m glad I’m too old to be washed away by the religious nutters – whatever their denomination.I’ll be pushing up daisies long before then. Apres moi le deluge.
The vast majority of the religious are not “nutters”.
That depends greatly on your point of view and your personal experiences. Most religions are based not on evidence and reason, but the need to find or imagine the heart of a heartless world, as Uncle Karl said. In any case, Rome lasted an impressive 2200 years, counting from the foundation of the city to the fall of Byzantium, and was not due to decadence of the popular sort but the fact that it had become politically obsolete. The most decadent eras of its civilization were probably also its time of maximum power. In spite of Mr. Gibbon, Christianity neither cleaned up nor doomed Rome, and at least in America, Evangelicals seem to be a corruptible and crazy as everyone else.
Ah, the easy insult against Christians. Very 2021. No need to provide details!
Fall of Constantinople, formerly known as Byzantium, please.
However you are correct about decadence, probably at its zenith in what we now call the first century before Christ. The age of Lucretius among many other devotees.
“Occ est vivere!”
That’s all very droll, but doesn’t really get to the essence of decadence. A solipsistic personal morality is just the symptom of what is a societal malaise. Decadence is when a society stops producing and starts consuming itself, when it decides to live on its capital to the impoverishment of the majority. As Joseph Taitner would put; when the cost of complexity outstrips the gain of specialisation. The private codes of morality that come with this condition are the cultural expression of a civilisation that knows it can’t justify itself.
Yes. Like so many before, she spoiled an important thesis trying to be cute.
Dionysia, Jerry Lee Lewis to our “Rap Artists”, however annoying and vulgar, is adolescent not decadent; and, flaneurs, merely narcissists. The imagists, Baudelaire, Mallarme, & Rambo, signified a true culture of despair, the all-shattering death of God, …the unrelenting deconstruction of all cultural value and diminution of Man to an insignificant speck floating momently in a vastness of Nihil. As Trump would say -“Whaddaya got to lose?”
That all sounds very impressive. Not sure it means very much though. Why can’t our civilisation ‘justify itself’, exactly?
Well she may be older, wiser, and less objectionable, but Julie still writes like she’s having fun doing so.
there’s a serious question in there though. Why do we forgive Bowie but not Saville? Talent? Should a huge stash of brilliant poetry by Saville be discovered, will his sins be forgiven?
or if we find that Bowie and Saville took part in a threesome with an underage girl (yuk, I know) will Bowie be forgiven but not Saville? Why?
Saville raped and abused children in hospital did bowie do that ?
Literally no evidence has been offered for that. Allegations, yes. but not evidence.
Saville was a deeply unpleasant man, but there is something almost as unattractive in the state taking it upon itself to loot his estate on the basis not of criminal convictions, but a lot of allegations, large numbers of which were either preposterous or impossible.
I agree that we need to stop reflexively assuming everyone is guilty until proven innocent when it comes to accusations of sexual abuse, no matter how unsavory and unlikeable we find the men accused. What bugs me is we do know, for a fact, that a member of the Rolling Stones had a sexual relationship with a girl that started when she was 13. But he hasn’t been disgraced, while celebs like Saville and Woody Allen have. Is it just because the victim in this case never thought of it as sexual abuse, but as a consensual relationship? But I thought that’s supposed to be irrelevant, when we’re talking about a child?
Not in hospital so far as I’m aware.
The theme is not middle-class morality, LGBTQP liberation, or PC. And neither is it adolescent rebellion. Children, even superannuated, are simply incapable of decadence.
“Lord of the Flies”
“ Still, if you know when to get off, there’s nothing wrong with youthful day-trips to Decadence.”
I suppose it depends who pays the price. If it’s simply a case of a severe hangover after “a bit of a night”, it’s probably not a bad thing. But what about the underage girls that Bowie took an interest in? I wonder what price some of them will have paid.
Agree very much with the broad point summed up in the last two sentences and the earlier comment, ‘The Age of Excuses.’ the way society conducts itself isn’t sustainable. It’s in plain sight.
One thing truly decadent people are not (I don’t know about Hunter Biden) is determined to force a political or moral view on others. One could hardly call Hitler or Mao decadent, or Stalin in his seminary or Pol Pot in his monastery. The danger of decadence is that it opens the door to such people. Yet it cannot be a simple choice. The world is a mesh of structures. If decadence entails taking much from them and giving little back then the resources have to be present to begin with. Lines of least resistance are seldom sustainable and hit bottom soonest, so it is not surprising that at least some of those once entranced by a papier-mache paradise clamber back up to find something more secure, even if no more firmly rooted in reality.
How does one indulge in Maoism, even on one of those day trips? That’s quite a leap from wanton s e x or being drunk.
Isn’t it just growing old we no longer have the energy, appetite, constitution or levels of hormones to sustain decadence. We grow older and we grow up and realise there are more interesting ways to sustain and enhance life.
Only in a country drunken w/decadence disguised as virtue could we get a – quite literally decaying – person like Biden elected President.
I agree. The dunces are truly in a confederacy.
I wish I’d been decadent- I’m now 62 and hoping to be The Oldest Swinger in Town! I have no time for moralists, especially PC ones – my ideal was Errol Flynn. He did what he bloody well wanted to do!
yeah – but he died at 50 doing what he bloody well wanted to do – no one younger 60 even remembers who he was but I assume he had a lot of fun before fading into obscurity and would no doubt make the same choices given the chance.
Flynn is no more obscure decades after his death than say, you and I are while we still living, and I’ll bet that he had more fun than the both of us put together. Seriously how can you try to tie Flynn’s Decadent lifestyle to the fact that he is relatively obscure to the youth of today. Pretty much any cinema star of his time is obscure to youth of today.
His autobio “My Wicked, Wicked Ways” tells a lot more about his ‘larger than life’ life than most are probably aware of sans reading it.
Isn’t this more of a Sunday Mail magazine column?
“Not many words take in both the fall of the Roman Empire and a chocolate ganache.”
Fun read. Thank you. And I wholeheartedly agree. Been there, done that, and now my only unreasonable and out of control indulgence is gardening for food and helping others do the same.
According to a lot of the pundits i read the youth are turning away from earthly pleasures in general and decadence in particular. Certainly seems true of my kids and their friends who are way more grown up that we were in our teens and 20s especially as far as intoxication is concerned.
But more anxious and care-worn too. Many adults believe that with the correct kind of education system many of the world’s ills can be fixed. In that capacity, we offload all our problems on to the young and except them to fix everything when they grow up.
Is decadence a fashion?
Oddly enough I have just this minute read, in an essay by Roger Scruton on Skryabin and Szymanovski, some of Scruton’s thoughts on decadence as they relate to the source of the music under discussion. I will not quote at length, and it is this sentence that seems most apposite here:
‘What is decadent cannot be truly felt; it exists as dream and illusion, as self-intoxication, but not as a warm response’.
I’ve always thought that decadence was such a waste of time. With my own little indulgence (weed), I am knocked out for hours. Oh, it’s very pleasant, which is why I do it. Still, the time factor is why I restrict it to special occasions, when I think I’ve earned a little time off. High days and holy days, you might say.
“By any standards, one of the most decadent people who ever lived was the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, a cross-dressing, sex-mad tyrant who ruled between the ages of 14 and 18”.
I’m afraid not, there were plenty of others, centuries before, for example Caligula and Nero. The idea that decadence did for the Roman Empire is frankly, tosh.
It a prurient Christian myth that originates with their sexually neurotic,Semitic origins in the wasteland of the Judean desert.
The great Bath Houses, (Thermae), had echoed for centuries with such cries as “ bring me another boy, this one has split” and such like, without any serious impairment of the fabled Pax Romana.
Civil War, fiscal collapse, increased bureaucracy, Christianity, pressure from Teutonic thugs to the North, and Sassanian barbarians to the East, and later Arabs to the south, these were the real culprits, who finally overthrew the greatest Empire the World has ever seen, or probably ever will see.
‘Sic Gloria Transit Mundi’.
Well and their political opponents calumniating them in hit-job biographies purporting to be ‘fair and balanced’.
Really human nature and society have changed far less than people want to imagine beneath the public-facing attitudes.
Po-faced moralism was always a minority sport, although people felt much more need to hide it (and thus from the historical record) and it is true it had more cultural purchase in the past. The collapse of that owed more to the general economic flattening that the second industrial revolution bought about and the economic independence and agency of swathes of the formerly impotent working classes who, as Orwell noted on his essay on Ghandi, the vast majority never really took to asceticism or moralising and thus no longer wanted to be told what to do by an overweening elite, which of course has come back to assert its powers over the masses since the third industrialisation re-centralised the wealth in the population again. And read Dostoyevsky’s impressions of Victorian London for a taste of the reality of the time.
“they had the deadly serious Joris-Karl Huysmans”. Yes, his progress from decadent french novelist in Le Rebours to his chillingly narrated scared straight engagement with French satanism (Las Bas) is worth a look. What is more decadent than satanism? Huysmans slowly changes direction in En route and becomes a medieval mystic in La Cathédrale. The latter was repurposed as an english travel guide for Chartres.
That cynical little phrase, “Yeah, right,” speaks volumes, Ms. Burchill! “Of course, it goes without saying that I am worldly and street-smart and could never be naïve enough to be drunk on virtue.”
You won’t find much more historically decadent than the Christian faith and that hasn’t changed. Evangelical Christianity in the modern age is littered with moral hypocrisy. Do what I say rather than what I do. Nope. If you’re looking for a saviour from decadence then something like radical Islam would be the answer. Like the Fremen in Dune. Of course that would usher in a new Dark Age. Perhaps Julie should be careful what she wishes for.
Place your faith in woke, then. No hypocrisy there at all.
Enlightenment has its rewards. For some, it’s the enlightenment itself; for others, doing well by doing good. Supply quotation marks as necessary.
Outstanding comment!
And where exactly did he claim he was pro-woke?
Not all opinions exist in some kind of manichean struggle. There are a great many atheists and anti-religious rationalists who see the moral panics of the last few years as actually having far more to do with the logical endpoint Christian culture assumptions than an anti-religious movement.
Meanwhile the decadence described and pointed to in this essay is very much alive in the person of Donald Trump who reeks of such decadence.
Even more so if you take into account the fact that prominent and influential so called conservative Christians pretended that the Donald was “God’s” chosen vehicle to re-Christianize America – whatever that could possible mean or signify!
As far as one can know, he did nothing to convert anyone. I don’t think he thought being a Christian mattered.
Trump does not drink and has probably never taken recreational drugs. As far as we can tell he is not remotely religious. Yes, his golden staircases and toilets or whatever could be described as ‘decadent’ but in truth it’s probably just bad taste. If you’re looking for decadence, check out Hunter Biden.
I think it was just a case of – insert DT here.
yes – more vulgar than decadent. And certainly not an advocate of decadence – quite the reverse.
Decadence is just vulgarity with taste.
If you wish an education in bad taste try walking around Quislington when this Chinese Plague is past.
For sheer pretentiousness, is has no equal.
Quislington – brilliant, I’ll use that.
I pinched it off Fraser Bailey Esq.
Rightfully, his is the honour.
and yet those who would forgive Bowie would not forgive DT, who discovered, and said openly, what Bowie discovered and exploited. That if you are a star you can grab em ….. and in Bowie’s case, much more.
-and too they embrace the “right-thinking” pols like Kennedy, Dodd, Biden, Clinton-all proven to have gone far beyond talking about it. Perhaps we should discuss the decadence of the partisan twisting of facts, ethics and judgement to fit a political goal.
Because Bowie never presented himself for political leadership. That’s not to morally excuse him, only it doesn’t seem bizarre that people hold those who want to hold the terrible power of the state over people’s head to a higher standard of moral virtue.
Some day, in the future, I look forward to another vaccine, or possibly herd immunity-for TDS.
your TDS is showing, along with your bigotry toward religious folks.
In attaching themselves to the likes of Donald Trump, many of them seem to be bigoted against themselves.
Agreeing with a man’s (actually, many people’s) politics does not signify an “attachment”. Many saw the alternative of the deeply corrupt Clinton family, and then the increasingly obviously corrupt Biden family, as a continuation of the feather bedding and self-serving that is fast corroding the republic.
It means that God works in ways unintelligible to he/she/it/ze/etc and perhaps you..