ARE WE IN THE AGE OF DECADENCE?  “Not the decadence of pure debauchery — there’s some of that available today, but public morals in the West probably hit bottom in the 1970s, not in our own era of stagnation. Rather it’s decadence as defined by Jacques Barzun: All that is meant by Decadence is ‘falling off.’ ‘. . . The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully. Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result.’”

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(Via Ace.)