Plague Journal (58): More thoughts on decadence

Yesterday was warm enough to roll up your sleeves, sit in a sunny spot in the yard and just bask. It was like when you've been hiking on the shady side of the mountain for a while, the cool side, and you come around a bend and into the sun, and for a moment it seems like you've stumbled into a different world altogether.

In yesterday's post I mentioned the concept of decadence and how it was a word I was seeing a lot of in various places. I suppose the word refers to a kind of societal decline or decay. And as I mentioned, at least one of its hallmarks seems to be a loss of confidence. A loss of confidence in national institutions (not only government but schools, major media, science, etc.). A loss of confidence in ourselves as a nation, our ability to face difficulties and pull through. A loss of confidence in the future.

This loss if confidence is not necessarily something everyone admits to openly, though some do. And it should be kept in mind that we are talking about a trend here, not some sort of all-encompassing absolute. This is a generalization, and it will be possible to find many exceptions or competing trends.

An aside: I remember when I first learned the word decadence. Maybe I was 14 or so, I'm not sure, but it seemed like all of my peers learned the word at about the same time, and it suddenly became the thing to go around saying everything was decadent (this wasn't yet the period when decadence became a badge of value). We were young moralists condemning our elders and the world they had bequeathed to us. I remember using the term in the presence of my best friend's dad, who was a kind and intelligent man, and him chuckling quietly in response. It seemed not everyone took us kids as seriously as we took ourselves.

So: a loss of confidence in our institutions. And I would also say, in the expectation that dialogue can be productive. Thus, a decline in listening, in considering opposing views, in thinking things through. What we want is a simple answer that places the blame on certain others. Bankers, Bolsheviks, the Jews, the Blacks, the privileged elites, the major media, the know-it-alls, the know-nothings, the God-haters, the God-lovers. Anyone but ourselves.

Can we talk? No, apparently not. Mistrust of sources is the order of the day. I mistrust and reject out of hand your sources of information, and you mistrust and reject mine. How can we talk? Rationality itself is obsolete. Conversation is a dead end.

Does an age of decadence contribute to a centralization of authority? The need of the moment is a restored confidence, but how does one come by new hope? The political system will always produce leaders who will seek to take advantage of the zeitgeist, promising what the people most need. Needing more than anything else to have confidence again, many will put their trust in this man, but remember that he has come along in a time of distrust in institutions and in dialogue. To win us, he must declare himself as mistrustful as we are. This is how he proves he's one of us. No matter how much chatter the rise of this leader may provoke, pro and con, there is little actual thinking, just an exchange of rhetorical fire. Dialogue is for losers.

Finally, I should clarify that all this talk of confidence in institutions does not imply no confidence at all. In fact, people seem more blusteringly self-confident than ever. Confidence has to go somewhere, it doesn't just disappear. There is great confidence in that one leader who is the exception to the general decline, or confidence in oneself and one's carefully delineated peer group. There is great confidence in this or that conspiracy theory, etc. Which of course reminds me of something Dylan famously said (but I'll take Eric Burden's version):