Decadence?

I am afraid that my linkage of the links below is rather contrived, but each link is itself recommended.

1. Douthat on decadence. And Thiel on Douthat on decadence. And Sixsmith on Douthat on decadence. (One of Sixsmith's better ones, I think: "In our lazier moments we are not opposing decadence but merely providing a soundtrack.")

2. Douthat says "A society that generates a lot of bad movies need not be decadent; a society that makes the same movies over and over again might be." Well, there are just 10 types of film - judging by their posters.

3. Douthat also tells us that, "Under decadence, Barzun wrote, “The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. ..."." Decadence is consistent with the highest levels of technical achievement - which brings me to Happy Birthday in the Styles of 10 Classical Composers. This really is incredibly good, if you like that sort of thing.

4. Another great Silicon Valley nanny job advert: "strategically think through vacation options based on the developmental levels of the kids and the need for the mom to relax";"Conduct research into domestic and global vacation options based on criteria, populate information into a simple Excel spreadsheet, recommend and book vacations, track vacation expenses in Excel including track vacation home deposits getting returned"; "Family eats organic and is allergic to cow and goat dairy, chicken eggs, green beans and watermelon" (you knew there'd be allergies, but did you guess watermelon?); "'Mom is a CEO and needs to relax on weekends". And here's an interview with the CEO Mom herself. What does Douthat say? Just that "... the promise of Silicon Valley [is] as much an article of faith for those of us watching from the outside as for its insiders; ... the one place where American innovation was clearly still alive."

5. Douthat talks about politics and economics. Starting with economics, here is Ryan Avent: "I have lived most of my adult life—and certainly the years since I began writing for The Economist—within the sphere of wonky technocrats, the quote-unquote reality-based community, people who live and breathe white papers and cost-benefit analyses and who feel certain that we can engineer our way to a better society if only we listen closely to the experts and the data. But in the years since the onset of the financial crisis, and for a number of reasons, a rift has opened within this world. On the one side stand those whose faith in the wonk worldview was not particularly shaken by the events of the past 13 years or so. [...] On the other side of the rift are those who have begun to suspect that some of the assumptions embedded in neoliberal policies were faulty." Frankly, if you haven't at least entertained the idea that the global financial crisis - and the reactions to it by those in power - should alter your worldview then you can't claim to be quote-unquote reality-based at all: "What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what Donald Trump and Nigel Farage said would happen has come to pass", as Lord Melbourne almost said.

6. ... which brings us onto the more purely political. "Both populism and socialism, Trump and Bernie Sanders, represent expressions of discontent with decadence ...". On this side of the Atlantic, we have Brexit and so I can seamless segue into Tom McTague, who continues his run as one of the consistently best writers on British politics by writing about Brexit here, and Matthew Goodwin, who also continues his good run here, echoing a point I made in the series of posts that I started here: "The story of how Brexit happened is likely to be one of those political stories that "everyone knows", even if what everyone knows might not quite be right." Leavers are, as Goodwin points out, quite nice really. But Remainers will write the history books and teach our children. The 1066 And All Thats of the future will no doubt describe the Leavers as Wrong and Repulsive. (Until the revisionist / Buzzfeed historians of the 2300s tell us that Everything You Thought You Knew About Brexit is Wrong!!!)

7. Douthat's NY Times piece does not mention universities, although I'm sure his book does. Anyway, here is a shocking article on how odd US universities are becoming.

8. And as for relations between the sexes and family life .... "I will try and explain what happens when mating meets politics using a speculative and overgeneralized model. This is a descriptive account of what I think is actually happening, not a moral sermon. There will be charts, and memes, and dating stories." If that's your sort of thing, then you will like this.

9. Next is an aspect of decadence not in Douthat's article: pornography. This is well worth a read: "For anyone born since 1995, it is not necessary to ask how they became aware of sex. It was by watching PornHub on a friend’s smartphone at the age of 13." And so is this (although be aware that (a) it is long - to make the obvious comment, you might want to skip to the good bits, (b) I have no idea if the science is at all accurate and (c) it describes some disgusting things that you might prefer not to know about).

10. Finally, last but by no means least, John Bercow discussed here, as is only right and proper.