Since our founding he is our media fellow to help coordinate some of our events in the more contentious events you have seen. We are super pleased ross is joining us today on the release of his latesthe book knowing is one of the most commentators on American Culture today he has written more than a few books at this point and to have the title how we became something. But today the format will be i will engage ross in a conversation about the book and to have the pleasureay of reading it with a conservative athe way things are but its nice to explore whats going on in our culture. Once we have exhausted each other we will open the conversation to the rest of you. There will be people here with microphones and they will approach you. Dont be alarmed and ross will engage you and i implore you the more time ross has to respond to the better for everybody. Just a nice pointed question. Thank youu for coming. [applause] it is called the decadent society with decadence. Thank you for coming in for doing this its really a pleasure to be back at cua in the situation where i am not moderating between the two embodiments of modern american conservativism as delightful as that was. I promised midway through we will have wrestlemania style faceoff and give people their moneys worth. So decadence, the conceit is lifted from a definition of 20 years ago wrote a book from dawn to decadence so to make the argument not in terms of catastrophic moral corruption and with those luxury goods and weekends at las vegas with the perks at the faculty lounge without outrageous stuff but as a clinical term that describes a civilization that has achieved a certain level of Wealth Development and proficiency to find it stuck that is the distillation so so to say that the decadence properly understood to stagnation and drift and reputation at a high level of civilization and then the argument is that this term very reasonably applies to america the west to encompass the pacific rim since the late sixties and early seventies and for the sake of convenience but then i start the book with the moon landing and as a particular peak of western achievement that is expected at the time not to be the peak but the opening to be a new frontier and instead it basically turned out that our capacities are more limited than we t hopedhati especially f once a wasnt a soviet threat to compete with them that ietered out and that frontier was closed and then we really entered into what i described as decadence. So those four indicators and the reputation and stagnation and political so if you want to talk about and then to exemplify it so political sclerosis is the one that i think is the one in the western world recognizes and agrees upon that over the last few generations it has become effectively to govern western countries and reform or transform or build government programs. So add an age it was possible to elect the president and have a Dramatic Program of reform from Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson down three Ronald Reagan has given way to an age when president s are lucky if they can passs one major piece of legislation across the presidency as obama did with obama care they may pay a politicaly price that last the duration and overall with various stalemates and without building clearle majorities in the United States and the increasing form of government that consists with the executive branch. So now there is a version of this that is a different version in europe with the European Union to advance to a point that it is too big to fail with all kinds of problems but the wild and crazy english could take the step of leaving with that fierce and populist that they dont plan to leave the eu but it creates all the economic problems but it can move forward or back but not shrink to that european superstate that they envisioned so they also have the stalemate. So this is what im describing is sclerosis. So thats the easy one. And is debatable and with economical stagnation and is not does forgoing that reality with that. Of Economic Growth with that spectacle pace of growth since the Great Recession of 2008 but overall with that lower growth rates compared to the norm with the seventies and those growth rates to achieve basically through that perpetual borrowing where you could get at 2 percent growth with massive deficits with four and a half percent growth that complained as massive deficits so in effect and to be more sustainable but as a rich society to pay itself to maintain a form of progress that fundamentals dont justify. Also with that technological stagnation and give us a walkthrough that. This is an argument i am stealing from a group of economists and noneconomists over the last ten years have made the case that in spite of the iphone in your pockets and all the resources of the internet and so this has been made about how we expected flying cars and illyrians into the future and instead we have 140 characters on twitter. So now there is no great stagnation now its 280. And Robert Gordon at the university of chicago has written ach sweeping 1000 page book and the point they all make is that its not that technological project one progress has ceased but breakthrough of communication and transmission and simulation and is more that Technological Progress is mono dimensional and its all tech and nothing else and agriculture even the built environment dont see the progress that we took for granted between 1840 and 1970. And further when Tech Companies leave the world of tech to revolutionize realworld industry those of the companies that often end up being the suppose it unicorns utter frauds or ailures that the attempt to bring big tech to bear to solve problems of how you conduct a blood test with a multibillion Dollar Company and to revolutionize office space so that piece of the stagnation puzzle is progress ceased but along a particular dimension that feeds back into the larger pattern because it leaves people to spend more time in Virtual Reality and simulation. S of economic activities. You are getting a kindf indicator by which to identify. What might count as counter indicators in other words, signs of life that they would engage in. One of the indicators to suggest we are not in fact looking through the period of immense technological transformation of measurement to try to get at how technology isl affecting the way people work has been stagnant in the initial flush of the revolution there was in factol a surge of productivity growth in the developed world from lets say 1996 to 2001 so that suggests there was this brief window where there was a sense of possibility of dramatic growth returning to. It is a non decadent exception that didnt have the cascading effect. The defining feature of the democracy in the western world. American conservatives especially like to say because america has retained a more dynamic economy than western europe, its not sort of a socialist and its maintained a inrtain amount of optimism in the future and intense religious practice. Thats why the birth rate is still above replacement and we are a country oriented towards the future in a way that france or sweden or japan or not. So in that sense the United States wasnt decadent as long as the birth rate was exceptional. We are now indistinguishable from the fertility levels, so those were two good examples of how its not undermined attempts to creatundermine theattempt toc understanding of decadence there are things that could have been in have happened that would be an decadence and if it would happen it would be counted at least as a shift, a change. But the other poin point id mas that it is not i am not trying to examine each of these as a sort of force existing on their own. Every society has some decadence in it. Whats to think of the moment is the way these forces are convergingce so that slow econoc growth feeds political unhappiness and distrust which makes it harder to pass effective political programs that slows Economic Growth further and then drives down birth rates to cause people dont feelt like they have the economic capacity to have kids which in turn makes the societies more risk adverse which makes it hard to make political changes. Fut there is a h sort of convergence of these forces that makes our moment more decadent, not fully decadent whatever that was thwould mean, but more decat than the periods in the past that only had one of these forceses at work. Great. Talk about how we became the victims of our success. It is something i wonder at times it could be the United States and it could be the west or Something Like that and at times it seemed global in terms of your description. But i wonder whether expanding it to include more and more people who might be the victims of success leading to decadence it might be exclusive and exclude certain communities who might say we are not in the age of decadence. We are an age of prosperity or a sentence. Think of there is more and more representation. How inclusive is the point and in thinking about that analysis. I guess i will work backwards. So, take the case study of africanamerican. I think, and this is of course a highly debatable proposition, but i think that there was more progress for African Americans and American Life in the period running from 1940 to the moon landing or 1980 1980, take a ped like that. Then there has been in the period sends and i think africanamericans have participated as im describing it. They are particularly low with the current moment and with the election as a dramatic breakthrough if you look at the gaps in the racial Household Wealth and the reformers that are interested in the equal of the indian changing you get a lot more change in a lot ofet those cases and in the civil rights in particular but the whole great migration. In a socioeconomic way there is a participation in decadence, and i think it is a little more of an open question an questione are obviously in certain ways theres been a big increase in africanamerican representation in pop culture and cinema, but i also think sometimes that is overstated and there is a little bit of forgetting these paths if you go back to the 1980s the biggest stars in america at that moment were africanamericans. A. Of the ris. The rise of the pope figure really beats to the 60s, 70s and 80s and we are getting a sort of further cycle but its not a complete novelty. So, that to the larger sense, the questions the book raises and doesnt answer is is it a western developed phenomenon or a global phenomenon. And i think that i feel very confident in arguing that there is some kind of the celebration and . Stagnation japan, south korea, the United States and western europe share in common. A harder question is what is happening in the countries that we still call developing. What is happening with the rising cover of the world, china, india and so on and you could make the case the decadence of the west is what is going to enable them on decadent developing world to develop in some sense test us when we talk about the pacific or asian century. That sort of implicit. At the same time i think there are ways in which if youti lookt for instance if you look at the demographics. The demographics of china is in the same low fertility trap and there are ways the u2 could see china is converging with the west. There is a bit of convergence and oligarchy is the billionaires compete this is sort of convergence in the low fertility oligarchy at the higher rates of wealth in the past that isnt the case of china leapfrogging past us and obviously what is happening in the coronavirus it raises a further host of questions that we can talk about in the apocalyptic portion of the evening. Another thing that i enjoyed about your book was it wasnt an end of the book. It doesnt say that they are in this decadent society and its only a matter of time before it is over. It is the kind of sustainable decadence. It sounds like a bumper sticker. One of the claims the book makes people hear the word of decadence and have the idea that they are sort of an iron logic of history once you become decadence, you are doomed and the absolute cliche versionnt of this is the writing on the wall, the babylonian palace or, you know, all the barbarians sweeping in and so on. In fact, i make the argument i think it is true decadence is a very normal condition for successful societies and empires and civilizations to fall into and once they do it can lead to collapse. But it can also lead to, you know, a kind of sustainable very long time. However you want to chart the decadence of this 400 years from the caligula moment to the actual full of road. However you want to chart the decadence of the chinese empire down through the 18th and early 19th century. These are long historical. Periods where prosperous and powerful societies in hindsight of decadence without them being tipped over into a crisis and collapse. And in certain ways, that is a more pessimistic vision for the future in the sense that i think theres an appeal to the idea that once you are decadent you are also doomed. There is a sense that some level people want history to follow a kind of morality play even if they dont want to actually be caught up themselves. And i quote at the start of the book saying Something Like im going to mean. Actually i dont have to. The book is right here. That is so convenient. So, he says what fascinates and terrifies us about the roman empire is not that it finally went to smash but that it managed to last for four centuries without creativity, warmth or hope. So, that is the dark version of the sustainable decadence. But, lets qualify it by saying that actually those four centuries that rome lasted under the decadence would especially from the point of view of, you know, the fac, this is the founo this university come in the period of dynamic change from within as there was a sort of development is very much i a no decadent religious faith edit and save the roman empire that did Carry Forward roman elements into the future down to the present day. I think you can imagine those that reinvigorate the civilization and the removal under decadence to create the best of our own legacy and that is the optimistic case that in fact decadence has its virtues. Theree are alternatives that are worse than the lives we have now and its not necessarily a horrible burdenn but as somethig that is not ideal but potentially a gift because it still leaves room for creativity, readable and paths back to dynamism and flourishi flourishing. I did not anticipate a. In the exceptionalism if you havent read it, i apologize for spoiling it. Ways of envisioning or imagining some sort off replenishment. My basic view is if you are thinking about the vulnerabilities of the civilization, the vulnerabilities of europe are starker van hours and in part thats because europe is more advanced on a statistical decadence indicators with lower birth rates for a long period of time. Theyve had relatively stagnant growth compared to us for a period of time but they are also more vulnerable in the sense that europe sits in the middle of the world where the United States has always had its splendid isolation and europe is in a pretty deeply unstable week with the freedom not only as people often think with islam in the middle east but also the current exception to demographic decadence which is the m contint of africa. So, we are headed for a scenario basically where europe used to have more peopleen than africa will potentially by 2075 or so have 500 million in africa could have 3. 5 billion. And one way or another it doesnt seem like tha the kind f equilibrium will hold so you can totally pessimistic story, one that i think ado lot of conservative and reactionary types tend to tell where europe will try to build a fortress against mass migration of the fortress will fail and there will be sort of migrant further details as far as the eye can see that you can also tell an optimistic story which is the ones that i was raising my referencing roman catholicisms most famous african cardinal and the sort of image of wauconda and black panther come to futurism that as a sort of interesting appeal in the decadent west as examples, with examples because they are not examples, they are more suggestions of what a more successful confrontation between europe as it is and will become in whatever africa is going to become and could play out. So, in that sense, there are some examples of how the places where the decadent civilization may seem more vulnerabl vulnerae the places that in thisla timele offer the most hope for renewal. And i quote him giving and giving a sermon about the murders. So it is a sort of fascinating example of a very conservative traditionalist Roman Cardinal from Africa Talking at a sort of monument to the catholic dead of the french revolution and affect sort of trying to call europe back to the ancestral faith while also building bridges to increasingly christian and reasonably Catholic Africa and what comes of that i dont know, but i think that its sort of an example of how history could presentt an expert at syntheses that you wouldnt have all anticipated up 30 or 40 years ago. And on the subject, you seem to be, it is a reasonable argument to make that what we are seeing is a kind of long playing out over time. But you do also think through the apocalyptic and today your column talked about the virus as a kind of test case that you had an anticipated in the thesis in your book. I didnt anticipate it happening while i was literally promoting the book. I figured we could have some sustainable decadence for the book to her, and then does stephethestephen kings scenariod get. Yeah, i dont think the virus is the thing that ends our decadence, but it is an example of how unexpected events were not completely, this isnt completely unexpected global pathogeglobalpathogen in certaie most predictable thing on the list of potential model transformers. But, you know, its something that can hit the weak points in the decadent society. So you know, its the fact that under decadence as i was saying our government clearly doesnt work particularly well to the publi, thepublic clearly doe