(February 9, 2023 at 6:34 am)Leonardo17 Wrote: Beauty, high level of self-worth, belief in individual power to create change is the characteristic of a self-governing people made of free citizens.

Which countries would you say meet this description today?

Jacques Barzun defined "decadence" as:

“economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development.”

Brian Sodding Boru defines 'decadence' as:

'The confluence of events, people, situations and inebriants that causes you to wake up half-dressed at a train station in a strange city with your head shaved and your genitals painted blue, and not regret the situation.'

Boru

(February 9, 2023 at 6:34 am)Leonardo17 Wrote: Here is the conclusion Part of an article on today’s Russia:
 

Quote:“The sentiment is classic fatalism, the product of centuries of life under despotic rulers — czars, revolutionaries, oligarchs — who treated ordinary people as an inconvenience, one that could be resolved in the vast frozen wastelands of Siberia, littered with the bones of so many dead. Resignation has become a form of survival, a kind of political self-care.
 
Navalny is asking Russians to put aside their cynicism, difficult as that may be today. For years he has asked Russians to imagine a country other than the authoritarian petro-state Putin has fashioned from the wreckage of the Soviet Union.
 
“It requires a lot of patience. It’s really slow,” Volkov says of the work he and the Anti-Corruption Foundation are doing. But, he later adds, “it’s important that we don’t lose faith.””

https://www.yahoo.com/news/from-prison-dissident-alexei-navalny-plots-vladimir-putins-demise-200202833.html
 
- So Cynicisms, low feeling of self-worth, resignation in the face of political oppression and fatalism is the typical attitude of the oppressed masses.
 
   Beauty, high level of self-worth, belief in individual power to create change is the characteristic of a self-governing people made of free citizens.

One is not really cynical if one could simply put aside cynicism.

Asking those seemingly on the verge of cynicism to simply put aside cynicism is foolish and naive, unless one’s intentions are malevolent to start with,  Because if they were not cynical enough so they actually could do this, they will mostly likely embrace fractionalism, fanaticism and blame shifting as their means of “putting aside cynicism”

Anamalocaris defines decadence as the prevalence of the view that what people believe, or can be pursuaded to believe, is more important than facts.    Any society where it is common to takes its religion seriously, or respect such dregs as would be part of the clergy above ordinary people is deeply decadent.

Tomato's idea of decadence: ketchup.

(February 10, 2023 at 4:09 am)Belacqua Wrote: Jacques Barzun defined "decadence" as:

“economic stagnation, institutional decay, and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development.”

Well then.  It must be so if old JB said it.

but he dropped a name, if that does not elevate him above mortal man what would?

(February 10, 2023 at 11:17 am)Tomato Wrote: Tomato's idea of decadence: ketchup.

Mmmm tomato jam

marinara sauce.