The decadent society How we became the victims of our own success

Ross Gregory Douthat, 1979-

Book - 2020

The best-selling author of Bad Religion presents a compelling portrait of how the superficial turbulence of today's world has become defined by economic stagnation, political stalemates, demographic decline and cultural exhaustion. --Publisher

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Subjects
Published
New York : Avid Reader Press [2020]
Language
English
Main Author
Ross Gregory Douthat, 1979- (author)
Edition
First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
x, 258 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9781476785240
  • Introduction: The Closing of the Frontier
  • Part 1. The Four Horsemen
  • 1. Stagnation
  • 2. Sterility
  • 3. Sclerosis
  • 4. Repetition
  • Part 2. Sustainable Decadence
  • 5. Comfortably Numb
  • 6. A Kindly Despotism
  • 7. Waiting for the Barbarians
  • 8. Giving Decadence Its Due
  • Part 3. The Deaths of Decadence
  • 9. Catastrophe
  • 10. Renaissance
  • 11. Providence
  • Acknowledgments
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

The Decadent Society offers an 11-section set of gloomy musings that dwell on a flagging American spirit. The US birthrate--like the birthrates of all advanced nations--is falling as society becomes more rigidly stratified. The mature economy based on consumption, not production, is sputtering and offering diminishing opportunities. Those in the impregnably powerful social-economic-political elite have blocked progress toward a more just and humane society. Disillusioned, citizens find little solace in arts, literature, and entertainment, where remakes and repetition replace originality. Church attendance and moral standards are falling, and the internet is a highway for pornography. In sum, the US population has become bored, hopeless ... and decadent. Douthat (a columnist, film critic, author, and editor) cautiously opines that there is a way out, but he gives it little attention. These lamentations would be terrifying if they were all true. However, readers have long known that literature is one story, told repeatedly. Science, despite Donald Trump, is advancing, along with knowledge in general. Douthat says nothing new, although what he says he says vividly, provocatively, and well. No illustrations, notes, or bibliography are included. Summing Up: Optional. General readers. --Douglas W Steeples, emeritus, Independent Scholar

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A comfortable but unoriginal, tired, and frustrated age has arrived, argues this scintillating diagnosis of social dysfunctions. New York Times columnist Douthat (To Change the Church) surveys a contemporary world where technological advance has subsided into the engineering of trivial digital apps; sclerotic, gridlocked governments dither; birth rates have fallen below replacement rate; young men lose themselves in video games and porn rather than start families or change history; the arts endlessly rehash boomer cultural touchstones and superhero franchises; and a managerial meritocracy entrenches itself in a soft authoritarianism of health and safety, while radicals playact at resurrecting communism and fascism in defanged social media tantrums and feckless street theater. Douthat's elegy on the death of progress is unsparing and often pessimistic, but never alarmist; decadent modernity may muddle along without apocalyptic collapse, he contends, or perk up again with a religious revival or renewed space exploration. His analysis is full of shrewd insights couched in elegant, biting prose. (American political partisanship, he writes, is "an empty traditionalism championed by a heathen reality-television opportunist, set against a thin cosmopolitanism that's really just the extremely Western ideology of liberal Protestantism plus ethnic food.") The result is a trenchant and stimulating take on latter-day discontents. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A journalist sees materialism and complacency pervading contemporary life.New York Times op-ed columnist and National Review film critic Douthat (To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, 2018, etc.) delivers an impassioned but not entirely convincing critique of American and European society, which he condemns as depressed, enervated, and bored, and he points to economic stagnation, cultural and intellectual exhaustion, and a dearth of technological and scientific marvels. According to Douthat, America's space project was the last time technological prowess ignited the public's imagination; now, instead of a shared vision of a "giant leap for mankind," we are left with a sense of resignation. The domination of near monopolies quashes economic risk-taking and growth; "below-replacement fertility" portends a "sterile, aging world"; a polarized, sclerotic government is mired in gridlock; and a narrowing range of cultural offerings reflects widespread cultural malaise. Movies reprise "unoriginal stories based on intellectual properties that have strong brand recognition"; publishers depend on "recursive franchises and young-adult blockbusters"; and pop music reveals "a sharp decline in the diversity of chords in hit songs" and repetitive lyrics. Douthat acknowledges that readers, many of whom have heard similar arguments in countless recent books, may not be as distraught as he is. Despite social, political, and ecological problems, they may ask, "instead of bemoaning the inevitable flaws of our present situation, shouldn't we work harder to celebrate its virtues"? The author thinks not. Although within a decadent society individuals can still "work toward renewal and renaissance"; although sustainable decadence "offers the ample benefits of prosperity with fewer of the risks that more disruptive eras offer," still, he insists that "the unresisted drift of decadence leads, however slowly and comfortably, into a territory of darkness." Describing himself as a believing Christian, Douthat underscores religion's entanglement with decadence. No civilization, he writes, "has thrived without a confidence that there was more to the human story than just the material world as we understand it." Underlying his call for change is an invocation to look "heavenward: toward God, toward the stars, or both."An earnest analysis buoyed by debatable evidence. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.