ITT: the concept of decadence Is it inevitable, or is it

>>1456635

Certainly seems to be inevitable, I don't know of any society that avoided it, given that they survived long enough for it to become a problem.

Does decadense have any good common defination?
I want to define it as wehenever any civilization got a way of living that allows them to grow strong and decadence is when they drops that way because of ideological, religious or comfort reasons and as a results loses what made it possible for them to survive and stand up against their neighbors.

First define "decadence", because otherwise people tend to use the term as a shorthand for "these things I don't like", "these fun activities I can't engage in for some reason", "things I rumble about when I get old", etc.

It's a fucking meaningless handwave, dude. It literally means "things I don't like."

>>1456723

That's not very easy though, because decadence seems to me a decline in things that are pretty hard to measure, like general empathy, dignity, morality, humanity, etc. It's a decline of exactly the type of things that are frustratingly hard to provide for in an analytical way.

A good example of this are violent revolutions/the rise of authoritarianism. People always view someone like the rise of Putin as something horrific and inexplicable. What they often seem to forget was the Boris Yeltsin period when oligarchs took over the whole of society after the collapse of the Societ union and basically plunged the whole of Russia into complete chaos in 1998. In response to this, the Russians choose order and dignity over democratic values, and ended up with Putin. This is also the main reason why loads of Russians are very enthusiastic about his leadership

>>1456755
No, Russians still value democracy very highly. What they don't value is liberalism, that is to say constitutionally protected rights and other such concepts. This isn't decadence or moral corrosion, but something that arose out of the context of the economic despair of the 90's and Putin's populist agenda. What was their alternative, continuing to suffer and die while unemployed with the only medicine you can get your hands on being a liter of vodka?

https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Revised/dp/0393331520

>>1456792
>No, Russians still value democracy very highly.
Russians value "democracy", not democracy. They value their Putin lead autocracy that gets called democracy. So they say they like democracy.

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>>1456755
I haven't seen anyone claiming the raise of Putin to be a "decadence". If anything, many in the country consider him a reaction to decadence of 90s and he actively use this image even now in his anti-gay pro-church rhetoric.

>>1456796
No, they value majoritarian democracy in its literal definition. The contention you're raising is with -liberal- democracy, like I said in the rest of my post. This is a crucial distinction.

>>1456731
As the last days have shown hardcore victoria playerd call pokemon go players degenerate for playing pokemon go i think that's the best defination.

>>1456809
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_democracy

>>1456818
There is an semi-official therm for this in Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy

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>alt-right /pol/tards love Putin because he combats "degeneracy"
>Russia is poor as fuck, has an extremely high rate of heavy drug usage, alcoholism, suicide, HIV/AIDS and other STD prevalence, depression, and church attendance is extremely low

And you tell me Russia isn't "degenerate"?

>>1456635
It's been BTFO by scholars since the 18th century. Edward Gibbon has been torn apart by hundreds of historians.