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The ascendant (or declining?) current state and future of western culture


lokisnow

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7 hours ago, maarsen said:

Can someone  define decadence?  To me it seems to consist of your neighbour having more fun than you. How does that cause the collapse of civilization?

Your third sentence is effectively its primary definition:
Quote
1. the act or process of falling into an inferior condition or state; deterioration; decay:
2. moral degeneration or decay; turpitude.
3. unrestrained or excessive self-indulgence.
How the second and third definitions cause problems is pretty straightforward, the debate is usually over what constitutes moral degeneration (for the second one) and how much self-indulgence is too much (for the third). A case can be made for both of them today, but the situation is not so clear cut yet that most people would be convinced. It's generally a difficult case to make since one is inevitably being negative towards the values and behavior of one's audience which is part of the reason it's so much more commonly made in hindsight.
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3 hours ago, Altherion said:
Your third sentence is effectively its primary definition: How the second and third definitions cause problems is pretty straightforward, the debate is usually over what constitutes moral degeneration (for the second one) and how much self-indulgence is too much (for the third). A case can be made for both of them today, but the situation is not so clear cut yet that most people would be convinced. It's generally a difficult case to make since one is inevitably being negative towards the values and behavior of one's audience which is part of the reason it's so much more commonly made in hindsight.

 

Frankly, that just looks like three versions of complaining over people not doing what you want them to. For the third one, there seems to be an assumption that it is the complainer's cause that should be indulged. That makes it all subjective and thus fairly meaningless in a discussion.  It would be a case of simplistic wishful thinking, of the classical divine punishment type, to claim it would cause any societal collapse.

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There's nothing subjective about it: the adoption of certain behaviors and values by individuals in the commanding positions of a society or among the masses or both will cause the society to decline and fall. This can be illustrated by thought experiments positing extreme scenarios (e.g. what if literally everybody decided to stop working?). The trouble with the word is that beyond such extreme cases, it's not obvious which behavior is genuinely problematic which is why the concept is much more useful in hindsight, but this is a matter of insufficient information, not subjectivity.

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Can you give me an example of a society that collapsed due to everyone indulging in counterproductive decadent  behaviour? I imagine that if everyone decided to forgo sex, the society would soon enough be on the road to extinction, but by no stretch of imagination  would this be construed as decadence. 

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So this may be timely - It's definitely relevant, but it's quite long. I have only watched the first half - still going - but the gist I'm getting so far is that the main tangible parallels between the decline of Rome and the decline of the US (modern West) are:

1) importing people (slaves/immigrants) to try supplement the original culture debases the culture

2) continued debasement of the currency to make it go further destabilises the economy

Other interesting notes from what I have seen - the state cannot exist without society and society cannot exist without an originally defined culture - so it seems that the further a society evolves into civilisation/Empire, the further it evolves away from it's base culture. An Empire may not be able to form without cultural decline - the question of whether or not the West is in cultural decline may be moot, in that regard.

But, as stated, I'm not at the end yet.

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13 minutes ago, ummester said:

So this may be timely - It's definitely relevant, but it's quite long. I have only watched the first half - still going - but the gist I'm getting so far is that the main tangible parallels between the decline of Rome and the decline of the US (modern West) are:

1) importing people (slaves/immigrants) to try supplement the original culture debases the culture

2) continued debasement of the currency to make it go further destabilises the economy

 

I always find the comparisons unworkable as 1:1, anyways. The US as an imperial power has existed for a fragment of the time the Roman Empire endured, to the point that there were only vague academic understandings of the world before them...very much not the case with the current situation. And that sense of realistic permanence had significant effects on how both Romans and non-Romans behaved. For example, almost none of the 'barbarian' states that brought about the fall of the Western Empire wanted to do any such thing...they were actually mostly fighting to become accepted into the Roman Empire. 

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13 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I always find the comparisons unworkable as 1:1, anyways. The US as an imperial power has existed for a fragment of the time the Roman Empire endured, to the point that there were only vague academic understandings of the world before them...very much not the case with the current situation...and that sense of realistic permanence had significant effects on how both Romans and non-Romans behaved...for example, almost none of the 'barbarian' states that brought about the fall of the Western Empire wanted to do any such thing...they were actually mostly fighting to become accepted into the Roman Empire. 

Of course James - a 1:1 comparison is never going to work and time periods will never be equal - I mean Rome and the US are in different parts of the world, at different times, with vastly different technology - it's the trends that the video, and a discussion such as this, should focus on  - not the minutiae.

The video has covered exactly the same point about the barbarians that you just mentioned, that they wanted to be part of the Empire.

Also, I haven't read you longer post yet but I will - seems like it will be an interesting counterpoint after this video.

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5 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Debasement of the currency? If I remember correctly silver, gold and salt were used as currencies. Please explain how to debase these. 

You put less silver in the coins and more other elements - I guess that's where the old cliche of biting the coin to see it's worth comes from.

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6 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

ummester,

the Roman empire had successfully integrated immigrant (or conquered) peoples for centuries by the 5th century CE. The problem wasn't new people arriving. The problem was letting the newcomers hang dry for several years until they started rioting.

Well, that and the fact that the military forces were eventually composed of almost entirely 'barbarian' forces of various romanization. This was not so much an issue of composition as the definition of a Roman constantly evolved but that towards the end it wasn't so much 'barbarians' put through the Roman system as entire bodies of troops recruited and used in their own traditional way who happened to be fighting for the empire. Auxiliaries had always worked that way, but after a certain point the entire army was almost auxiliary. 

 

Edit: but as to your point about integration, absolutely. I mean, Rome was a city. The entire concept of Roman was necessarily elastic and evolving, else they'd be trying to run the world with the people of one town. The history of Rome is waves of redefinition of Roman in often huge blocks of incorporated citizens. Without that pattern, Rome would never have even been anything at all...some historians credit their elastic citizenship as the crucial mechanism that allowed them to transcend the more insular/colonial Greek model.

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3 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

ummester,

the Roman empire had successfully integrated immigrant (or conquered) peoples for centuries by the 5th century CE. The problem wasn't new people arriving. The problem was letting the newcomers hang dry for several years until they started rioting.

It hasn't gone into sanitation much yet :D

The video has, however, spoken about how in the BC years slaves were made of conquered peoples and culture subsisted, to a point. Slaves devalued Roman workers though - there is a lot to take in but the broad strokes seem to suggest that it's impossible to avoid cultural decline with imperial growth.

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Yes, but there were always clear paths to wealth for poor Romans even back then. Veterans were granted large estates after conquests, for example. So, in a way, widespread slavery enabled the military power of Rome.

Also, by the time the Roman Empire fell, the worst excesses of Roman slyvery was well in the past. By the 2nd century CE, slaves had gained some rights and the number of additional slaves fell due to the reduced expansion of the Roman Empire.

 

Or, in other words, the high-water mark for Roman slavery coincides with the high-water mark for Roman culture: 200 BCE-100 CE or so.

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9 minutes ago, ummester said:

Of course James - a 1:1 comparison is never going to work and time periods will never be equal - I mean Rome and the US are in different parts of the world, at different times, with vastly different technology - it's the trends that the video, and a discussion such as this, should focus on  - not the minutiae.

The video has covered exactly the same point about the barbarians that you just mentioned, that they wanted to be part of the Empire.

Also, I haven't read you longer post yet but I will - seems like it will be an interesting counterpoint after this video.

I get you, sorry for verging off into semantics. What I meant to say was that I think the models overall present value, ie this is how expansive/imperial states tend to act, tend to react, etc. And that can be looked at in this case in terms of decline, though it's important to remember contextual priorities. As an illustration, to the medieval mind, they were at the apex of civilization even while knowing that they couldn't build/administer/rule like the Romans had. Because their priorities had shifted to the spiritual, and there they thought themselves the most advanced. So in any age, the idea of ascent/decline etc. is not necessarily along the lines we'd agree with now. 

We currently prioritize technology, and thst's the rubric we use to measure past societies, but to a medieval mind we'd be in a terrible state, most of us damned to eternal torment. To someone from classical Greece we would seem terribly homogenized, politically...we'd be thought to have forgotten all but one or 2 voices from the choir of political thought...Macedonians would be cool with that part, but find us mostly effete submissive clerks. Etc. I get way off point pretty quickly the closer a discussion gets to my areas of study...

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36 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Yes, but there were always clear paths to wealth for poor Romans even back then. Veterans were granted large estates after conquests, for example. So, in a way, widespread slavery enabled the military power of Rome.

Also, by the time the Roman Empire fell, the worst excesses of Roman slyvery was well in the past. By the 2nd century CE, slaves had gained some rights and the number of additional slaves fell due to the reduced expansion of the Roman Empire.

 

Or, in other words, the high-water mark for Roman slavery coincides with the high-water mark for Roman culture: 200 BCE-100 CE or so.

Yes... and no

Again - broad strokes - he's talking about a heap of stuff, mostly economic.

400BC-0 Rome is expanding and conquering all over the place, kicking arse and taking slaves. Roman rural workers are fairly prosperous but, slowly, over time, the slaves are becoming a larger and larger segment of society. Sure, a Roman is still free and gets to buy and sell a slave as they like but the value of a slave is on the up and up (as slaves are utilised to do more and more) so the work value of a Roman goes down.

0-200AD Mainly about free trade and keeping the markets going. Yes, slaves are gaining rights and they are making citizens out of everyone they can - it all seems on the up and up. The more socialist Egypt failed against the might of Rome (Russia, anyone?). But, behind the scenes, over this time, the value of the denarius (sounds like a dragon rider :D ) is being debased. Everyone wants Roman coins and Roman trade - it's safe right? The Roman military keeps things in check, keep pirates out of the sea ways, keep the roads clean and clear of brigands - but the value of the coins are going down and down because of inflation (they have less and less silver content) so they can be spread further and further - India, at the furthest.

200/300AD + things start going pear shaped - need to watch more. Some titbits - they had some kind of property crash. Women moved away from traditional mothering roles (left the mothering to slaves), in pursuit of more social status and divorce increased/became commonplace. (I had never heard of these things before?)

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1 hour ago, ummester said:

 

1) importing people (slaves/immigrants) to try supplement the original culture debases the culture

2) continued debasement of the currency to make it go further destabilises the economy

 

This seemed like language from the far right, neonazis and such, with "culture" being used as a codeword for race. The second claim hints to belief in supernatural properties in gold, also common in such circles.

 

The statements about importing the Other would make no sense otherwise. The Roman Empire was, as the name implies, an empire. And the USA was built by immigrants. If immigration would destroy it, it has always been destroyed.

 

So a quick search showed me that the person in the video is indeed a mentally disturbed man from the far right.  I do not think you will find anything relevant in such an source, at least not that could be separated from the rest, and therefor you could not have relevant discussion based on it.

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48 minutes ago, Stalker said:

This seemed like language from the far right, neonazis and such, with "culture" being used as a codeword for race. The second claim hints to belief in supernatural properties in gold, also common in such circles.

 

The statements about importing the Other would make no sense otherwise. The Roman Empire was, as the name implies, an empire. And the USA was built by immigrants. If immigration would destroy it, it has always been destroyed.

 

So a quick search showed me that the person in the video is indeed a mentally disturbed man from the far right.  I do not think you will find anything relevant in such an source, at least not that could be separated from the rest, and therefor you could not have relevant discussion based on it.

WTF are you even on about?

Some of this is just logic, it's not far right or left or anything. If you have a culture of people that evolves with particular traits in isolation and then mix this culture with another, the original traits will be diminished or declined - hence cultural decline. If you form a society with immigrants of different races and stabilise them with homogeneous traditions, as the original immigrants in the US were, then they can still be said to have a 'culture' - if this culture is later made divergent by either changing the traditions or introducing it to new migrants that are not homogenised, then, by logical definition, the original culture has declined.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the right and left of politics. The right and left of politics are about capitalism (right wing) vs Marxism (socialism) left wing. I don't think the guy in the video is an extreme capitalist? He seems against welfare states and bloated bureaucracy - but not against socialism per se?

I think you are confusing left and right with some combination of progressive/conservative(or traditionalist) or possibly authoritarian/libertarian? But I'm not exactly sure. American progressives are now mostly authoritarian capitalists that call themselves left - but they aren't left, not by a long shot - they have lost their political bearings entirely.

Also, I'm very close to the end of that video now and no-where has it mentioned gold having supernatural powers :) That's just crazy talk. Many people do believe that the gold standard should never have been dropped and that, by dropping it, the US started to debase it's currency - but this isn't suggesting that gold is supernatural, just that it has an intrinsic value that fiat currency does not.

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No. Culture is no zero-sum game. The richest cultures are often those with the most outside influence. Also, cultures are constantly changing. A constant culture is a dead culture. Countries that tried to conserve their cultural status quo usually ended up far behind in just about every metric one might imagine. Just look at China or Japan during the 16th to 19th centuries. 

The guy in the video is a cultural essentialist. Which... eh, well, doesn't really work with the above. 

And no, gold standards are terrible. If you want to see the consequences of a gold standard, look no further than Greece, which operates under a de facto gold standard.

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