Good afternoon, good evening, happy fat tuesday, thank you very muchsd for spending your evening with us. Im joe capizzi, the institute has been here for 3 years, ross has been an important member of the institute. Since our founding, hes been the media fellow and helped coordinate some of the events, some of our contentious events you have seen ross was involved with. [laughter] right. Anyway, we are super pleased that ross is joining us today i think on the day of the release of his latest book. All of you know ross as one of the most important commentators on American Culture today. He writes for the New York Times opinion page and written more than a few books at this point. They seem to all or at least a couple of them have the title how we became something, right. [laughter] right. You might want to steer clear of that or explain that at some point. Anyway, today the format is going to be that i will engage ross in a conversation about the book. I actually had the pleasure of reading it and it really is an interesting book. In my judgment not the sort of typical conservative on the way things are butut takes a nice tk to explore whats going on in our culture. Once he and i have exhausted each other, we will then open up the conversation to the rest of you so there will be people here with microphones, so if you have a question, please raise your hand and theyll approach you and dont be alarmed and then, you know, make your question and ross will engage you. And, of course, as i always do, i implore you to phrase the question to people, the more time ross has to respond the better for everybody, so dont make a speech if you can avoid that as possible, just a nice pointed question, okay . Again, thank you all for coming. [applause] all right. So lets begin. The book is called the decadent society with decadence. Yes, this is working. First thank you all for coming. Joe, thank you so much for doing this. Its a pleasure to be back at cua in a situation where im not moderating between the two embodiments or factions of modern american conservatism. As delightful as that was and i promise add marylandway through promise that midway through we will have faceoff and decadent, definition offered about 20 years ago of the term by the 2 great cultural critic o wrote a book from dawn till decadence and he basically made the argument that we should think of decadence not just in moral corruption, not just in terms of luxury goods and weekends at las vegas, you know, the perks and lounge, the outrageous stuff but clinical term that describes a civilization that has achieved a certain level of wealth, development and proficiency and finds itself in effect stuck without clear lines of advance is his formal way of putting it, stuck is the oped columnist distillation. So in the book my gloss on barzoon to say the decadence refers to stagnation drift and repetition at a high level of civilizational development and the argument then is that this term very reasonably applies to america, the west, the developed amrld encompassing the pacific rim since the 19 late 1960s, early 1970s and for the f sake of convenience, but also i think for the sake of what it evoked i start with book with the moon landing as particular peak of american, western achievement that was expected not to be a peak but a beginning, the open of in kennedys phrase a new frontier and instead it very quickly turned out that our capacities were more limited than we hoped and space, tinny bit bigger and colder especially there wasnt a soviet threat to compete with andea the space age petered out and that frontier was closed and at that point we really entered into what im describing as decadence. You identify four indicators that support the claim that we are in a period of decadence, repetition, stagnation. Economic stagnation, political sclerosis is one and serenity. Sure, so the the easiest one to start with is political sclerosis, thats the one that i think everyone in the western world and especially in the u. S. Recognizes and agrees upon, that over the last few generations its become a lot harder to effectively govern western countries and toot effectively reform or transform or build new or unbuild Government Programs and so an age when it was possible to elect a president and have a Dramatic Program of reform from Franklin Roosevelt and Lynden Johnson all the way through ronald reagan, if they succeed as obama did with obamacare they may pay a political price for it thatba lt the durationth of their presidency, and overall, politics is dominated by various stalemates by polarized parties competing with each other without building clear majorities, with in the United States sort of congressional advocationjo and increasing form of government that consists of basically negotiation between the executive branch and the Judicial Branch which i think is how a lot of actual american policy now gets made, but i think theres a version of this is somewhat different version in europe where you have the institution of thehe European Union which in a sense is too big to fail, all kinds of problems but no one accepts the wild and crazy english are taking the step of leaving, even the sort of fearsome populist of Eastern Europe dont actually plan to leave the eu but meanwhile its inefficient, creates common currency and common problems that are obvious to everyone and cant move cforward nor back or cant move forward towards the kind of actual european super state that many of its architects envision and so it too it sort of has the stalemate. So thats thats what im describing as sclerosis. Economic stagnation is not as sort of thorough going a reality as sclerosis, you still have periods of Economic Growth. Weve managed a respectable pace of growth under the basically since the Great Recession in 2008, but overall you do see a pattern of real deceleration lower growth rates compared to what was the norm prior to 1970s and you have the growth rates achieved basically through a kind of perpetual borrowing, right, where you can get to 2 growth with massive deficits whereas inh 1950s you could have 4 and a half percent growth with what then were sometimes complained abas massive deficits but werent really deficits at all. So in effect i think those deficits may be more sustainable than some conservatives think but they are sustainable in effect rich society paying itself to maintain a form of progress that its own fundamentals dont really justify. Talk a little bit also then in stagnation about the technological stagnation. You refer in the book back to the future, for instance, right, to exemplify this, give us a walkthrough that. So this is my this is an argument that im basically stealing from a group of economists and noneconomists who over the last 10 years have made the case that in spite of the iphone in your pockets and all the resources of the internet, Technological Progress since the apollo era has been disappointing, peter thiel famously made about line about flying cars, delorians winging their way in the future and instead we got 140 characters of twitter which is now 180 characters so in fact, theres no great stagnation. [laughter] and robert gordon, an economist at the university of chicago or north western, excuse me, who has written a sweeping thousand page book the rise and fall of American Growth and the point they all make is that its not the Technological Progress has ceased, obviously the internet era has demonstrated a lot of incredible breakthroughs in communication, information transmission and simulation. C its more that Technological Progress has become mono dimensional and its all tech and nothing else in area like transportation, energy, agricultural, even the built environment dont see the progress that we took for granted between 1840 and 1970, lets say, and then further when Tech Companies sort of leave the world of tech and try to revolutionize realworld industries, you are those are the companies that often denned t being the supposed unicorns that turn out to be frauds or failures, so, you know, theranos , the attempt to bring on an old fashion worth solving problem on how do you conduct easy blood tests and doesnt work and you end up with a multibillion Dollar Company evaporated or wework trying to revolutionize office space. So thats the core of that piece of the stagnation of the puzzle, progress hasnt ceased but progress along a very particular dimension that then feeds back into the larger pattern of decadence because leaves people to spend more times in Virtual Realities and simulations of Virtual Realities and retreat from both kinds of Economic Activity but also to bring us to another force, retreat from family formation, romance, sex, childbearing which is which is the aspect of decadence that i stall sterility, basically. I know that you have books bthat involve the sterile landscape which i thought was brilliant and fun. Lets think critically about what you wrote, so what would count as counterindicater . Youre giving a yo provide indicators, metrics, im sorry. Sorry. Thank you, michael. You provide indicators by which to identify us as decadence society, what kind count of ocounterindicaters, signs of le that you have to engage . Sure, so lets give examples. So one of the key indicators to suggest that we are not, in fact, living through a period of nimmense technological transformation is the fact that productivity growth, right, an economic measurement that tries to get at how technology is affecting the way people work has been stagnant and kind of pathetic for a long period of time in the 21st century. That was not true in the late 1990s, the initialer flush of the internet revolution. There was, in fact, a surge of productivity growth in the developed world from lets says 1996 to 2001 and that suggests, one, i was alive then, i was a teenager and it was this brief window where there was this sense of sort of the possibility of really dramatic growth returning and had that continued i think the argument im making today would i would be making aen different argument, right, that that t window was a nondecadent exception that then didnt have the cascading effects that people expected it to. Or another example, i mention sterility, the defining feature of demography in the western world since again the baby boom, 1960s and 70s is sad replacement fertility. People having too few children to replenish the population and this is true everywhere, but for tia long time america was something of an exception and so down to, you know, the early 2000s american conservatives especially like to say, well, look because american has retained a more dynamic economy than western europe, its not, you know, sort of socialist and sporadic and intense religious practice. Thats why our birthrate is still above replacement, we are estill a country sort of orientd towards the future in a way that france or sweden or increasing japan are not. So in that sense the United States was not decadent by my definition as long as birthrate was exceptional but over the last 10 to 15 years our birthrate is ceased to be deceptional and those are two examples under my attempts to create a statistical understanding of decadence there are things that could happen or have happened that would be undecadent and if they happened again they would count as a shift, at least a change, but the other point i would make is im not trying to examine the each of the forces as sort of forces that are just existing on their own. Every society has some decadence in it. Whats distinctive is the way the forces are converging so that slow Economic Growth feeds political unhappiness and distrust in government which makes it harder to pass, you know, effective political policy programs which in turn slows Economic Growth further and then drives down birthrates because people dont have any, you know, dont feel like they have the economic capacity to have kids which in turn makes society older and risk averse which makes it harder to make political changes. Anyway, youis follow me. Convergence that make our moment more decadent, not fully decadent, only one of the forces at work. Great, great. Talk to me about the we, how we became the victims of our success in this . Who is the we here because it is something that i wondered as i proceeded through the book that at times it could be the United States, at times it could seem like it would be the west or Something Like that and at im sorry sometimes global in in terms of your description. Aside from expanding out to include more and more, you know, people who might be the we, the victims off success that now is leading to decadence, it might be exclusive the finer grain you go, exclude certain communities, we are not in an age of decadence of prosperity, think of thehe Africanamerican Community in the United States, an africanamerican president was elected. More representation, how inclusive is the we here i guess is the point and to what extent might thinking about that refine your analysis at all . So i guess i will work backwards, right, so take the case study of African Americans. I think and this is, of course, highly debatable proposition but i think that there was more progress for African Americans in American Life in the period running from 1940 to the moon landing or 1940 to 1980 or pick a period like that than there has been in the period since and rein that sense i think African Americans have participated to some in decadence as im describing. Africanamerican unemployment rates are low and obviously thee election of the first black president was dramatic breakthrough, but if you look at gaps in racial wealth, household wealth, you know, the blackwhite income gap, test score gaps, all of the things that sort of reformers who are thinking interesting in racialha equality are interestig in changing, you get a lot more change in a lot of those cases in the you know, the era of the civil rights in particular but really the whole zone from the great migration through the king assassination into the 1970s. So in that sense at least in some socioeconomic way theres a kind of participation in decadence there and i think its a little more of an open question in culture. Obviously in certain ways theres been big increase in africanamerican representation in pop culture and cinema but i also think sometimes that too is overstated and theres a little bit ofhi forgetting of the very recent past that, you know, if you go back to 1980s, the biggest stars in america at the moment were African Americans. Now, one of them is bill cosby. Not something thats a cause for celebration at the moment, but bill cosby and eddy murphy, but not the case that there wasnt africanamerican representation and the rise of pop culture figure really dates to the 60s, 70s and 80s and we are getting a sort of further cycle now but its not a complete novelty, so thats to the last point. Developing world to develop past us when we talk about a specific century. That is implicit. At the same time i think there are ways in which if you look at demographics of china it is in the same low fertility track that the developed world is in and there are ways in which china is converging with the west. As our government decays a bit the emergence of oligarchy. Is not the same thing in beijing but there is a convergence and in stratified low fertility at higher rates of wealth and in the past. Obviously whats happening with the coronavirus raises a further host of questions that we can talk about in the apocalyptics portion of the evening. S t i did have a question about that. Another thing i enjoyed aboutk your book was that it was not an end of book. It doesnt say we are in this decadent society in its only a matter of time before its over. Its actually described as a sustainable amount is the bumper sticker. What would make this a sustainable decadence. One of the claims the book makes is that people hear the word decadence and they have the idea that there is a iron logic. The absolute cliche version of this is the writing on the wall. The babylonian palace or all the big barbarians were sweeping and for orgies in rome. I make the argument and i i think its true that it is a very normal condition for successful societies in empires and civilizations to fall into. And once they do can lead to collapse. If you have out rivaled that can exploit it. Ap it can last a very long time. However you want to chart roman decadencean from the actual fall of rome. However you want to chart ottoman decadence or the chinese empire. Prosperous and powerful societies in hindsight look decadent without them being tipped over into crisis and collapse. In certain waysin that is a more pessimistic vision for our future in the sense that there is an appeal to the idea thatt once you are decadent you are also doomed. At some level people want history to follow a morality play even if they dont want to beeo caught up. I quote them at the start of the book seen Something Like im going to mangle the quote. The book is right here. That is so convenient. They said what fascinates and terrifies us about the roman empire is not that it finally went smash but that itth managed to last for four centuries. Lets qualify it that it is actual four centuries it was especially from the point of view of the face that founded this university a time of dynamic change from within as there was a development of a non decadent religious face that did not in the end save the roman empire from ruin the dead preserve and Carry Forward roman elements into the future down to the present day and was there when it finally went smash as awa powerful force. I think you can imagine versions of that. You can imagine a renewal under decadence. That it creates something new to carry on the best of our own legacy. Is the optimistic case. In fact its has its virtues. It was a lot worse than the lives that we have now and we should regard life under decadence not as a horrible burden but as something that is not ideal but potentially a gift because it still leaves room for creativity renewal, and pass back to dynamism and flourishing. I did not anticipate encountering Cardinal Sarah in the book. And even less anticipated what exceptionalism was. If you havent read it i apologize for spoiling it. And no spoilers. As possible ways of envisioning imagining some sort of replenishment. If you think youre thinking about the vulnerabilitiesf the vulnerabilities of europe in certain ways they had had lower birth rates for a longer time they had had relative stagnant growth compared to us for a longer time but they are also more vulnerable in the sense that europe sits in the middle of the world whereas the United States has always had its splendid isolation in europe is in a equallwis libriu. But also with the current exception which is the continent of africa. And so we are headed for a scenario where europe which used to have more people than africa well potentially by 2075 or so had 5 million odd people in africa could have 3. 5 billion. One way or another it doesnt seem like that kind of equilibrium will hold. You can tell a pessimistic story one i think a lot of conservatives and reactionary types tend to tell where europe will try to build a forest when it will fail and there will be migrant driven chaos as far as the eye can see. You can also tell an optimistic story the one that i was raising by referencing the most african cardinal. And the image of oconnor and the black panther. That has some sort of interesting appeal in the decadent west as examples and less examples because theyre not examples. They are more suggestions of what a more successful confrontation between europe as it is and will become in whatever africa is good to become. They can also see the places that in the best timeline offer the most hope for renewal. It is this fascinating example of a very conservative talking at a monument to the catholic dead of the french revolution. In effect trying to call europe back to its ancestral faith. And bird dash bird dash Bank Building bridges. What come as this. Its an example of how history could present an expected sympathies that you would not had anticipated 30 or 40 years ago. On the subject of unexpected stuff its a reasonable argument of that i can make. You do also think through the apocalyptic and today your column that talks about the coronavirus a kind of i would say i anticipate it. I did not think it would happen literally while i promoted the book. It is an example of how unacceptable unexpected events a global pathogen is in certain ways the most predictable thing on the list. It is something that can hit the weak points in a decadent society. The fact that under decadence as i say it does not work very well that i have a lot of trust in public institutions. You had have a certain amountsn and the way that they had exported part of their industrial base. In certain ways it seems to be headed towards a more stable authoritarianism. It could be vulnerable to unexpected turmoil and resolution. In that way i would say the coronavirus is a kind of stress test for decadence. I think its actually quite serious and you should all have a weeks worth of canned goods in your home. Speemac it is a stress test because a decadent society will not be able to respond to it. Or is it a stress test for other reasons. I think we will be capable to responding to it in an imperfect but fund him mentally adequate way but i dont think its guaranteed. Etiquette puts pressure on institutions that under decadence are least functional and most vulnerable to outside stress what i said in the column and i will certainly repeat it there. You have the effective stalemate. Between some sort of establishment. And that government has populated the response. It seems unready to actually govern the country and so the coronavirus you could say is a threat that on the one hand is not consciously accepted but exploiting the mistakes of the establishment the mistake of saying its fine to have all of your supply chains to go overseas. To not manufacture your own animatics. It is hitting that sort of knife tape. But also hitting the fact that the establishment is not running the government. That means we have an acting department of Homeland Security had whose testimony today instilled noconfidence whatsoever. And donald trump say what you the populace to got elected how we needed to stlice our borders and be tough on china would be the man for this hour but the tweets he seems convinced that he can talk the markets into calm instead of actually acting like a germ of phobic nationalist which might be that thing that America Needs right now. Speemac very good. It does seem poised to respond to this. Most of us are anticipating thchnology. I think we assume the one area of technology that will be responsive is medical technology. We are not exploring the stars with human beings like we anticipated they more or less take for granite that probably by that summertime there would be some kind of medical response to this. If not summertime it would be shortly after that. I think that is reasonable. A counterpoint to some of this technician just arguments. Its not just like this. I dont think we necessarily expect an incredibly Effective Public Health response i dont think we necessarily expect the governmental side we do expect there to be some sort of vaccine. We have come closer than the ebola vaccine. We have managed past threats like this one not only with a vaccine but felt last great plague. It was not dealt with but at least sort of responded to with some sort of effectiveness. There had not been the kind of dramatic medical breakthroughs that a prior round of breakthroughs led us to reflect. There were reasons to expect that. We very slowly made some grinding progress against cancer. The same goes for alzheimers in an array of illnesses. We have not have the big dramatic victory. Then there has been some specific progress on rare conditions that is dramatic and there has been effective responses somewhat effective. It is not full decadence. If it was full of decadence we should not expect the vaccine and i think we reasonably do. I think there is a lot within the realm of technology. Th i think there is good argument to be have about whats happening. Even the way in which i think your book assumes that a Technological Progress i is good. Not to have it becomes a kind of market it. Its not always a good. There are ways that Technological Progress could end decadent that would be very dark. There is a trans humanist post human scenarioer that as a catholic i would oppose under my definitions would count as an escape. In that sense its not that all progress is good but i guess what i do thinkca is the society that we had built up is a society that expects into some extent depends on the promise of progress. S s very hard to imagine getting back to a society big partt is not a of what is expected and hoped for. I dont think as much as i find a certain kind of pastoralist and agrarian perspective appealing and certain ways i dont think there is a pastoralist retreat from the modern world. There is for some people in the modern communities. Not for the culture as a whole. I do think the alternatives are succeeding and finding new ways to grow or stagnating. Rather than finding arcadia again. Let me ask you to more questions before i turn to the audience. You entertained some alternatives. Liberal democracy is that an alternative here. Is that a response to this. Is that every envisioning or brie a livening of society or is it something else. My take is that both the revival of socialism embodied by figures has a likely next democratic nominee. Enter Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbin or others. And the kind of populist nationalists mixture on the right. We took a wrong turn. We took a wrong turn. And we could inea fact get back to a more utopian perspective on what government can do. Make America Great again. We were great in the past we want to get back there in the future and there is a feature that we were promised that we have not been given. So in that sense they are both kind of alternatives to the stewardship of decadence. Michael bloomberg not may be the barack obama of the 2008 campaign but the one that govern mitt romney in 2012 we were all sort of promisingob the same liberal or conservative politics. In a stewardship of eight prosperous stagnation. In we can do Something Different and we we can do something better. That said in the book i have some skepticism about how far this can go. Once the populace takes power i think the same is true of the socialist. Even if you want too. Thats onees point. Second. Pu a collaboration of a figure like ormonde. He stands up to give a speech and says i represent an alternative to liberalists. In practice, it seems to want the organization of the eu that existed 20 years ago rather than today it wants a one party or quasi one party situation that i think resembles mexico across most of the 20th century. More than it represents moose selena italy. Dash mike mussolinis italy. It is social conservatism it is kind of the normal social conservatism of the post 1970s west. Liberalism has obviously changed. So a standard conservatism can look more exotic in contrast with where they tend to be going. So much as sort of a slightly more conservative in the way i like. Version of the existing late moderate liberal a democrat order. If you crowned king and hungry if you have these places reaching for a different source of legitimacy even putin pretends to be a democrat. And may be maybe in the Sanders Campaign large d if they intervene. Russian interference humor is not. There is still elections in russia. Its a oneparty state. There is a lip service to democracy even as he governs this kind of autocrat. He is not restoring the roman ops. It seems to me that you cant declare that we are in a post liberal world until you have powerful and important governments. When is it version of the normal liberal democratic view. I could be wrong. We will see. Final question for me at least. The book starts with the moon and ends with the stars. You have this sheepish bad christian if i didnt mention faith all the sudden, i would be a bad christian is humble. The book ends with hope more or less. D the way in which they can provide hope for people is that really the force of your argument more or less really what is at the root of the decadent society is that it is a hopeless society i asked in part that would be a theme i would love to see carried out. I had written like two books about religion. I think yes, our soon to go back to his definition. We lost the decadent society. That a possibility. And i think implicit in that. The loss that it faces is a loss of confidence that this particular society is part of the story that has a particular destination. It is to some extent. Societies cant escape from that. Its true certainly in the cecase. We as human beings but we as those of us who are religious believers. They should be cognizant if we are in a story this is a really interesting point in the story. The story starts from a christian perspective with an admonition to fill the earth. For better or worse with some environmental catastrophes along the way. We have done that. It came when there is was not a true world empire. And that was the moment when god entered the world. That was an interesting moment. From what i draw from that. Not just the idea that okay we sted a recovery of faith. I would be in favor of that. And that would be a force pushing against. I go a little further. Maybe it will just be a christian revival is something that we will expect something stranger to happen. It is figuring out a way to sort of leap into the stars. They dont give enough space to the reasons why we probably cant build a work drive. I do think we have this one place. There is a huge universe out there. Its not as going up. It is something unexpected going down. I think it is justified place. We had reached some moment of human achievement that has some limit on it. If you believe the human story has a purpose and a direction then you would expect a really interesting plot twist. Im going to stand up and approach the lectern. I would never ask anybody over here to speak if i dont. We will bring around we won mike over here that i can barely see. You mentioned decadence and disaster apocalypse. Where are we going. How is this can end up. Are we living in First Century rome. My bet and it could be wrong is that it is more for century rome then late 18th century paris and what you are seen and i was just gesturing at this talking about or ormonde on the right. I desire to return to that bliss and that don to be alive. Ut the desire that is hard to meet in a society that is rich and old and stagnant and relatively stable. The french revolution. It would be a sort of left wing version of the struggles that the Trump Administration has had to enact much of the legislative agenda. In that sense i dont on the religious front, i disagree little bit with some of my religious conservative friends who see a sort of cultural progressivism carrying all before it and reducing conservative christians. I think cultural progressivism has carried forward in certain environments but some limiting principles on its advance and its in certain ways more likely that the secularism of today is neither as vigorous nor as dang rouse as the secularism that murdered knupps in the french revolution and the christianity today is neither as vigorous or at secular perfect be. So we are beating at each other with weak fists and reenacting on twitter. Thats happening online. Im just not completely convinced its about to break out into revolutionary chaos in the world. Nicholas and alexandras russia was saying he same thing. I expect to be gee be guillotined with my book. In the back and a couple guys over here. Ross, thank you very much for a very interesting presentation. Senator rubeey spoke at this university and also spoke at my university, a a few months ago and he has promoted the term is common good capitalism. And the very virtue of decadence notwithstanding, is that a possible alternative that is proposed now that resists the excesses of the financialized thinking of the right and the redistributessist thinking of the left . Im curious your thoughts. To full disclosure, with some caveats, basically support some version of that kind of program. So to the extent theres an attempt by figures in different ways, like senator rubio and senator josh holy of missouri to put a little more policy meat on the boneses of trumpan populism and hive been interested in that going back to books i wrote when i had more hair and was very young and innocent. And i do think the virtues of that kind of program is that, yeah, its intended to push back against specific features of what im describing as decadence, and so it contains attempts to contain efforts that pro family policy that try to push back towards the turn toward sterility and demographic decline and includes in some versions emphasis on industrial policy and funding for research and technological innovation that tries to get us back to if not the manhattan project, at least the building of the interstate highway system or Something Like that. So i think that is the i think the promise of that kind of agenda, too, is that its a goal, is to build a real political majority and not just one of these 50plus one or 47 plus one political coalitions that have exchanged power in our politics. Arguably since reagan, certainly over the last ten years, right . I think the clearest way out of political decadence of sort of stalemate and gridlock in washington, dc is for one of the two Political Parties to figure out how do you build a majority that can win landslides and i think rubios goal is to say how do you take existing conservativism make it more appealing to middle and working class americans and maybe especially in some cases black and latino americans to sort a build a kind of pan ethnic conservative poppic not just the kind of White Working Class conservativism that trump has managed to rally. Ive favorably disposed towards senator rubios project, but it does some of the caveats i offered about other populism and socialism both apply to that project, too. Under conditions of decadence its very hard sometimes to make real headway or maybe youre just pushing back a little built its hard to achieve that much. And i i try on the one hand to be optimistic and supportive of those efforts and also at least somewhat realistic but theyre prospects. Because in part, a lot of white house were involved in conservative policy work to in the lay 2000s and early 2010s had this idea that we were sort of building a kind of incrementalist conservative reform alleged that somebody like rubio or jeb bush would embrace in 2016 and ride to victory. Instead trump came along and certain ways adopted some ideas in a very different way and blew everything up and disease steroid a lot of my preconceptions of what can happen in american politics and that makes me i would like to see a Republican Party led by holy and rubio. I think its quite possible the future of the Republican Party is an endless battle to the death between don jr. And ivanka instead and we should be prepared for that eventuality. To sum up the response, its a no that that cant solve the decadence that youre describing here, right . The convergence of factors youre describing, some of them are like outside of our control. Talked about limiting principles on ingenuity and what we can do that seem to be beyond our capacity to form policies ill be more optimistic that than. My basic assumption is that to really get us out of decadence, just sort of the rubioesque approach is not sufficient and you need some more disjunktive events, some Dramatic Development we arent looking for, some innovation that is even now being prepared but will sort of push radical change, some religious revival that cant be engineered from above. In that sense the answer, yeah, is, no, my expectation is decadence takes more than just political programs to end decadence, but its not an either or. You can mitigate decadence, you can reduce decadence, the dotcom boom created a decadent window in the American Economy and the line, for us theres the fight the rest is not our business. We should applaud the trying and shouldnt assume a limit on human inning, not a yes we seem to have hit some kind of ceiling in how long we can extend human lives and what we can do with sprays travel, but maybe space travel but maybe its a bottleneck. Sometimes youre shouldering your way through and then theres an unexpected range of innovations waiting on the other side; so, its not all pessimism. Thank you. We have a question right up here in there you go. So going back to the discussion of whether decadence is a western or a global phenomenon, if you look at the world of 50 years ago you have tremendous disparities between the western world and the rest of the world, and then we have all of these barriers to transportation and communication and commerce coming down, and this is going to be kind of a pro decadence question. Can the case be made that maintaining any level of minimal but positive growth in the western world is actually a significant achievement but politically nobody can say that. Yes, that case can absolutely be made, and economists can say it. There is a author is it might be i might be getting it wrong. He has a suitably dramatic name and he has written a book just coming out called fully grown that makes the case we should not expect that economies do develop to a certain point where its unreasonable to expect them to achieve dramatic growth anymore, and there is rich as we can get in our to go to your point, we have resource constraints, were a one planet species at the moment. Theres only so far we can go and therefore our goal should be to get our goal should just be convergence. We want to get india and china as close to the per capita gdp of the western world as we can get. Avoid the destruction of the coronavirus or anything else. And we want to be comfortable with the fact that at the current frontier of human prosperity the best you can do is what we have done since the Great Recession, 2 growth that compounds over time and requires some pretty big deficits to assistant but were rich and can maintain those deficits and thats a great achievement. That is literally the case for sustainable decadence, and i think it is worth taking very i try to take it seriously in the book. The book is not just a deck kansas is the word decadence is the worst thing in the world. No. If theres case certain technological ceilings were hitting and not going to invent the warp drive we shouldnt be totally unhappy with that kind of scenario. That being said, i mean, i think, one, theres a its a little bit theres a tendency for that counsel of reasonablity to become a council of quasidespair. This all we can do and we have to accept these limits on our imagination which puts the best of humanity to one side, and then theres also the aspect of deck dense we talk but less but where the sort of the huxleyyan brave new world is under peril. You dont have the gulag but you have slow motion dehumanization, where people their horizons are narrow, theyre just are so youll have small families because you dont want to have too big of Carbon Footprint and you retreat into Virtual Realities and the next thing youll know youre on soma and watching the feelies and its youre right, its territory, and thats is whew i dont think were there but elements in our society, drugs that are somaish. Online progress was d pornography that is theres not a case for sustainable decadence that says if you dont have people pushing against decadence, whether its politicians looking for an agenda or people trying to be fertile and create if the in their own communities and lives, then you can drift a long weighed towards the brave new World Without anyone completely noticing and wake up one day and youre hooked up im not going to be able to quote huxley sufficiently but you know what im saying. I was wondering if you could connect the themes of your last two books. How does the decadence analysis apply to the Catholic Church today and what should the Catholic Churchs response be to the status quo decadence look like. You can see this argument so my last book, for those who missed it, was an analysis of the controversies in the church in the first four or five years of the francis pontiff cat with me taking their more consecutive of the holy father and some over changes they were pushing for are dramatic moment in catholic history with the potential to create schisms down the road and i think you can see this book as qualifier to that analysis to the extent the evidence of the two and a half years since i wrote my back is that decadence and catholicism itself is more powerful than i thought when i was writing the book. Again, as a conservative who was doubtful of some of the reforms being considered in rome, im rooting for decadence in the sense im rooting for a return to the liberal conservative stalemate rather than a sweeping liberalize asia and sweeping transformation, but thats the story of the last couple years, pending events in germany that if not francis himself, certainly figure round him had a pretty dramatic reform agenda that was sort of stalled in the synod but pushed forward, but then beyond that, whether its hoax osexuality and samesex blessings or the case of the last year or so, deconnests and celibacy in the priesthood, the push has continued and each time the holy father has backed off and we returned to a version of the status quo. So i think thats i think the Catholic Church in the western world is very clearly decadent in terms of being a large institution, struggling to adapt and in some kind of slow motion decline, and decadence rather than crackup seems like where the francis pontiffcat ended up. As to what the church should and can be doing, i mean, i think its a really tricky question for the hierarchy, the problem of a bishop or arch bishop supervising the church, supervising a city or region from on high is similar to problem of politicians in washington, if you throw yourself into revolution or dramatic transformation it may fail or may actually make things worse, and theres an understandable desire to sort of steward the ship as it exists for as long as it exists. But that in concern, i think, makes it that much more important for catholic institutions and figures who have the capacity to be more nimble and adaptable, to think more about what renewal from within locks like and you can take Roman Catholic case study and christians within an imperial context and its obviously not quite like that in the sense that in spite of what some twitter accounts occasionally argue, the vatican is not necessarily going to persecute wouldbe reformers as nero percent accused christians but theres a sense where youre trying to breathe Life Interest an institution from within, and that means figuring out to take i will just give you one american example context. What does the American Church need right now . It needs a lot of things but maybed needs a missionary order, new or revived existing order, capable of essentially treating significant portions of once Catholic America as mission territory, and that something that, as a newspaper columnist who writes about the church im not a position to invent or found, but there are men, people, who are in a position potentially to do that, and the world of decaying Catholic Diocese maybe need an order where you have three priests coming in and living in an oratory and handling seven parishes between them. Thats just one example but that is the kind of sort of youre not trying to save the whole tottering structure but trying to figure out ways also not to aabandon the structure and find dynamic ways to renew it amid its decay. Two more questions. Maybe professor gorman, and then a fellow who i almost called on before. Would our be bed in commenting on the topic of risk. Im old enough to remember we just wandered around the neighborhood and our parents didnt know where we were and we didnt wear helmets when we rode bicycles except when thought it made us look cool. Now i feel like thats just meant to be a little tiny metaphor. I wonder if our society is just extremely risk averse. Thats not a tiny metaphor at all. That gets to one of the core questions here, which is not its not just biffle helmet bicycle helmets. Takennage life in america is safer than its if been in spite of fears of predators on the streets and internet. You look at teen behavior and drinking and driving and most drug use, not completely mars but almost every form of drug use, teen pregnancy, how early kids have sex, all of the subpoenas of a thousand rock n roll songs, everything is safe enthan it was when i was kid and even safe are i assume were but two years apart in age when you were a kid, and people have this argument on twitter the other day, david french, circulated a version of this chart and said the only thing that kids are doing more of is playing call of duty and david french has a good frenchist is in favor of call of duty, but in fact, in fact you knew it would come back to french in the end. Something about the spirit of this place. And i dont think thats i dont think thats a sufficient analysis. Its not just that the kids are playing more video games its also that they are somewhat more depressions and anxious and team suicide rates have again up steeply even as all the other indicators have. Have improved and well see how things look in ten yours but right now seems likes these anxious, iphone using, video game playing teens have more trouble than past generations forming meaningful relationships, figuring out how to pair off and get married and have kids, and that seem to me to be the crucial decadence tradeoff, that we have more safety and stability in many ways than america had in 1969, and that sort of why conservatives wanted. Conservatives looked at the 60s and 70s and said theres been a terrible collapse. The dynamism of the babyboom generation was destructive and we need a recovery of stability but the recovery offsetable we get can feel more like a sickness unto death than a real return of fruitfulness. So things are theyre not i mean, the tarantino movie that came out once upon a tim in hollywood is a portrait of a moment in time that in many ways cultural conservative deplore this moment of the sexual revolution reaching its peak and then the moment where the manson family shes up and people are murdered in the darken 70s begin. But its striking to watch that movie and its a fantasy but a fantasy with roots in reality to see how young and garish and vigorous and vibrant the america that Taryn Tarantino conjures up. And part of the theme of this book is a in a sense im a cultural conservative who is in certain ways nostalgic for a certain degree of chaos and find myself to my own surprise preferring it to a stability that doesnt seem to have real fruitfulness about it. Final question. Thank you. And thank you for a really interesting conversation. You have referred to a number of artworks over the course of the night, cultural product and im curious but to ask you to reflect on the relationship between the arts and this sort of decadent moment, and if i could preempt maybe the most obvious answer, i was thinking about the decadent movement in the arts and the way that it arises actually in a very confident and arguably overconfident, late victorian moment, and sees itself as a kind of rejection or critique of a kind of banal confidence in progress. So, if im right, if there is not a onetoone correlation between the decadent culture and decadent arts, what kind of art might be expect, hope for or dread arising in a decadent culture . Yes. I would under my definition, its this is an eccentric claim to make the decadents werent really decadent, in the sense that they were sort of overripe and highly estheticized and experimenting. Like the 69 moment in American Culture, experimenting with transgression for its own sake, but they had a sort of they felt like they were sort of in effect renewing a kind of increasingly sterile bourgeois, smug, late victorian moment and i dont think you really have that in the arts today. Again, i feel like the sort of transgresssiveness that conservatives deplore has reached its enpoint and given way to a sort of early adolescence culture. My impression of sort of certainly where a lot of cinema has ends up, mass market cinema in a space that is perpetually 14 years old. Not childish, leaving childhood behind but the super hero origin story that never ends, always just sort of come interesting your powers and have a lot of adolescent angst but never move on to adulthood. Theres no sex or sort of real romance in super hero universe. Always sort of that scary adulthood and you never quite get there. And in the same way i think the sort of what distinctive in the higher arts about the era is their retreat from cultural significance mostly. I dont think i i dont feel im well versed enough in the state of contemporary painting or opera. I dont feel like im completely equipped to comment on the esthetic quality of some of certain areas of the high arts but i am equipped as a cultural on server to say their place in society has shrunk dramatically and what has taken their place, ann for well educate would have been going to opera and sustaining art calories art fall rid is in a algorithm created content. Every netflix show is pretty good but its not it is in its own way stuck in ruts and doing the same thing over and over again. I see the moment of the gold aim of tv sort of the way i see the internet boom. This brief moment where a bunch of figures were able to create some really impressive works of art on television and that lasted about ten years, and it sort of echoed the cinema of the 70s and now its over and now the algorithm is create can our television entertainment. The parts of the book about culture are mostly about that. The way were in a sort of were in a period of sort of repetition and uncreativity and also a period where Something Like the internet has not had exactly the effect that people expected. Its actually sort of homogenized things further. The promise of the internet which im old enough to look back on as a nostalgic thing, instead of big newspapers you would have blogger and instead of huge pop stars you would have a Million People plaining the guitar and some of that exist in the way teaches use tiktok and youtube and that doesnt completely not exist but in fact, in terms of cultural production thick internet has been a consolidating force, destroyed small and midsize newspapers and now you have a few newspapers like mine doing well but the small and midsize ones are weaker or gone and it weakened smaller or mid sized recording artists so taylor swift and kanye are bigger than if but the more eccentric figure have less commercial viable and the same thing in pushing. Its pushed in deferring ways everything towards a sort of marvellization of culture and i join marvel movies but seem to represent a kind of aversion of the repetition that im talking about in the book. Great, thank you. The book is fantastic, worth reading, an easy read. Ross style is very accessible and its funny. I dont mean to sound sophisticat sophisticated. The goal is to write the dan brown page turner. Great. Im glad to have you have goaling in your life. Apparently the rest of us dont. We have a decadent society. Thank you for coming out on a tuesday night to be with us. Were really grateful that ross joined us on the day his book is published. Thats a reception afterwardses. You can stay around doesnt start until 8 00 p. M. Lets join me in thanking ross. [applause] youre watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authored eave weekend. Booktv, television for