I asked, 14 years ago, in a blog post titled "Jacques Barzun has died... at the age of 104."
I landed there because I had the idea that people don't talk about decadence anymore, and Grok reminded me that Barzun had published "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present" (commission earned) in 2000.
That was a quarter century ago. How long past decadence do you need to get before decadence isn't even an issue? And then, what?
As for the question in the post title, pressured, Grok to came up with 300 to 500. There are super-centenarians in this world, though you never encounter them when you're just out and about. It would be cool if you did.
Barzun was 9 and living in Paris in 1914, when the war broke out. He was one of the students who had to become teachers, teaching younger students when so many of the real teachers were drafted. He became deeply depressed, contemplated suicide, and — it seems like a solution — travelled to America. There he attended Columbia University, where he wrote a Ph.D. thesis in which he "attacked the popular notion of 'the French race.'"
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We don't talk about "decadence" because we are too busy talking about decline. "Decadence" was used to describe a falling away from the norm. We don't have those norms anymore, but we are worried about society surviving and continuing, and about what comes next.
Barzun's incredible book. The learning of those one to two generations gone, now, was impressive -- inadequate word here. Barzun would probably have said we have continued the decadence of the 20th century into the next "era," but that some conflict or development is going to cause a major reordering of our western world. It may be well underway but simply not entirely clear to us, living in the present as we are forced to do. Islamists, one obvious factor at this moment. Or whatever follows a giant peak in prosperity.
Lee Grant, actor/director, turned 101 yesterday.
"How long past decadence do you need to get before decadence isn't even an issue? "
I dunno, maybe ask those that are bitterly opposing the construction of a decadent White House ballroom?
@Lazarus
We don't "talk about decadence" because we are actually living it every day and don't even think about it.
I was surprised at how many of the TV actresses in the 70s had careers going back to the 50s. Sure, they had to start out somewhere, but it was a little like realizing that one's parents or teachers had lives before one came along. Lee Grant started out even earlier, but the blacklist delayed her rise. It had more to do with her husband at the time than herself.
I'm not sure what she's doing lately, but like Bill Shatner she had a career stretching over decades. She was an understudy for the original performance of Oklahoma! in 1944!
Something was lost when “actress” stoped being used.
stopped
“ How long past decadence do you need to get before decadence isn't even an issue? And then, what?” Ann Althouse.
We are there right now. The Left celebrates the murder of Charlie Kirk. The Left advocates for child mutilation. The popular culture of music, comedy and the movies is miserable and bankrupt.
Drug use is common place. Gambling is everywhere. Out of wedlock births are widespread and culturally accepted. Teenage girls think they are trans or homosexuals.
Illegal aliens still billions and the Dems do nothing.
Illegal aliens invaded America and we barely have the political will to kick them out; especially in MN.
America has become Pottersville and the Dems gave us it.
Eva Marie,
But we'll always have "Blogress".
I always liked Barzun--his defense of the weird spellings and pronunciations in English is a classic. (The oddnesses in the language embed its history.)
I would contend that pretty much the entire globalist endeavour is of the last 80 years is a direct by-product of WWI, and we still have people fighting -- desperately -- to maintain that world, along with its culture and institutions.
As just one non-political example, the idea that the arts, music, theatre, and architecture should "challenge and disturb" rather than enrich and uplift. That somehow "progress' must be "transgressive" and that we should celebrate and promote grievance over greatness.
I read Dawn to Decadence about 25 years ago & it remains one of the greatest expositions on a decaying society ever published. From our hostess's meanderings one would have to assume she's never bothered to read it? Maybe too much of a challenge to her "world view"?
Great point Bart. Although "Challenge and disturb" was only supposed to "Challenge and disturb" certain groups of people.
Since 1970s there's been very little in art that "challenges and disturbs" the reads of the NYTs. If it does, we get endless shrieks that it be cancelled.
At my age, decadence is aspirational. I can't even stay up past midnight anymore......WWII was a continuation of WWI. My parents lives were shaped by it. After my generation passes, it's no longer a living memory, and the then current generation can get on with the exhilarating adventure of the next big war.
If America became Pottsville its because the Right and the Center Right didn't want to fight hard enough. They'd rather watch football, or win the approval of the MSM. Or pat themselves on the back for not being one of those nasty "rightwing extremists".
My experience with Rightwingers is they just want to make wry comments. Or stupidily tell leftists "you'll be sorry". Thats when they're not running away.
Barzun wrote a great book - but it takes a while to get through it.
"How many individuals still live whose young lives were shaped by World War I?"
Everyone in the world is still living under the shape of things that happened in WWI.
They just can't follow the lines that far.
My dad was born in 1917, and passed a while back, but he had a friend who was a doughboy. I met him. We went through his house in his estate sale, we were kids and had no respect, and he had still kept his uniform, and extremely cool helmet, so I have that memory.
Read The Guns of August and you will notice that we are living in eerily similar times to those when WWI broke out.
Remember when the British public were inveigled into fighting the war that their elites wanted for reasons of empire, the empire that made British elites extremely rich. Well, it was all to protect "poor little Belgium" from Germany. Belgium had about 10 million people, I guess I could ask AI how many men died in WWI, but if you include, and you should, WWII, it's way way north of 10 million.
It's not that hard to argue that we are still fighting WWI, which led to the Middle East being divided up on a map with Winston Churchill holding the pen.
"The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” —William Faulkner
"The Left celebrates the murder of Charlie Kirk."
You might do well to look at the things that Charlie Kirk said about Oct 7 and just a couple of weeks before he was murdered, Gaza. And think about how easy it is for spy agencies to maintain a stable of easily manipulable nut cases who could be given a gun and a plan. Think Charlie Manson and the "Free Clinic" that the CIA has admitted running, where, had you read the book Althouse once blogged here, The Instability of Truth, you would know that the CIA burned all of the files from "The Free Clinic" on the night of the Manson murders.
You should think about all of that before you are certain of what happened. Israel brags about their prowess at assassination. They even gave Donald Trump a "golden pager" for him to keep on his desk, so that he doesn't forget how good they are at it.
Not an endorsement (because I haven’t yet read it) but in 2020 Ross Douthat wrote “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.” It was swallowed up by covid.
The British Elite had already decided to get into a Germany v. France side before 1914. That's why you had the BEF ready to go in August 1914. Belgium was just an excuse.
In 1940, the Brits had no problem in attacking neutral Norway to stop Iron ore from getting to Germany. Or occupying neutral Iceland - cause reasons.
WW 1 had a massive effect on UK and Europe. Not so much on the USA. We didnt declare war till april 1917, and 90 percent of the 2 million doughboys who went to France got there in 1918. It was probably the only war that was "Over by Christmas" - from a doughboy standpoint.
We lost about 50,000 KIA, the same as the Aussies and Canadians.
All of our lives are still shaped by WWI and it's aftermath.
It's like that story about Chou En Lai and the French Revolution's effect on Western Civilization, "Too soon to tell." (I know, I know, it was a misunderstanding about the riots in 1968.)
“I would contend that pretty much the entire globalist endeavour is of the last 80 years is a direct by-product of WWI, and we still have people fighting -- desperately -- to maintain that world, along with its culture and institutions.”
Of course. Even the people seeking to destroy that world are doing so with the cultural and ideological tools forged there. Much like a Prog prating about racism has no consciousness of how their thoughts originate in the Western Civ they profess to despise.
I was thinking about the “thinking about the Roman Empire” thing on the way to work the other day. Between my driveway and my office there were so many examples of the legacy that the exercise just became a blur.
“Or whatever follows a giant peak in prosperity.”
What should follow a giant peak in prosperity is the realization that a good life is peace, simplicity, creativity, and self actualization. But that is not how humans were made. What great artist or author or filmmaker would have excelled in his craft unless he knew he could become rich doing so, or in communism, to be nomenklatura. Writing is like bleeding.
So all that is left is to follow a peak in prosperity with a yet greater peak, which is what has been happening in the world since the city of Ur fell.
Did Europeans really think their global dominance would last forever? With hindsight it's clear that China and India weren't going to be kept down forever -- and that European wars would only hasten the decline of the European empires. The keys to peace were Germany and Britain working together in global affairs and Russia and Austria-Hungary working together in the Balkans, but I guess everyone was too stupid to realize that.
imTay, "You might do well to look at the things that Charlie Kirk said about Oct 7 and just a couple of weeks before he was murdered, Gaza. And think about how easy it is for spy agencies to maintain a stable of easily manipulable nut cases who could be given a gun and a plan."
So, the CIA had Charlie Kirk killed? Is that what you are saying?
Try Occam's Razor. Tyler Robinson is a whacked out Leftist who was trying to impress his boy/girl trans lover.
But you'd like the new movie, "Wild Horse Nine." It's about the CIA. I gave it a 7.
"How long past decadence do you need to get before decadence isn't even an issue? And then, what?" would be a great masthead motto. CC, JSM
LMAO. As Althouse herself has noted, a large number of Democrats have taken to peppering their speeches with F-bombs, apparently in a misguided effort to seem relatable to working class people. Yet Trump is the vulgarian.
"apparently in a misguided effort to seem relatable to working class people."
You mean like putting cheese on a raw burger on the grill?
OnwardandUpward, I agree -- although its characteristics are still highly visible, are they not?
Bart Hall +1
RCOcean 10:46, 10:50 +1
@Josephbleau -- wasn't 500 years enough for you? You need the entire Holocene?
Even Barzun, with 80 years of learning and a classical education, was limiting himself to a particular era, and only in western civilization.
So sure, our human species is aspirational and creative. But individual lives may partake of that very, very differently, yes? We are used to the generally upward trajectory of American society and economics in the 20th century -- and more especially in the lives of Baby Boomers born after the three worst parts of that century!
Imagine an American born in the late Gilded Age, perhaps 1883 -- a parent of the "Greatest Generation." He or she saw an economic slide after the gilded age; World War 1, and, if a man, possibly serving; the Roaring Twenties updraft; the relentless Depression; World War II. An average lifespan of 60 years and he dies in 1943.
What would his experience of human progress have been? And that's someone born into the greatest engine of progress in a thousand years.
Our lives even in an upward era, such as the Reformation to the millenium, have such extraordinary variety of experience. It is possible a generation of pessimists will evolve from those born into these last 20 years of an economic peak. To them, the Boomers took all the future wealth for themselves, left the young the bill, and then the profligacy of our government bankrupted our system. Certainly a very live possibility for a major part of a generation's lifetime.
One definition of decadence is that it involves the loss of an object or goal in life. Europe overthrew oppressive governments. It conquered the world. The West produced mass affluence and a relatively egalitarian society. America conquered the moon. Where to go next? What to do next?
𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠, 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦'𝑟𝑒 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛
𝑊ℎ𝑜'𝑠 𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠?
𝑊ℎ𝑦, 𝑖𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒'𝑠 𝑎 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑘𝑦, 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝐻𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑖𝑛?
𝐻𝑖𝑔ℎ 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦 𝑑𝑖𝑛
𝐼𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑜𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛
𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑚 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑤𝑎𝑦
𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟, 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑜𝑟 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟?
𝑆𝑎𝑦, ℎ𝑒𝑦, ℎ𝑒𝑦, 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑡 𝑎 𝑑𝑎𝑦
𝐵𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠, 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑖𝑛 𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒, 𝑖𝑡'𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑚𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛
𝑊ℎ𝑜'𝑠 𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦 𝑏𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠?
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