Puritanical Decadence

2008-02-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

I've been postponing having a blog for a long time, partly because I hate reading other people's, partly because I don't see the reason for putting a medium amount of effort into anything, and partly because I don't have time to put a large amount of effort into this. But I guess I might as well begin with this.

Are we, Westerners, increasingly decadent as a society? Or is that a paranoid feeling that our own self-obsessed culture promotes under the guise of reflexivity? Today I heard on the BBC's Culture Shock an interview by Tim Marlow with James Harkin, who recently wrote a book speculating what this century's most influential neologisms will be, and what they mean. Had I heard of the book first, I might have brushed it off as another collection of 'cute' and amusing tidbits to adorn the shelves of the gift section of Urban Outfitters, among cousins such as "101 Things to Do Before you're Old and Boring," or the no doubt witty and self-consciously ironic "Encyclopedia of Useless Information." But the interview revealed that the author himself regards the proliferation of post-it intellectualism (in the words of show host Tim Marlow - this phrase ironically belongs to the category of that hateful self-congratulatory smug post-it style - and now I am congratulating myself for noticing that, further spiraling down the endless ladder of feel-goodness) as a result of the market model applied to ideas, and that he is quite critical of it. How cynical he is, given that I suppose he will be making quite a bit of money from selling his book, is somewhat off the topic here.

Among the many interesting points raised by Marlow was the question of decadence as a fact of the post-postmodern world or as simply an illusion. Harkin brilliantly points out that it is difficult to be decadent in puritanical world in which we are constantly being told "No" by others, by Government, by advertisers, by bloggers and by whom else only God knows. Especially when it's said with that condescending tone that implies tolerance, but which is the outgrowth of anything but: "You shouldn't smoke," "You shouldn't cheat on your girlfriend," "You shouldn't cheat on your test,"etc. That almost universal Indo-European 'should' vs. 'must' distinction, which allows the finger-pointing do-gooder to shame rather than chastise or condemn. And it is much worse than that - because, in a way which constrains our efforts to really be decadent even further, the shaming moves on to attributes of personhood which are hardly as alterable as smoking: you shouldn't be fat, but not too thin either (lest you may betray a disturbing eating disorder, on account of which you ought to feel even more ashamed), you shouldn't be short, bald, have a flat chest, big hips/narrow hips/big belly/small belly, a moustache (yes, moustaches are part of the terrorist uniform, so why would you wear one if you weren't a dangerous criminal?) etc. I will just assume that everyone agrees that personal freedoms (in terms of gratification of personal desires) are vastly undermined by a rather powerful and heavy structural fence growing on all sides - but is this evidence that we are, as James Harkin says, not actually decadent?

To that I have to say a resounding NO. Our puritanism is the very source of the decadence, since it has given everyone the unsavory gift of fulfilling the need for asserting themselves (itself one of the greatest of the wanton desires) through one of two means: either by endlessly improving/upgrading themselves in a game of one-upmanship (e.g. mostly through the purchasing (and I'll get to that next) of expensive prestige goods such as a better face or bottom, a Toyota Prius, a t-shirt with Che Guevara's face on it, etc.), or by denying others the pleasures they are seeking (generally by declaring them immoral, degenerate, and unacceptable). Note that the latter can be exercised at any time and is not dependent on the content, but simply on having enough supporters. Both of these are fully supported (naturally) by a thriving population of commercial entrepreneurs whose sole purpose is to invent new ways in which the experience of partaking in either of them can be enhanced to the maximum.

Example:
Puritans 1: "You (a beautiful woman) should have big(ger) boobs/should not be flat chested."
Business 1 response: OK, we can easily find a few hundred services which will satisfy this desire for improvement in a variety of ways, at a variety of costs.
"OUTRAGE!", says the Puritan 2 contingent (note that puritan here just means the party which advocates denial of desire, not in any technical sense of the word)- "it is immoral to say you should have bigger boobs - is that the way to teach our young daughters to respect themselves and engage in meaningful and productive mature sexual relationships?!"
Business 2 response: We are offering a new series of t-shirts with slogans such as "I am natural and beautiful" and "Keep Silicone in Computers!"

As you can see, both urges are immediately satisfied, with the small negative effect of a bitter aftertaste, which is inevitable: the new possessors of fake boobs will feel ever so slightly guilty for needing the reinforcement of their new fake boobs, and the fake-boob-deniers will feel just as ever so slightly guilty for not having naturally big boobs. And that's because both advertisements will be flung in both parties' faces at every street corner and on every computer screen.

So what am I trying to say with all of this? Simply that this tit-for-tat culture of immediate gratification of our most natural desire, that of bettering one's fellow Man (ooo, I can feel the chilly reproaches for having used that word..., and I draw full perverse satisfaction from it), is an indicator of the fact that, despite the complexity of our civilization, we are perhaps entering, or have been deeply involved in, an age of super-juvenilism - where we reach for a toy to put in our mouths, and if it is forbidden, because it is dirty, we are allowed to have another, a cleaner, healthier, better suited one. With the added bonus of forbidding the first one to others.

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Puritanical Decadence