Between various despotic and autocratic pseudo-communist regimes using the word “decadent” to describe anything they didn’t like (including the corrupt Western idea that you need to eat food or you’ll die) and the way modern megacompanies plaster the word “decadent” on anything they want to charges you an extra 20 percent on because it’s so “sinful” (Try our sinful, decadent, indulgent douche rinse now!), the word “decadent” and, by extension, the entire concept of decadence has taken quite a beating in the last century or so.

Add in the historical complications created by a Catholic church that condemns decadence from a triple-gilded and bejeweled Vatican, and the equally crazy Protestant extremists declaring war on any idea that life should be even slightly pleasant for even a second in its name, and it’s no wonder that the very word has disappeared from the living language.

Nevertheless, I think it is a valid concept, and something to be understood so that it can be guarded against and avoided whenever possible.

The problem is not that it is not a valid concept but that it has been used without being properly defined and hence used in so many different context that it loses all meaning.

Here, then, is what I consider to be the proper definition of decadence.

But first, I am afraid, we need to start with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

It looks like this :

As always, click to enlarge

Those of you who have taken Psych 101 or Philosophy 101 in college have probably seen it before. It’s a very simple idea : that human being have a great many drives/needs besides the basic biological ones needed to keep us alive, and that these can be arranged in a rough pyramid, with the lower levels in large needing to be satisfied before an individual can concentrate on higher levels.

A classic example that anyone can understand is that if someone is starving to death, they are going to spend most of their time thinking about food instead of, say, whether their clothes are in fashion.

But while we all understand that level of the hierarchy, what we almost always fail to see is that this progression does not end with the usual amenities of middle class life, and that satisfying the needs on one level inevitably brings the ones of the next level into sharper focus. Thus, satisfying one level can actually make a person feel less happy, as now the needs of the next level are crying out to be filled.

The worst consequences come from when people, for whatever reason, cannot acknowledge or satisfy the newly awakened needs of the next higher level, and instead attempt to drown out the pain of the higher level need with the pleasures of the current level.

My definition of decadence, therefore, is this : the misguided attempt to satisfy a higher-level need via lower-level means.

The classic example of decadence serves this definition well : the excesses of ancient Rome.

We all know the stories. Orgies, feasts, palaces, vomitoriums, in a never-ending cycle that grow more and more obscene and grotesque until whole villages were burned simply to provide a backdrop for the next horror of decadent excess.

But if you look at Maslow’s chart, you will see that for all their attempts to make themselves happy, all they were doing was hyper-saturating their lower desires while completely ignoring the vast amount of the pyramid above them.

That is what drives the excess. The more the lower level needs are satisfied, the more painful the denial of higher level needs becomes, but without a way to acknowledge let alone satisfy higher level desires, the only remedy for the pain is to increase the dosage on the lower level pleasures.

This is akin to what would happen if you try to treat your broken arm by taking painkillers. The condition worsens and more and more painkillers are needed to function, and it’s clearly not a long-term solution. But if you can’t get to a hospital…

This is also what leads to the highly modern phenomenon of the person who “has everything” and finds themselves still unhappy. They did everything they were supposed to do, and have the nice house, the good job, the car, the spouse, the kids. But they are still not happy.

How can that be? It must mean there is something very wrong with them, right?

Wrong. Look at the chart. All those “American Dream” things only take you so far up the pyramid, and “having it all” actually just makes you feel your lack of success in satisfying the higher needs all the more keenly.

In fact, one of the most shocking and heretical conclusions that follow directly from my understanding of decadence and human needs is that money can only take you so far.

The higher up the pyramid you go, the less effective money is at satisfying the need. Money is great for providing your biological needs, and pretty good for providing high quality safety, shelter, physical pleasure, entertainment, and so on.

But once you start thinking about needs like feeling connected to your community, happiness in your personal relationships, and self-actualization, wealth can help with these a little bit, but they are going to be far more strongly determined by aspects of your own personality and character, and those of the people in your life.

And when wealth becomes great enough, it actually can actively work against some or all of your higher level needs being fulfilled by providing you with so much short term pleasure to distract you and isolating you from most of the rest of humanity.

And that is where decadence truly takes its toll. When a person is stuck on a lower level, the inevitable result will be increasing unhappiness, even despair, no matter how thoroughly they satisfy their lower level needs.

Once you understand this principle, a lot of middle class and upper class problems become fair more clear and easy to understand.

There is no final happiness…. only satisfying one level and starting on the next.

Anything else is just mindless decadence.