Thoughts on Decadence & the American Ethos

Joos van Craesbeeck, The Temptation of St. Anthony (1650)

3,082 words

The New York Times quoted French social critic Jacques Barzun when they defined decadence as the “economic stagnation, institutional decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development,” in a 2020 article entitled “The Age of Decadence.” According to it, decadent societies are, by definition, a victim of their own success — the implication being that civilizations necessarily become decadent as a result of excessive wealth and material comfort, and thus what is currently taking place across the United States and Europe was an unavoidable consequence of unmatched prosperity in the post-Second World War era, thus denying that the American regime or its citizens could have stood against this encroachment of economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural exhaustion.

Its author, Ross Douthat, continues:

The decadent economy is not an impoverished one. The United States is an extraordinarily wealthy country, its middle class prosperous beyond the dreams of centuries past.

I deny this statement factually, and I believe there are polls to corroborate my point of view. However, for the sake of this essay I’ll grant his premise that America is a wealthy country, and that he believes decadence sprang from this wealth. He therefore believes that America’s descent into decadence was unavoidable. If I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll hear about it.

The writer defended the current state of decadence:

With this stagnation comes social torpor. America is a more peaceable country than it was in 1970 or 1990, with lower crime rates and safer streets and better-behaved kids.

Yet again, I’ll deny that this statement is true, as I believe available polls and crime statistics suggest the opposite. But for the sake of my present argument, I’ll grant him the premise that modern America is socially lethargic.

Douthat then wraps up with his thesis: “complaining about decadence is a luxury good — a feature of societies where the mail is delivered, the crime rate is relatively low, and there is plenty of entertainment at your fingertips.” Again, I’ll deny that this statement is true in fact, yet it’s fair to infer that in his estimation of decadence is either a net-positive or a net-neutral. And since he’s writing for the paper of record, it’s only fair to assume that large swaths of America’s functionary elite have the same opinion.

The opioid crisis was a luxury good:

. . . and then there is the opioid epidemic, whose spread across the unhappiest parts of white America passed almost unnoticed in elite circles for a while because the drug itself quiets rather than inflames, supplying a gentle euphoria that lets its users simply slip away, day by day and bit by bit, without causing anyone any trouble. The best book on the epidemic, by the journalist Sam Quinones, is called Dreamland for a reason.

We could get into polls. We could get into the data suggesting that the writer’s own reader base is the “unhappiest part of white America.” We could get into the data suggesting that conservative Middle Americans are wealthier, more attractive, and more politically ascendant than most liberals. But that would be a paper in and of itself. So for now, according to the paper of record, the cure for unhappiness is euthanasia — or more cynically, if you’re not happy, kill yourself. This is the perfect articulation of the current American ethos or spirit behind its culture.

But of course, not everyone agreed with the American Regime’s theory that decadence is an unavoidable byproduct of wealth. Friedrich Nietzsche in particular had a drastically different idea about what it meant to decay, describing it instead as a failure of unity and of proper order in the self. Author Andrew Huddlestone wrote an outstanding essay, “Between Frustrated Wagnerians and Unsatisfied Schopenhauerians — What Does Nietzsche Reveal about Decadence?”, where he categorizes Nietzsche’s theory as suggesting that “décadence is an affliction characterized by a particular self-destructive pattern, bespeaking a failure of unity and of proper order in the self.” In this sense, both individuals and cultures as well as worldviews can develop serious flaws, and decay ensues as a result of these flaws. Huddlestone then gives a great Nietzschean analysis of Wagner’s music:

It is important to bear this in mind, since we often tend to think of things the other way around: to use our colloquial concept of decadence for a moment, we often think in the first instance of things (e.g., foie gras) or world-views (e.g., sexual hedonism) as decadent, and the people who are drawn to them as decadent derivatively. But according to Nietzsche, we cannot infer a person’s decadence from characteristically decadent predilections, since what is decadent for one person may not be so for another. Being drawn to Wagner’s music, for example, is typically a manifestation of decadence, but not for someone such as Nietzsche himself, who is able to turn this ‘questionable and dangerous’ music to his advantage.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here.

Socrates serves to illustrate Nietzsche’s point. Rationality and logic in most instances are a good thing, just not for Socrates. This is because Socrates used his reason to totally subdue his instincts and impulses to the point that Socrates’ self was quite literally tyrannized by reason, a type of disease that Socrates infected others with through his teachings. This disease is really an obsession with logical dialectics and forces a disunity in the self which can be seen in rationalist thinkers such as Plato, who suggested that the state should have a monopoly on childrearing to such an extent that parents would forbidden even to live in the same residence as their own child. In a healthier context, the baser instincts of the parents — protection of one’s own child — should triumph over reason. Rationality by itself, however, is not simply a form of decay, as one may suffer from impulsivity as a defect as well. The cure is not to engage more with the defect, but to balance it. Thus, encouraging Socrates to glorify logical dialectics more is akin to encouraging a drug user to keep using drugs.

Another example of decadence is the modern obsession with civil war and revolution. In my opinion, Nietzsche would describe these people as Wagnerians. According to Huddlestone, a Wagnerian is to Nietzsche someone who cannot accept that most of life is mundane and normal, and thus uses the examples of walking the dog and having family dinners. The Wagnerian is so obsessed with the theatrical aspects of life that he basically lives in the opera house and has sealed himself away from reality. Huddlestone described the Wagnerian as experiencing life only in such moments as when “he cast off exhaustion and believes he is really alive [and] are those when he is immersed in Wagner’s music dramas and the exalted, heroic way of life they depict.” Thus, the Wagnerian cannot accept a mundane political struggle, but rather must envision it as a large-scale heroic war.

But what of the non-decadent man? Nietzsche describes such a man as someone who

. . . guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful; he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. He collects instinctively [instinktiv] from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he leaves much to fall through [lässt Viel durchfallen]. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes: he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting.

Huddlestone explains this as follows:

. . . acting with instinct (in this sense) is not a matter of just letting impulses (instincts in the former sense) take their course; it is an ability one develops or achieves through painstaking work. The non-decadent person is thus not someone just happily living out his impulses with wild abandon. He is someone who has made a careful effort to cultivate these impulses in a particular way.

In other words, the non-decadent man is one who fights an internal struggle to sharpen himself — a man who sees the value in both cold, Socratic reason and hot, yet tempered instincts. And, of course, he must develop a fit self to adjudicate both.

This was the great revelation I had when I discovered race realism. I had suppressed my normative, healthy instincts for the autocratic tyranny of reason. With that said, the essence of the Nietzschean theory on decadence is that of the rightful ruler of the self. This rightful ruler is not set in stone — and thus the path out of decadence is not so much a destination as a journey. It is a journey in which one must not worry about the proper accumulation of wealth, as a poor man could be infinitely more decayed than a rich man, the poor society infinitely more decayed than the wealthy empire. And so on.

But is American society decadent? The short answer is yes, largely due to how it came to understand its own ethos, the essence of which is beautiful life. The American ethos, or the spirit behind the culture, has mutated a few times over its relatively brief existence. Its original articulation dates back to the Declaration of Independence, right at the founding of the country. This now-famous clause states that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The key component in this clause is the pursuit of happiness. While it is hard to ascertain whether this clause and the worldview it espouses are decadent in the abstract, subsequent generations’ interpretations of it definitely are, establishing in utero beautiful life.

Beautiful life began to bloom in the 1960s, and its next metamorphosis is best encapsulated by the John Lennon song “Imagine.” This truly British recreation of the beautiful life doctrine had a soul of conquest, imperialism, and idealism. It was here that the American ethos began to declare war on eternal meaning itself. Happiness became equated with feeling good. Virtue became an impediment to happiness. It called for a true brotherhood of man with nothing to live or die for, and no higher ambitions outside of one’s own temporal pleasures. It was in this state of decay that happiness could only be expressed in materialistic terms. At this stage, the clause evolved into “among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness through sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.”

You can buy Tito Perdue’s novel Cynosura here.

The final evolution of the beautiful life doctrine, as expressed by Ross Douthat, abandons the idealism of the homogeneous American culture of the 1960s for the realpolitik of diverse America in 2020, suggesting that the unhappy parts of America should be euthanized, roughly bring about state-enforced happiness. Be happy or take the needle, just be quiet. To suggest otherwise is to question whether the fleeting feeling of temporal happiness is in itself ultimately meaningless. The current clause reads something like: “. . . among those are Life, Liberty, and the State Demand of Happiness, otherwise kill yourself.”

Beautiful life is neither completely hedonistic in nature nor completely moralistic in nature, as both of these when taken to their logical extreme bring unhappiness. It’s a kind of relativism. It has neither a consistent form nor a substance. More experiences. More newness. More safety. More drugs. If it feels good, do it. If it stops feeling good, stop doing it. More comfortable living. Lengthen your own life at any cost. More petty tyranny. Beautiful life as a concept is selfish, nihilistic, small-minded, and in the Nietzschean sense disaffirms the value of life. The ethos of beautiful life, at its most extreme, creates a dynamic where man becomes a slave to his own self-complacency. It is a kind of Siren’s call, if you will. His own creature comforts. His own decayed sense of self. No insult is bothered about, and every dream is smaller than the last. It is a beautiful kind of slavery, defended as freedom. As a result of this, man’s existence has become cheap, expendable, and ignoble. Western man has not yet drowned, but there may come a time when he is unable to free himself from his own self-complacency, his own beautiful slavery.

On the opposite side of the spectrum from Americanism are the Spartans and their beautiful death: the understanding that an honorable death is preferential to a dishonorable life. The Spartans also understood this idea in practical terms as well, believing that escape from premature death was much more often a sign of bravery and resourcefulness than an act of cowardice. Happiness, then, became a consequence of this type bravery and virtue. In fact, the common Greek word for happiness, eudaemon, had overtones that were different from the English word. It implied not a transitory “good-feeling,” but a permanent condition of life[1] –something that could only be achieved through virtue. This Greek definition of happiness can be seen in the Spartan Constitution, which says that “[virtue] ensures that the brave will have happiness and the coward misery.” In this sense, virtue created happiness: “Why, there is not even a need of money to spend on [fancy] cloaks; for their [value] is due not to the price of their clothes, but to the excellent condition of their bodies.” This means that the virtuous life — in this case, physical conditioning – is preferential to the wealthy and decayed life.

As much as the Spartans are remembered for their love of martial training, their highest virtues were actually humility and obedience. The consequence of this was that the goal of a beautiful life became a never-ending pursuit of hedonistic happiness, whereas the goal of the beautiful death was virtue itself. Americans — at least according to the law — don’t dictate social behavior, as everyone’s pursuit of happiness is unique and individualistic. Virtue is all too often an impediment to this happiness. While it took a long time to manifest, this planted the seeds of the current crop of hedonistic and temporal pleasure-seeking obsession. Americans sought winning because it brought them happiness, while the Spartans were prepared to lose — i.e., die — for the sake of eternal fame and virtue.

While Americans, both then and now, took a rather superficial view of decadence, attributing it to mere wealth, the Spartans adopted a proto-Nietzschean stance. It began with their educational system, the goal of which was not merely martial in nature. It sought to create men who were obedient, respectful, and temperate in nature. Manual labor was introduced at puberty, because the Spartans realized that puberty was the time in life when a man had the deepest sexual and hedonistic urges. They also realized that this was the ideal time to teach a child what they called self-will. As a child progressed into young adulthood, the Spartans began to moderate how much a child had to eat. This encouraged the child to steal, but they punished him severely if he was caught. Yet, that in itself was not the main reason for the exercise. The real lesson was to teach the child that “by enduring pain for a short time, one may win lasting fame and felicity.” In this sense, the Spartans had a fixation on the eternal, while Americans have a lust for the temporal and fleeting. The goal of this Spartan training was to create a man capable of good reason, great instincts, controlled but not dominated appetites, a strong self-will and an equally strong respect for authority, as well as a good sense of moral (virtuous) good to offset his intense military training. And, of course, they instilled a governing sense of self that was capable of calling upon all these skill sets.

Nietzsche had the right idea. Decadence is not merely a matter of wealth, but a matter of the decayed man, society, worldview, and so on. In other words, America is not decadent merely because of its wealth. Rather, decadence in the American context is a kind of zeitgeist and a result of the society’s obsession with the pursuit of its own happiness. This has encouraged those predisposed toward loving eating to become fat. It has encouraged people predisposed toward loving sex to chase ever more dangerous sexual experiences and drugs. It has encouraged those, such as Socrates, who love reason to abandon any sense of the baser instincts and thus reason themselves into insanity. It’s encouraged some men to completely abandon any sense of their will to dominate and become cucks, for lack of a better word. At the same time, it’s also encouraged others to go so far with their will to dominate that they became mass shooters. It’s led many to become so narcissistic and self-aggrandizing that they become basically unteachable, and oftentimes bound for prison, while it leads others to become so shy and hermit-like that they never leave their own homes.

Americans have pursued happiness and found misery. This is largely due to its citizenry’s adoption of the American ethos of the beautiful life. As a result of this, America has become a society of decayed people. A truly corrective solution will not be found in the realm of materialistic political science, but rather in a change in the American ethos itself by bringing about an understanding that happiness is not a fleeting pursuit, but a reward for the virtuous. Only after this can societal changes be enacted that go beyond mere individualism and contribute toward building a different type of man and woman — an indestructible, yet virtuous type. This will not happen by accident, but rather requires a concerted effort. In other words, the cure to a bad ethos is a good, life-affirming one.

But if America’s decadence goes back to its founding ethos, why has America only recently fallen into such a decayed state? That’s a question that one could write a book on, but for now I’ll use Nietzsche’s own example of Wagner’s music. Wagner’s music encouraged a type of decadence in many people, but Nietzsche wasn’t one of them. The American founding ethos of the individualistic pursuit of happiness is a decadent one, but it wasn’t necessarily decadent for Americans. At the time of America’s founding and up until recently, America was an incredibly religious society — one that was willing to addresses excesses of decadence, as in the prohibition on alcohol. Eventually, America lost this indirect method of governance, and the decadent beautiful-life ethos became the master and the religious impulse the servant.

Note

[1] D. Lee (ed.), The Republic, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2007), p. 40.