The Untergang's All Here

I have finished reading Ross Douthat's The Decadent Society (so you don't have to) and while normally I maintain a policy of not spending much time on books I didn't like (because life's too short) I felt obligated to post something here, because of the earlier posts I wrote about societal decadence.

This isn't likely to be the lengthy analysis of Douthat's book I had originally intended. My plan was to attempt to contrast this new book with Robert M. Adams's Decadent Societies, a book written in 1980-81 (when Douthat was approximately two years old) that attempted to answer the basic question, Are we decadent? within the frame of reference of the early years or Ronald Reagan.

Unfortunately the plan foundered on a basic point.
I can't compare Douthat's book with Adams's because Douthat doesn't address the same question Adams did. Where Adams laid out a definition and examples of societal decadence, and then asked if the US matched up, Douthat, like a Wal-Mart version of Spengler*, starts with a conclusion and then tries to construct a definition of decadence that supports that conclusion.

As for comparisons between the current state of decadence Douthat claims and any previous period or society in human history, forget it. Douthat wears his historical knowledge like a cheap suit, and you won't learn anything about the similarities (or absence of same) between the current situation and any previous instances of decadence. There are a couple of rather slap-dash references to Rome, and nothing else. In Douthat's world, apparently decadence is something that first appeared in the aftermath of the Apollo 11 voyage to the Moon in 1969.

Another obstacle to any attempted comparison is the definition Douthat spends pretty much an entire chapter dancing around. He appears to be heavily influenced by Jacques Barzun's late-life From Dawn to Decadence... which while it does have the D-word in its title, is in fact a book of cultural criticism. (And a book of cultural criticism written by a very cranky old man, I feel compelled to add. Not one of my favourite reads.) And while decadence is certainly a word that can be used in a cultural context, cultural decadence does NOT automatically equate to societal decadence. Look at the self-identified Decadents of the late nineteenth century, and then try to persuade me that late-Victorian Britain was a decadent society.

And as if the idea of using pop culture as a barometer of societal decadence wasn't pointless enough already, Douthat chooses to base another full chapter's worth of "evidence" of decadence on the lack of creativity or originality in Hollywood. Yes, that's right: we are decadent because a bunch of twits in Hollywood think they have a better chance of making money by grinding out yet another Marvel underwear-perverts movie, or yet another slice off the Star Wars sausage. Lack. Of. Originality. In. Hollywood. It's as if he's suddenly discovered that water is wet.

Worse, when he does identify issues that could properly be seen as signs of decadence, he completely misses the point about them. A slowdown in productivity or innovation could be a sign of decadence, if (as happened, say, in Imperial China) a societal decision is made to stop investigating. But to search without success (for example, looking for new antibiotics) is not a sign of decadence; it's a sign of bad luck or inadequate resources. Decadence would be not researching at all.

Worst of all, I think, is his complaint about declining birth rates. Clearly he thinks this is a problem, but he never asks the obvious question about the cause of fertility declines in wealthy societies: why do women choose to restrict the number of children they bear? Or the follow-up question: would women be more interested in raising children if the burdens involved were truly shared? Look at cultures with sharp declines in fertility and I think you'll find a combination of deeply entrenched misogyny and a recently enhanced technological ability for women to control their own fertility. I'm willing to agree that misogyny is, at heart, a decadent condition.

But somehow I don't think that's the conclusion Douthat wanted me to reach.

*Spengler's The Decline of the West, in its original title, provided me with the horrible punning opportunity I couldn't resist in the headline. Granted he was writing in the aftermath of the Great War, but his massive screed mostly seems a crock to me.