Session: Has Decadence Rendered Us Happy and Comfortable or Stagnant and Disappointed?

Featuring Ross Douthat, conservative political analyst, author, and New York Times columnist.

Douthat’s newest book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success, explores what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of “sustainable decadence”. Douthat dissects how we got here, how long this age of frustration might last and how our decadence might ultimately end.

The Aspen Institute