The New American Decadence

Scarcely a day goes by when I do not hear about a young person who is putting in extra hours at work to make sure he does his best job. He is not doing it because he has to, but because it's the right thing to do.

Such young people have a strong work ethic; they are not just whiling away the hours on their iPods or texting their ever widening circle of Facebook friends.

Such people do exist. If you belong to an older generation, each time you hear about one you feel a slight rush of optimism. If these anecdotal examples are not enough to make us hopeful about the American future, at least we know that some young people are primed for success in life.

But are they the majority or a minority? Do they represent the value system that is motivating young people? Or are they outliers, culture oddities swimming against a rising tide of cultural decadence?

According to the Pew Research Center, the millennial generation-- those between 18 and 29-- has done away with the old Protestant work ethic. The new generation, just starting out on careers and families, does not believe in hard work, in competitive striving, or in getting ahead because you have earned it. Link here.

The implications are stark. Members of this generation will refuse to put in those few extra hours that spell the difference between career success and terminal mediocrity. In the name of what they calls work-life balance, they refuse to take on the extra project, refuse to work overtime, and believe that it should be granted responsibility regardless of whether or not it has earned it.

Apparently, the millenials are more about fun than work. They want to enjoy life, and they believe that work is an impediment to their pursuit of pleasure.

By and large they are Obama supporters. They like being taken care of; they are not interested in competition or capitalism. They are not interested in competing against the Chinese or the Japanese or anyone else for that matter. They are the bane of the middle class independents who form the base of the Tea Party movement.

Previous generations believed in the good old work ethic. And they are properly horrified to witness the organized sloth that infects the millennials. They do not understand the feeling of entitlement, the failure to show respect, and the will to party. People who worked hard and sacrificed to build the nation now see that the upcoming generation has no real inclination to build on their work. The millennials are about spending the money of the Tea Party generation... to have a good time.

Surely, the millennial anti-work ethic fits well with a socialist economy, or an economy where labor unions are empowered. The millennials seem to want to work for the government, where they can keep their jobs even if they do not work too hard, and where they can enjoy something like tenure and a comfortable retirement on the public dole.

At a time when America is still reeling from the financial crisis, when we desperately need everyone to buckle down and get to work, the millennial generation seems to have decided that it is doing its part by buying the latest electronic gizmo, hunkering down in the parental nest, and waiting for the storm to pass.

Millennials want to be taken care of, even to be coddled. Better yet, they demand to be respected for their lifestyle choice.

Score one for the counterculture, for the educational establishment, for the media elites, and for the therapy culture. Apparently, they have wrung the work ethic out of the major part of the younger generation and have taught them that competition should be avoided. The millennials have learned that competition is bad because it is going to make someone feel bad. They have learned that work is like indentured servitude, to be suffered as little as is humanly possible. Their goal in life seems to be partying until the money runs out, and then... well, they haven't really thought about what comes next.

Welcome to the Chinese century.

The decline and fall of the work ethic is not an overnight phenomenon. For decades now the counterculture has been hard at work destroying the work ethic. They have denounced hard working mid-level executives as organization men, as mindless automatons serving their corporate masters.

But their first line of attack was against the military. By demeaning and belittling and slandering those who serve in the military, they have also convinced young people to keep their distance from martial values.

Culturally speaking, people who serve in the military are involved in constant competitive striving, in gestures of dignity and respect, in selfless sacrifice for their nation, and in a clear and unassailable work ethic.

For those reasons the culture warriors who control the school system and the media hate the military. All of the talk about the injustice of Gitmo, all of the branding of American soldiers as war criminals... had a purpose: to discredit the cultural values that made for great soldiers, great business leaders, and great professionals. And incidentally, to discredit the values that made our country great.

The military ethos was not conducive to fun; it was dangerous; it was not a party culture; it did not show you how to be good at vacation.

The counterculture did not want young people to emulate soldiers. Today, it pays more lip service to the military than it did during the 1960s, but still, it does not young people to be disciplined, to have decorum, and to compete for victory. Not at all.

The counterculture wanted young people to emulate troubadours, the folk singers and rock stars. It wanted them to be like Orpheus, not Achilles or Odysseus. The counterculture replaced war heroes with guitar heroes.

But is it fair to say that the millennials are thereby decadent? They value leisure and parties. They believe that they should be having as much fun as possible and should never sacrifice fun for work. Call them lotus eaters orslothful fun-lovers... but is that really the same as being decadent.

Here I would introduce one caveat. This younger generation may be decadent, but it is really not very good at decadence. There might be a saving grace here if the millennials were trying to excel at decadence.

Sadly, this does not seem to be the case. Their idea of decadence is compulsive texting, being zoned out on their iPods, consuming excessive quantities of alcohol, drugs, and wings, being mesmerized by internet porn, and indulging random, anonymous hook-ups.

In the world of decadence, this just does not cut it. I do not want to come off as a subspecies of moral prig, but, truth be told, hooking-up involves nothing more or less than a couple of drunken adolescents groping each other in the dark. If that's your idea of decadent pleasure, you have a lot to learn. You are a long way from the Story of O or the Marquis de Sade.

In the world of decadence, hooking-up is just plain mediocre sex ... even before the trauma.

It's not so difficult to understand the difference between decadence and a compulsive search for elusive pleasures. Decadent pleasures might easily involve almost all of French cuisine, from escargots to coq au vin. Stuffing your face with Doritos and Big Macs might be an attempt at decadent insouciance, but it is really just an aesthetically unpleasing indulgence.

Do I have to explain that there is a palpable difference between internet porn and a visit to the local bordello. The latter might well count as a perfectly decadent pleasure; the former is a cheap imitation.

Older people have been warning young people against hooking up. They are not doing it because they are hopeless prudes or because they envy the young for getting blind drunk and groping their way to sexual congress. No, they are trying to tell young people-- who have, thanks to the counterculture and the therapy culture, been taught to ignore all adult authority-- that hooking up is not even good sex. It is not even fun.

Say what you will, but Girls Gone Wild does not attain to the status of being the good kind of decadence. It is a cheap imitation of burlesque, not very interesting or engaging. Real decadence is sophisticated, elegant, and aristocratic.

It is one thing to say that the millennial generation has sacrificed the work ethic to run off and search for decadence. As of now it has not even been able to get decadence right.