Decadence, etymologically, means state of decay. To decay, to decompose, degenerate, deteriorate, disintegrate.
The overtone in decadence is the dis-integration of subject. And subject is multiscalar.
A person, a family, a community, a nation, an international class or an international order can break down.
One faction is alienated from another, and stops associating or is set against another in conflict.
In an individual, individuum is lost, and becomes multiple individual factions inhabiting a socio-biological dividuum. Each faction does what is pleases in disregard of the others. One faction wants to be healthy and disciplined, but another faction sees a slice of chocolate cake and devours it, health be damned.
A decadent organization, large or small, shatters into mutually alienated and hostile factions that no longer care about the organization as a whole.
A subjective being is decadent when it loses its integrity — its intersubjective integration — and disintegrates into intersubjective anarchy. A We or an I is divided against itself — and often cannot stand other aspects of itself. Self-loathing, other-loathing, convulsive inter-factional alienation and conflict prevail.
A place is decadent when it loses its habitational integrity — its spatial coherence — and is chopped up into dissociated spaces. (Christopher Alexander dedicated his life to repairing places.)
Time is decadent when it is fractured into dissociated instances. Attention is on one thing for a few seconds and then another thing. Momentum is arrested in stop-start motions. Each start lurches in a different direction, in a this-that trajectory. This meeting, then that meeting. This TikTok video, then that video. This topic, then that topic. This election cycle, then that one. This great event, then that one. This mass hysteria, then that hysteria.
There is no evolving flow or development of being through time, across places. Things fall apart. Mere anarch is loosed upon the world, and all that.
There is no time or attention for a long train of thought in a decadent world.
Everything is interrupted mid-thought, mid-sentence.
Only bite-sized bits of information will be eaten. Anything bigger than a bon-bon is too much to chew and bypassed as bad communication.
Only tactic-sized strategies may be followed. The longest long-game is to decide the next move before the problem evaporates into obliviousness.
Perspective is impossible, because each eye spasms toward what is shiniest. Cubist double-vision induces double-think dysunderstandings. A person wants perfect equity and unfettered freedom under theofascist-marxist totalitarian rule… as long as whoever made you feel like something the cat dragged in feels even worse.
A conversation of interrupted sentences is interpersonal decadence.
I am interrupted and interrupted and interrupted by people who increasingly need to not understand the truth.