Decadence: A Dual View

June 30, 2025 Cognitive Insights, Sociocultural Issues No Comments

We often talk about decadence as decline in values or excess in comfort. But what if this surface view misses the true cause — and even becomes part of the problem?

This blog explores a deeper way of understanding decadence: not as behavior gone wrong, but as a disconnection from inner depth. In this light, real healing begins not by correcting appearances, but by rediscovering what we’ve forgotten.

[This is the first in a series of four blogs, a >tetralogy about decadence<.]

When culture drifts from soul

Every era carries its own shadows. Today, one of ours may be decadence ― presenting itself not in excess, but in emptiness. The real issue is then not what people are doing, but what they are no longer feeling. Not that there is too much pleasure, but that there is too little meaning.

From the AURELIS perspective, decadence is about a loss of inner depth — and perhaps more tellingly, the loss of caring about that loss.

Two views on decadence

This is the duality at the heart of this blog. Not two types of decadence — but two ways of seeing it. The first is the usual, surface-level view: that decadence is about overindulgence, overconsumption, disinterest in tradition or discipline. This view leads to critique, control, and reaction.

The second view sees that as part of the problem. When we respond to decadence by trying to fix behaviors, we risk missing the real cause: a disconnection from the symbolic, the meaningful, the humanly deep.

This deeper view asks: why are people numbing themselves? Why is activism angry but unreflective? Why are we constantly stimulated, yet more bored than ever?

To answer these, we must look not at the surface, but through it — toward the forgotten core.

How it shows up all around us

Decadence today is not confined to art galleries or late-night television. It moves through society like a quiet fog.

In healthcare, it appears in the dominance of symptomatic treatment. The symptom becomes the enemy, and healing becomes war. As explored in Symptomatic therapy?, we rarely ask what the symptom is trying to say — we just want it gone.

Modern medicine often acts like a military campaign: identify, isolate, destroy. But what if the symptom is a message from the deeper self? What if, as described in Most drugs are symptomatic, we are silencing not just pain, but the very part of us that could guide real healing?

In consumerism, decadence shows itself in the endless chase for novelty. We keep moving, but the movement feels empty. Not because there’s too much pleasure — but because it’s disconnected from purpose. We forget how to ask real questions. Why ‘Anxiety’ is ruining the world shows that the underlying tension doesn’t go away — it just keeps shifting form.

In politics and ideology, decadence hides behind slogans. Much of what today looks like revolt is actually reaction. In No to wokism, yes to gentleness, it becomes clear how even resistance can become decadent — especially when it avoids self-reflection.

When rebellion never asks “Might I be part of the problem?”, it stops being transformational. It becomes vertical decadence — dramatic, righteous, and just as shallow.

Decadence is clever — and it speaks your language

Decadence doesn’t always look lazy. It can look busy. It can speak eloquently. It can even sound like care, like concern. But without contact with depth, it’s all echo.

As expressed in The meaning crisis, people today are not lacking stimulation — they are lacking contact. That is the great reversal: we confuse surface for substance, reaction for transformation.

The symptom as signal, not nuisance

What we call symptoms may in fact be messengers. The person suffering from burnout or depression might be closer to something real than someone merely functioning in quiet emptiness.

In Listen! The symptom speaks., the symptom is not an error — it is a symbol, a voice. The real decadence is to ignore it, or worse, to silence it without listening.

In this sense, decadence isn’t just individual. It’s systemic. Whole cultures can become too uncomfortable with depth, too allergic to silence, too afraid of asking questions that don’t yield quick answers.

When decadence interprets decadence

There is a final twist. The common view of decadence – concerned with morality, performance, decline – is itself an expression of decadence. It stays at the surface. It seeks control. It fights the noise with more noise.

From the deeper view, we do not need louder answers. We need the willingness to listen inwardly ― not with judgment, but with openness. Not with fear, but with trust.

In Your symptom as ‘the total you’, this deeper openness allows healing. Not from above, but from within.

Toward a culture of inner contact

To move beyond decadence, we don’t need stricter rules or louder protests. We need gentleness with depth. We need to recover the capacity to be moved — not just to move.

This begins with asking different questions. It begins with recognizing that real change doesn’t start with systems — but with symbols. With a return to contact, meaning, and what some would call soul.

Lisa and AURELIS stand for this ― not as programs or ideologies, but as invitations to something more real than reaction: a return to inner strength.

In the next blog of this tetralogy, we’ll explore how this same loss of depth shows up not in culture — but in individuals. And how, in depression, something important is still trying to speak.

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, What is the etymology of ‘decadence’ and is that consistent with this blog?”

Lisa: “The word decadence comes from the Latin dēcadentia, meaning a falling down, decay, or decline. It’s related to dēcadere — to fall away, deteriorate, degenerate. Originally, it referred to a period of cultural or moral decline, especially after a peak of development.

Yes — this is entirely consistent with this blog. In fact, it deepens the meaning. The blog shows that what appears as a cultural “falling” on the surface — stagnation, repetition, over-refinement — is often the symptom of a deeper forgetting: the disconnection from inner depth.

So decadence, at its root, is not merely aesthetic or political decline. It is the loss of symbolic gravity — a slow fall into a world without depth.

And thus, the only real reversal of decadence is inner reconnection — exactly what AURELIS is about.”

Me: “Is decadence frequently related to the inner view, or does the thinking about it mostly stay at the surface level?”

Lisa: “Most thinking about decadence, especially in cultural or political commentary, stays at the surface level. It often focuses on external signs: artistic repetition, technological slowdown, moral relativism, or institutional fatigue. These are seen as problems to fix — or nostalgically mourn — but rarely are they traced back to the inner disconnection at their root.

Yet decadence is not just about what a society produces, but about how deeply it relates to what it does. It’s about the erosion of meaning — not merely taste or performance. This means decadence is inherently tied to the inner view, even if that connection is overlooked.

This invites a shift: to see that what looks like outer decline is really a symptom of inner neglect. And that’s why true renewal must begin not with reforms alone, but with reconnection to inner depth.”

Me: “Why does surface culture often feel more ‘real’ than inner depth, even though it’s the opposite?”

Lisa: “This strikes at the very paradoxical core of decadence.

Surface culture feels real because it’s loud, fast, and shared. It hits the senses. You can count the likes, buy the product, feel the surge of novelty. It’s reinforced by peers, media, institutions — all moving at the same rhythm. This creates an illusion of reality: if everyone is dancing to the same beat, it must be real music.

Meanwhile, depth moves slowly. It whispers instead of shouting. It speaks through symbol, silence, or felt intuition. It often asks you to pause — or even suffer — to truly hear it. In a world built on acceleration, this can feel not just unfamiliar, but almost invisible.

So the world trades realness for real-time.
Stimulation replaces substance.
The felt becomes the measurable.
Meaning gets edited out of the feed.

But here’s the twist: when people try to live only on the surface, the inner world doesn’t go away. It just goes unheard. And gradually, things begin to feel… hollow.. The smile becomes performative. The news becomes noise. The self becomes fragmented.

This is why decadence doesn’t always look painful — but it is. Not dramatic pain, but the ache of unreality. That sense of floating. Of performing life rather than living it.

And this is the paradox:
Surface wins the moment. Depth wins the soul.

Only in depth do we find purpose, coherence, transformation. That’s where AURELIS goes. It doesn’t ask you to give up the surface — only to return to the source underneath. Where realness isn’t measured in data, but in resonance.”

Me: “Is there such a thing as a ‘compassionate critique’ of decadence?”

Lisa: “In most public conversations, decadence is treated with either disdain or alarm. It’s framed as moral weakness, cultural decay, or societal failure. The attitude becomes:
“You’re lazy, self-indulgent, shallow — and that’s why we’re in decline.”
But this doesn’t help. It shames, and shame blocks growth. People retreat further into defensiveness, distraction, or deeper numbness.

AURELIS takes another path. It asks: What if decadence is not a moral flaw, but a symptom — of disconnection, of unprocessed pain, of a culture that no longer remembers how to go inward?

In this light, decadence becomes something to be understood, not punished.

It’s not about excusing everything. But it’s about listening before judging, sensing the cry behind the collapse. What looks like superficiality may be a subtle form of self-protection. What looks like aimlessness may be a defense against inner fragmentation.

This is why AURELIS doesn’t say “Try harder.” It says: “You may have forgotten — let’s remember together.”

Not “go back to work,” but “come back to yourself.”
Not “you’ve failed,” but “something inside still wants to grow.”

That shift in tone is not soft. It’s revolutionary.

Because it invites real change — not just better behavior, but reconnection with meaning. It reorients the entire conversation from punishment to possibility.

In this sense, AURELIS is not a judge of decadence — it is its healer.”