The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” So said Antonio Gramsci, and so argues Ross Douthat in his masterful new volume, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Douthat, a New York Times columnist and apt social critic has written in The Decadent Society a fresh perspective on America’s current society.
Douthat’s argument is that our culture has descended into decadence, which he defines as “economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development” (9). Douthat believes that America’s great success in advancement, particularly through the first half of the 20th century, has led to a new generation of stagnation, sterility, sclerosis, and repetition.
In fact, Douthat refers to stagnation, sterility, sclerosis, and repetition as the ‘Four Horsemen’ of decadence, guideposts that serve as warnings of a deep cultural issue. When a society sees stagnation in technology development or cultural repetition, decadence is nigh.
Thankfully, Douthat does not leave the reader without some solution. To close the book, Douthat gives three optional ends to decadence: catastrophe, renaissance, or revelation. Each has its implications and very real possibilities for each culture embroiled in decadence. The direction we go, then, is up to us.
Douthat is a gifted writer, and you should follow his column at the New York Times. His prose is enthralling and his argument follows sound logic. Douthat’s cultural knowledge shines through in this book, as he weaves helpful anecdotes into his argument throughout the book. The book, simply stated, is not perfect but helpful. I think Douthat struck a nerve with this argument and has provided a good resource to build upon. The book is also beautiful. The cover art features the Gargantua character from Rabelais’s novels. I would commend this book to those interested in cultural critique and those who have become tired of our cultural decadence.