The Eric Metaxas Show - Ross Douthat

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat has an interesting take on the decline of the American culture and brings the evidence from his new book, "The Decadent Society."

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I tell all my relatives to take it. relief factor.com. Children all over the world love Eric, except for one 10-year-old girl named Ramona. She can't stand, Eric, and she's not afraid to say so. Okay, I admit it. I am Ramona. I hate you, Eric.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, infinity. Oh, yeah, and here you are. I mean, here he is. Eric Mattaxas. Hey, Todd, man, you're such a troubled guy. He's so messed up. Folks, I'm so glad Todd is in California, because he scares me sometimes. Albin, he scares me. I know he does. I don't know what show he's announcing,

but it's not this show. It just has no relationship to the show. We do a mature show. Mature. Okay, so this is Thursday. So I have to remind myself, today's March 5th. I didn't get to say it yesterday. March 4th, which was yesterday, is the only day in the calendar that is a military command. There you go. March 4th. Okay. I just thought it was important that I say that. And as it turns out, it was not important. Okay. We've got, yesterday we had Charlie Kirk on the show. If you missed that, we put that up on video. And I have to say, it was a wonderful time with him. If you don't know, Charlie. Now, he said something. People are already sending in comments. They're all upset. He said something about the kingdom is better because America's better or something like that. I thought he misspoke. So I didn't correct. erect him, that he was basically saying the church. And he means, I think he meant the body of Christ is improved when America is freer, because you can preach the gospel. And, you know,

when you have religious liberty, that's what I thought he meant. So, so anyway, I just want to be clear on that because I can't always interrupt my guests, although I try. I try not to, to let them have a word in edgewise. That's just what my job. Okay, today, in a couple of seconds, we've got another very, very special guest. Ross Douthit, he's spectacularly brilliant. He will be here to talk about his new book, The Decadent Society. I've known him since he was 12 years old. I try not to bring that up when he's in the room because I don't want to embarrass him.

He's now a very sophisticated, I think almost 40-year-old columnist for the New York Times. He is serious about his Christian faith, and he is a, political conservative, really brilliant, and it'll be interesting to talk to him for the whole hour and then the rest of the second hour today. So most of the conversation today is with him. Now, Albin, I want to tell you who walked into the restaurant last night. Okay. I was at a very fancy restaurant.

A couple took Susanna Mia. It's a very nice restaurant. And I'm sitting there. You know what? I'm going to save this for the end of the segment. Oh, it was on the, you can't think of a bigger name than the one I'm going to mention. For New York. It killed me.

I couldn't go up and hug this person, but I just didn't want to bother this person. But, okay, we have on tomorrow's show, Sean Spicer. Sean Spicey is on the program. Wow. We've got spicy on the program. Dancing with the stars. Dancing with the stars. The ruffled chartreuse blouse.

He won't be wearing that. That's always known for is that. He's going to be on the program. program, Spicy. Sean Spice is going to be the program. And John Smirak's on the program tomorrow. What a crazy week this has been. Unbelievable. And ask metaxus. Oh, and then tomorrow, right, after I talk to Spicy and after I talk to Zmirak, we're going to do our weekly time. We call it Ask Metaxis or X metaxus, depending on how you pronounce Metaxus. And, or maybe we should change it to Ask Mataskis. Something like that. Ask Mataskis. No, my name's really Metaxis. We're going to have to stick

with my name. People can write us, and people have written us already and submitted their questions for the host. I'm the host. And the questions can range from anything to anything. I don't mean to be so broad, but that's just the nature of this program. You can ask me absolutely anything, and we'll try to get to all of them eventually. We'll do as many as we can tomorrow. We are doing a campaign with Food for the Poor, Albin.

Food for the Poor. Holy Cow. We are raising money for families in Guatemala. I have to say this, folks. We do need your help desperately. We want to provide a venue on this program, not every week, not every month, but often for you to give to something that we consider worthy that we have vetted as a very worthy cause.

Food for the Poor is helping kids in Guatemala. Now, rural Guatemala is so stricken with malnutrition that they have this really lamentable title of being the number one place for malnutrition in the Western Hemisphere. That's how bad it is there. Now, if you think about how much food we don't eat and how much extra food we have and how much, it's just you start realizing that maybe I need to think about helping them out. Food for the Poor is an extraordinary Christian organization. You can go to our website metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner. We'll give you the phone number in a minute. But I just want you to know that if you give $80 is tax deductible. And this is stunning what you can do with your money, with your American money.

The dollar is so strong and Guatemala is so poor that literally $80 of your money, if you give to food for the poor, it feeds a kid for an entire year, plus drinking water for a lifetime because they're digging and drilling wells for clean water down there. They don't even have clean water. It's terrible, but we can do something about it. So let me think. I want I want to make sure that I mention this. Well, anyway, Paul Jacobs, he's with Food for the Poor. He said that less than half of all the kids in rural Guatemala have access to clean safe water. Now, think about this.

Most isolated communities store rainwater in rusty 55-gallon barrels, like the one that Paul Jacobs of Food for the Poor showed us on a recent trip. Let's play that clip. What do you see? You see all kinds of things moving? around in there. All kinds of things moving around and little particles, bugs, but what is most dangerous is the things you don't see. The things that when she boils the water for her children, it's not going to get it clean enough. It's not going to ever be healthy enough for them to drink and why it's so important that we help these families get water for life. I, you know, I've said this

over and over again. This is horrific stuff, but there is good news. The good news is you can do something about it, and you can do something very significant. First of all, we ask you to give anything you can give. If you can't give $80, give $20. But if you can do it, $320, $4 times 80, feeds a family of four for an entire year. That's how we can leverage the American dollars. That's what food for the poor is able to do, which is why we work with them because they are just extraordinary. There's a phone number. But we're going to have a challenge here. We want to raise at least $1,000 in both of the hours today. That means you folks, are going to have to step up.

As you know, Albin and I, we pick a grand prize winner every single week. That means tomorrow on this program, one of you who gives today or who has given this week will be chosen to get a parcel of signed books, a ton of my books, some of Albin's books, all kinds of some guest books are throwing all kinds of stuff and swag and hats and T-shirts and a visit to the studio with as many people as you like. Someone will win that tomorrow. It could be you if you give anything. You can even give $10.

Whatever you give, we're going to give you the phone number right now because I don't want you to miss this. And by the way, if you can't come, if you win, you can't come to the city here. You can give it to a friend who's visiting New York, and he can bring in all his friends. We love having visitors here in the studio. So here's the phone number if you want to call right now, and we're depending on you. 844-863-473. That's 844-8-863. Hope. 844-863 Hope. I will not interrupt this program to mention this again while I have Ross

doubt it on the program. I don't want to do that kind of a program, but I say this up front. I'll catch you at the end of the second hour in case you haven't made your decision by then. But anything you can give, I always say this is a great way to get your kids involved. You say to them, hey, if we give $27 a month as a family, we can feed a family of four in Guatemala for an entire year and get them clean drinking water. It's really an astounding thing. It's an astounding thing. The number again, 844-863 Hope. 844-863 Hope. Mataxis talk.com is the website. I only have a few seconds now to tell you, I'll be who I saw in the restaurant last night. Just to show you how different my life is from people in Guatemala who have no food. Woody Allen

walked into the restaurant with Sun Yi. And I just thought, I know this guy's films by heart. I've read every humor piece he wrote. I probably know his comedic oove better than almost anyone. And it was hard not to go up and say something to him. When we come back, we're going to talk to Ross Douthit for the full hour. We'll catch you at the end of the second hour with more on Woody Allen. Hey there, folks.

This Eric Metax's show. Even that song, that 1973 song from the Hughes Corporation, reminds me of the thesis of the book I'm holding in my hands. The book is called The Decadent Society, How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success by Ross Douthit, who is a friend and a columnist for the New York Times and the author of many books. Ross, welcome to the program. It's great to be here.

Or welcome back. Thanks for having me back. I've missed you. And it's the kind of a show where most people are listening, of course, on the radio, but those who can see you via YouTube can see. that you have ashes on your head, which means that they will know that this was taped on Ash Wednesday, unless you wear ashes at your head all the time, just to play with people's heads. Right, I keep a priest in a, you know, like Catholics did in England for a long time.

Now, I know you live in the New Haven area, but you came into New York today, and so you got your ashes at a New York church. I did. 20 blocks from here, St. Agnes, and they had the assembly line. I could have, you know, you could literally be in and out in 30 seconds, and I saw people doing this just coming in, get the ashes going out. And I learned actually from our pastor and knew that there's, obviously, you know, Christmas and Easter Christians, right? I've heard of them, yeah.

But there's also the people who only come when there's something to get. So it's Christmas, Easter, Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday, right? So if you get the palms and you get the ashes. Right. And I'm not sure, you know, the assembly line maybe encourages that a little bit. You literally have to spend 30 seconds in the church. But, you know, in Manhattan, seeing a lot of people walk around with ashes is still kind of a cool thing. Even if Ted Turner says mean stuff about you 25 years ago.

You know, it's funny, I've known you so long that I knew you long before you were a Catholic. But we're not going to talk about that today. I appreciate it. We're going to talk about your book. The book is The Decadent Society. And I said that the Hughes Corporation, the music, the 70s music that I usually play in this program, reminds me of the thesis of the book. because one of the themes in this book, one of the parts of the Deccan Society, one of the characteristics of it, is this idea of recycling culture getting stuck so that you're now only recycling culture. And we'll come to that. But let's start at the beginning, Ross. You've written about a lot of things. What led you to write this book with a very impressive thesis, well-researched thesis? It's also well-written. something that matters to readers.

But this idea, and I do mean it. But the Deccanin society, where did you get this idea and what made you think that I want to write a whole book about it? I mean, there have been a lot of moments. Like any book, it comes out of a lot of different thoughts. But one place to start might be, do you remember the moment, it was a while ago now, five or ten years when they took the space shuttle and they flew it on the back of a jet airplane around the U.S., and they were taking it basically from its launch pad or its hangar to retirement at the Smithsonian in D.C.

And there was a science fiction writer, and I do occasionally read science fiction, a guy named Neil Stevenson, who's written a lot of bestselling books. And he wrote something about this, and he said, you know, when I was a kid, I was sitting there watching the actual, you know, actual space missions, the actual moon landing. I think he meant, I read that part of the book. He mentions, actually he mentions Gemini. So he's talking the beginning when the space race actually begins. And he's watching it on, you know, the oldest black and white, you know, the beginning of the television era. And he said, now here I am. And I'm watching the space program effectively be retired, or at least the space shuttle be retired.

And I'm watching it on the most amazing sleek iPad, you know, the technology for watching what happens in the world. world has gotten amazingly better. But the technology for exploring the world has stagnated, stalled, and, you know, we basically figured that space was too big and too vast and we couldn't go anywhere. And that's one of the sort of ideas that's the germ for this book, because the book basically starts with 1969. It starts with the moon landing. And it says, look, this was this, this was one of the peaks of Western civilization, maybe the greatest single achievement sort of as a technical thing in because I've never thought of that. I mean, I thought around it, but the idea of labeling it as you do in the beginning of your book as the singular achievement.

And actually, I'm going to, I will help my audience understand what I mean by your writing, by actually reading that part of the book. Because it's interesting. I very recently interviewed Peter Thiel out of Socrates in the city, and he talks about this very thing. Okay, this is the first paragraph of your book, the introduction. The peak of human accomplishment and daring the greatest single triumph of modern science and government and industry. The most extraordinary endeavor of the American age and modern history occurred in late July in the year 1969 when a trio of human beings were catapulted up from the earth's surface where their fragile, sinful species had spent all its long millennia of conscious history to stand and walk and leap upon the moon. That moment, that's a good opening. That's not bad. That's not bad. No, it's wonderful. And that, it struck me that I guess I have always thought of that moment that way myself, that it was a high watermark of something. And in a sense, from that point, what have we done? Where have we gone? It's difficult to think that way. But so I guess your thesis is that since then, we've become the decadent society.

Yeah, I mean, I spend a lot of time arguing early in the book that decadence shouldn't be understood just as sort of a moral judgment, right? It doesn't mean we have gout and orgies. Right. It doesn't mean we're all in Vegas, eating chocolate, dips, strawberries, and going to bondage dens. Right. It means, and I'm stealing this from the great cultural critic Jacques Barzune, that basically there's a kind of technical definition of decadence, that when a civilization achieves a certain level of wealth and sort of success, and stability, it can get stuck and lose sort of new places to go, lose new frontiers to explore, and to enter into a cycle of sort of repetition, boredom, stagnation, and decay. And that's, I think, the story of America and really the whole developed world.

And I talk, this is mostly a book about America, but I talk a fair amount about Europe and the Pacific Rim, too, that for the last 50 years we've had a convergence of an economic slowdown, technological stagnation everywhere except Silicon Valley and that, you know, those amazing iPads, demographic decline. People are literally having two few children in every rich society in America, in the world, except Israel, to continue current population levels. And then, this is a little harder to measure, but, yeah, going back to your 70s music references, a certain kind of cultural repetition where we make remakes and reboots of cultural products that were new and fresh in the 50s and 60s. Well, you illustrate that very well in one of the first chapters of the book. And I have thought of this myself. It's a stunning thing that when I think of the 50s, I get an image of poodle skirts and cars with tail fins and Eisenhower. And I get

these images in my mind, distinct images of that era. When I'm watching movies on TV, on T. Turner Classic movies, I can almost to the year from the look know what I'm looking at. Something happened in the 80s and onward where decades are less distinct. It's kind of like a melange of previous decades. If I think of the 90s or the teens, they don't seem to be distinct. And that's the question. When did this happen that suddenly it became so fuzzy? And that's kind of the case you make in the book.

Yeah. I mean, I think there was, I think you can see a kind of slowdown in the crisis years of the and then kind of little dynamic moments with the Reagan boom in the early 80s when you do get some distinctive fashion shoulder paths and so on. And then there's another little boom in the late 1990s when we have, you know, the first wave of Internet technology. And that correlates with, you know, those are the only years of really dynamic growth in the last 50 years, basically, 1995 to 2000. It's the only time, even now that we're doing pretty well, we're still 2% a year. in the 1990s, it was 5%. That was also, I'm a movie critic,

that's my other job. I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. I forgot. And the late 90s were this little silver age of movies before the blockbusters just took over and it became all remakes for the last 20 years. So it's not a sort of perfect linear slide into decadence.

There are moments when it seems like we're pulling out. But generally the trend has been slower growth, fewer kids, older people, and yeah, styles, you know, if you go back and watch Friends and Frasier, there's a touch a difference, but it's nothing like, it's nothing like watching, you know, Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood back to back with, you know, the big sleep or something, right? Where you're like, these are different moments in American history. And there's just less of that now.

Yeah, it's extraordinary. Now, I don't know, I love etymology, but when I see the word decadent, is there a relationship with the word decade? Is it the end of a decade? Is it something that found du cecla? How do you say that? I mean, I'm kind of wondering, I should have looked it up before we got on the air. I should have looked it up before I wrote the book, man. I think there's a connection to decline. And this is the question that I spend a lot of time sort of arguing back and forth in the book, is how much decline is implied by decadence? Like, how long can a decadent society go on? Okay, that's another very interesting point you make about the Roman Empire for centuries.

of decadence and stagnation. We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to Ross Douthit. The book is The Decadent Society. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Ross Douthit. Yes, I am. The title of the book is the decadent society. And on the break, we just looked up the etymology of decadence. And in fact, it's not related to decade. The Greek word deca, meaning 10, different. Deca comes from of to deteriorate and the last part of that. De is obviously, well, apart down, Cadere to fall. Anyway, I just, I love the fact that we all would assume that decadent comes from

decade and it doesn't. So now we know. But we were just talking about... This is very useful for future interviews. I'm glad. This is set me, no. This has set me up. But now you know.

De Qadere. De Qadere, yes, naturally. So to fall down. So you were talking about. earlier about, or in the book you mentioned how the Roman Empire was in decline or in this state of decadence for nearly four centuries. So talk about that. That's part of your thesis, that we don't need to, we don't, we're not leaning into the apocalypse necessarily. We can go on like this for a long time. Yeah. And in that way, I mean, the book is, in certain ways, it's a very pessimistic book. Obviously, it is telling a story of some kind of falling off and stalemate and decay. But I'm also sort of pushing back against the people who say, you know, our budget deficits or climate change or something right around the corner is going to make all of Western civilization unsustainable. And in fact, I think it's totally possible that we have a kind of sustainable decadence. You know, put that on a T-shirt, right?

That we can, in effect, sort of go on cushioned by wealth with a lot of amazing virtual entertainments at our fingertips. and that our society is a little more self-stabilizing than people think. And now obviously, you know, I'm out promoting this book in the moment of the coronavirus, so I have to, you know, keep in mind that by the time the paperback comes out, you know, we may be in a post-apocalyptic landscape. But I think there are a lot of ways that decadence, people associate decadence with barbarian invasions, right? It's like the orgies are going on in the palaces and the barbarians are coming over the frontiers. And the reality is that, you know, whether it's Rome,

or the Ottoman Empire or the Chinese Empire before the 19th century, you can have hundreds of years of wealthy, successful, powerful societies that are just sort of stagnant. And in a way that's depressing, but it's also good news. It means we can imagine having a renaissance

without having the dark ages happen first. Well, okay, but let me ask you. Some place in the book, I think you quote, I think it's Yates, who says the best lack all conviction. Is that Yates? or housemen or somebody.

But I think, at least one of the things I want to talk about here is this idea of somebody coined the term not so long ago, cultural confidence, right? If you know who you are, you are willing to live for it, you're willing to die for it, if you believe in freedom. But if you're not so sure, if you have forgotten what got you there, you lack cultural confidence. And it seems to me that at that point of kind of cultural weakness, you invite those who have cultural confidence. In other words, the Visigoths and the Vandals and the Goths, they had cultural confidence. They were hungry to go back to an 80s movie. They had the eye of the tiger, whereas, you know, Caligula and his minions had long forgotten what it was to be hungry and vital.

It seems to me that that's part of what it is to be decadent. And there always is that danger. We don't have an empire in the way that the Romans had an empire. It strikes me that we have vulnerabilities, maybe that they didn't. So one, I totally agree with the initial point, right? And I think the most striking example of this is the nation of Israel. So if you go through every wealthy country in the world and look at their birth rates, they're all below replacement. Some of them are way below replacement. South Korea has a birth rate of one, which means every two people are being replaced by one young South Korean. And that to me is one of sort of the defining features of decadence. It's a lack of confidence and optimism in the few. The exception is Israel. Israel has a birth rate over three. And this is not just religious Israelis. It's not just the ultra-Orthodox. It's secular Israelis as well. And I think what you see at play there is just what you're describing. There is this sort of sense of mission and purpose and, you know, that we are the Jewish state. We are the custodians of the Jewish future. We are embattled and surrounded by enemies. And therefore, we know who we are and what we're doing and what we're going to fight for. And one of the corollaries of that is people still have kids. So in that sense, absolutely, there is a confidence that's lost under decadence. What I'm not sure about is who has confidence outside the Western world right now.

So, you know, there's a lot of concern, I think, especially among conservatives in the West, about the sort of revival of Islam and the idea that, you know, sort of a decadent Europe is going to be gradually taken over from within. And I talk a little bit in the book about this French novel submission by Michelle Wendon. Wealbeck that was sort of this success to scandal a few years ago imagining an Islamic France. But that possibility coexists with the reality that the Muslim world as a civilization is not incredibly dynamic right now. They're not great Muslim empires being built. Instead, you know, there are a bunch of petro states and then there are states sort of tearing each other apart like Syria and Iraq. And so it's, I'm just not sure that I think there is, in a way,

more cultural confidence, more confidence in Islam in some places. Yeah. There is confidence in Christianity. I'm just not sure that Islamic civilization right now is strong enough for the kind of takeover that you're... Yeah. I mean, I guess it depends what we mean by takeover. And, you know, when you think of the Gats, Vissigoths and Vandals, they didn't have

an empire. They just wanted in. They wanted to climb over the wall and have what they didn't. you know, they didn't create an empire of those tribes. They weren't a great power. They weren't Parthia or Persia. But I guess they were good enough is what I mean. And so that's the question.

We'll be right back, folks, talking to Ross Douthit. The book is The Decadent Society. Hey there, folks, is here from Texas show. I'm talking to Ross Douthit. You may know him as an author. You may know him as one of the columnists for the New York Times. He's the author of a brand new book called The Decadent Society, how we became the victims of our own success.

We were just talking about a number of things, Ross, related to the thesis here. One of them, of course, I called it cultural confidence. But it does seem to me that, for example, radical Muslims are having lots of kids and modern, secular Europeans are having very few kids. In other words, it wouldn't take much to think that a few decades into this century places like Belgium and Germany and these countries would be principally Muslim. It's the kind of thing that even 10 years ago I thought, well, that sounds like fear-mongering. So I'm not so sure.

I mean, I think there is a big, obviously, birth rate differential between first-generation and Muslim immigrants to Europe and native-born Europeans. And in some countries, it's hard to get good numbers in some places because, like, the government of France, does not collect statistics on religion, which makes it quite challenging to determine. Also, that's pretty ridiculous. That's amazing, actually. It's a part of their sort of secular theory of the state. But there's, I think there's also a lot of evidence that, yes, you have, you know, you have real sort of communities that are pulled towards radicalization and pulled towards jihadism or just sort of a kind of, you know, the kind of rebellious sort of enclaves

that are cut off from wider European societies. And that's a real issue for Europe. It's a real challenge. They're going to be dealing with that problem. But the birth rates in North Africa and the Middle East are actually converging with the West. And this is one of the phenomena I talk about in the book. There is some kind of basically everywhere except sub-Saharan Africa,

which is the big exception. And we can talk about that in the minute. There is a kind of convergence, right, towards the place that Europe and the U.S. and Japan and South Korea have already ended up. So to switch from Islam to China, right? Like, China is clearly a great power rival to the U.S. Clearly, and clearly there's aspects of Chinese society that have that cultural confidence that you're talking about. Like this sense that this is going to be the Chinese century, America's time has passed,

we're going to rule the world. There's even, I was reading a piece, I read it too late to put it in the book, but there's this sort of younger Chinese vogue from memorabilia from 40s and 50s America, which is really interesting. It's like this sense of sort of, you know, we're the new power and we're going to sort of look back to the old powers peak and, you know, and steal their hot rods and so on. But China's birth rate, in part because of the one child policy, in part because of just, you know, late modern trajectories, is lower than the U.S.

And so there's a totally plausible world where China gets old before. it finishes catching up to us. And so that's, that's, again, it's not optimism exactly, but I'm saying there's maybe more convergence on this universal destination of decadence right now than there are signs that an Islamic empire or the Chinese empire are about to leapfrog us and, you know, topple us from our perch, if you will. And it's interesting because the, the Chinese have a kind of enforced secularism and obviously the would-be caliphate is just the opposite. There was a book, I'm sure you know, by George Weigel around 2004 called The Cube in the Cathedral, where he talks about these ideas, this convergence of, you know, he doesn't use the term cultural confidence, but it's the same

kind of thing, how the Europeans are being less and less fertile, less and less fecund, and he ties it into secularism. In other words, we're not sure. sure why we're here anymore. We've lost, we've lost hope. We've lost a sense of mission, as you put it. And so, why should we have kids? We don't know what the point is. There's no real end game. So we're just here. And, you know, kids are just expensive and time consuming. So we'll have fewer. Versus the idea of the cathedral and this idea of growing and planning and whatever. And it's interesting because as Christian faith, faith in the West has declined. I mean, it seems to me, as a Christian, that would be the first thing

I would look at or that I would see somehow as why we're here. I don't know what to do about it, but here we are. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you mentioned that you'd interviewed Peter Thiel, the internet tycoon and author and famously supporter of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. And Teal, I quote him a lot, as you probably noticed in the book. He's sort of a theorist of technological stagnation. But he has this line, I think it's in his book, Zero to One, where he basically says that there is a belief, one of the most important beliefs for human beings to have is the belief that there are secrets in the universe that we can encounter and discover or have revealed to us. And that is what, in a way, unites both sort of the

religious imagination and the scientific imagination in ways that I think people, people, again, in the secular West, don't always appreciate there's this sense, oh, you know, religion has one sphere and science has another, and sometimes they fight over Galileo. But in fact, the impulse to the scientific impulse assumes ultimately that the world is intelligible to us, that it will yield itself to our endeavors. And the religious imagination similarly imagines that the world is here for us and we're supposed to do something with it. And I don't think it's a coincidence that those have declined together, that you've had a sort of. certain technological stagnation at the same time that you've had the secularism that Weigel talked about in that book, the sort of, you know, the emptiness of late modern European existence where you build these sort of sterile architectural cubes, right? That's what his title

comes from, one of these hideous late modern monuments to nothing. Right. It's not as ugly as the center Georges Pompidou, but close enough. Well, or it's worse. So this is the other thing that I want to say about decadence, right? So really ugly buildings might not be decadent because at least they're like the Santra Pompidou in France is one of the ugliest buildings in Paris. But it's now 40 years old or so, right? And it's built at a moment when even this sort of modernist architecture seems kind of new and they're doing crazy things or like brutalism. Right. Brutalism is it's hideous.

Yeah. But there is at least some imagination behind it. And it's decadence is almost it's what happens after that. It's when we don't even have the energy to make something. ugly anymore. You bring up, we've only got seconds left, but you bring up something that one of the things that I've noticed is that the way people dress, especially men, it's all retro. In other words, it's hard to do anything new. So you either look, you're always dressing or styling yourself, you know, after some kind of a previous decade's fashion or something. I'm not going to be able to

finish this thought. Good. be right back. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Ross. Doubt that the new book is The Decadent Society. And Ross, I was just saying that what I have noticed, because you were talking about, you know, even looking at brutalist architecture, which is hideous. But it reminds you of an era.

It reminds you of the pretensions of an idiotic era that they thought they're going to build, you know, the city hall in Boston, what could be uglier? And you look at it and you go, it's so 60s that they did that. But it seems to me that now we're at a point where everything we do looks back to some other era. or unless if I'm thinking about what how do people look different today it seems like all guys who are losing their hair shave their heads there's this new look that you didn't see I haven't gone there yet God bless you but but people in the past would never have done that so that is something new this kind of like bland ovoid look but it strikes me that the same thing has happened with cars at some point like 30 years ago all cars look sort of the same they're ugly. They're not willfully defiantly ugly, but they all kind of look the same. There's this ovoid shape. They all have the same colors, champagne or whatever it is. There's nothing distinctive and bold or anything. And I thought it is a little bizarre. How did that happen that cars have devolved

to all sort of looking like nothing? You know, that to me, if anything, seems like a sign of decay or decadence. When I look at the car designs that I don't see anything new. But they're not. Right, but they're not bad, right? It's not that the current car designs are sort of disastrous or hideous or anything like that. It's just, as you say, that they're doing the same thing over and over. And there's nothing like, I mean, you know, maybe Tesla is a little different, but even Tesla, it's different inside. Yeah. You know, it has its own sort of computer interface, but the outside of a Tesla is not that different from other cars.

And, you know, again, I, if you watch any movie from the 60s and look at the car, They're like art objects. It's just sort of extraordinary. But what is it the market forces? I mean, I keep trying to think, how is this possible? I mean, some of them were unsafe, right? It's sort of the intersection. That's an intersection, right, of sort of bureaucratic decadence, right, where you're, I mean, and this actually goes to sort of a core theme here, which is that the decadent society is generally a safe society, right?

So teenagers today, for instance, are safer than they were when I was a kid or when you were a kid. less likely to drive drunk. It's the opposite of wildness, right? It's safety. So they're on their phones. They're, you know, looking at online pornography instead of having sex. They're texting their friends instead of drinking. And in a way, there are people who look at that and say, well, that's progress.

But then those same kids are more likely to be depressed, more likely to be suicidal, less likely to, as far as we can tell, form meaningful relationships, get married and have kids. And that seems to be the tradeoff our society. made. We've traded, you know, people aren't getting drunk and jumping off the dam and dying, and that's a good thing. I don't want my kids to do that. Right, right. But there's a sort of, you know, there's a retreat into the virtual that's mirrored in maybe automobiles being safe and okay looking and not nearly as creative as those, you know, those tangerine fins. Right. Right. In 1968. Even if they weren't tangerine fins, folks, fins. We're at the end of our first hour here. We'll just continue the conversation. But there is so much here, Ross, and congrats to

you on this wide-ranging thesis, which you back up tremendously well. The question, of course, which we'll talk about on the next hour, is what to do about it, if anything. If this is all true, is their way out or beyond it. Folks, please don't go away. I'm talking to Ross Douthit. The book is The Decadent Society.