Family - Decadence: The Meaninglessness of Modern Life

[@AnnabelleJARankin]

This and the other films in the series are very well made and make a lot of good points. I have noticed the growing tendency amongst the young to relate through media rather than in reality. We treat our bodies like machines as well. Very sad. The eastern attitudes towards family are much better.

[@timkruger7365]

Good comment. Could you please explain more "We treat our bodies like machines as well"

[@AnnabelleJARankin]

@@timkruger7365 Wow! That was a long time ago. I think I was thinking about people's obsession with appearance - beauty and fitness. At the time I was teaching young adults from all over the world and I heard of very youthful girls having quite unnecessary plastic surgery, for instance. When I grew up, back in the horse and cart era (70s, actually!), it was all about being natural - nail polish and dyed hair was considered a bit trashy, for instance. What do you think?

[@timkruger7365]

@@AnnabelleJARankin Thanks for your answer. Yes, the obsession with beauty and fitness is over the top. And filling a body with silicon/botox or doing way too much fitness is treating bodies like machines. I was researching the meaning of decadence in the west and stumbled on this video :). I am looking to use decadence as a theme for a story in a game and find these points you wrote about interesting.

[@AnnabelleJARankin]

@@timkruger7365 Decadence is a very interesting topic. I have noticed that since the turn of the century there have been a lot of dystopian stories made into films (things like Hunger Games and The Purge) which to me is a sign that individual human beings are being devalued by current social trends. Dependence on technology and online communication has dulled our experience of people also - in the past, you would only talk in person and could 'phone almost anywhere and get a human being on the end of the line to answer your queries (when is the next train to so-and-so, what film is showing at the moment, etc). This 'mood' causes people to become more self-serving, less considerate and a lot more isolated. Good luck with your project!

[@redknight1825]

I was talking and creating art about this back in 1996. As an artist I created art that warned of a decadent morally declined apathetic future run by corporations. I was laughed at and ridiculed. I lived in the UK back then and eventually came to the conclusion that I was shouting too deaf ears. No one wanted to know as everyone seemed so obsessed with getting rich. "Greed is good". Right? So I looked around the world and saw that there was one country that seemed to have held on to its humanity. Norway. So I emigrated and never looked back. In 2007 another creative person seemed to see what I saw, documentary creator , Adam Curtis, who made the masterpiece 3 episode documentary series called "The trap" - anyone who really wants to know the truth should really watch this - it is astounding. And so here we are in 2018 and the world is finally waking up to the false empty reality it has made for itself. When lemmings are all heading for the cliff and there are a handful of lemmings standing there shouting "Don't go that way" and yet they still jump off the cliff, what can the lemmings that have foresight do?

[@davidregi7571]

Damn bro ,it's scary,.its actually appreciated in the west to be selfish ,moms are encouraged to put their happiness ahead of children .Men are manipulated using their need for sex.We love in interesting times and that's why China is rising while west is steadily declining

[@Goths-On-The-Beach]

Honestly the art crowd are just not interested in these deeper ideas at all which I don't understand. When this was made this was probably a liberal documentary but now it's probably considered 'far right'. I'm an artist in the UK too and it's hard to get any notice if you look at these ideas of decline, it's even worse now with all the cultural Marxism and identity politics about

[@caynaanmohamed5451]

What great documentary it is. Thank you very much.

[@martingeorgiev999]

hold tight before it crumbles

[@haunterbuythem137]

Young people are tattooing total absurdities on their own bodies. Meaninglessness is just everywhere

[@fridasophia5356]

A very subjective observation. What a pity.

[@haunterbuythem137]

@@fridasophia5356 as your tatoos

[@Pier-wy6dd]

At 10:10, there is a misconception. Feminism did not "fail the family", it actually is part of the ideology since the Bolshevik revolution; and Kollontai knew that.

[@philpetersen4477]

Does anyone know what the theme song is called for this? the chilled one which plays near the end of each episode while it is summarised?

[@lindosland]

"Couples with children make up just 47% of all households, compared to 54% just a decade ago". This is bad use of statistics - people are living longer, so there are more households without children for that reason. Also, more young people are well off enough to leave home and set up on their own. It says nothing about the actual number of couples with children!

[@matonmongo]

When did being 'well off enough to leave' become a substitute for a child's readiness, life skills, and emotional maturity (aka, the primary benefits of good parenting)? Or maybe we need yet another book on "How To Manage Millennials In The Workplace"! ;-) www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html

[@lindosland]

You might argue exactly why, but my point stands, that there are more single households today, at least in the UK, so the statistic is meaningless. Things might be different in the US.

[@matonmongo]

@@lindosland ​ Well, quibble about the 'stats' all 'ya want, but the growing childless trend is pretty well-recognized in nearly all western cultures these days, *_especially_* in the UK. And simply using money (aka, how 'well off' a child is), as a measure of maturity kinda illustrates the whole point of the 'Decadence' series. "Levels of childlessness in Britain are higher than in many other European countries, with just under one in five British women currently reaching age 45 with no biological children of her own." link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44667-7_3

[@lindosland]

@@matonmongo I agree! But it disturbs me greatly that people increasingly cannot read a sentence without putting their own meaning on it. Facts used to make a point need to be relevant, and the one I quibble with simply isn't! It mentions households; houses, and houses cost money! There's much more to the world of course, but my brief comment was not about other things.

[@Thana-cu3ou]

I hate modern life

[@Worldwideweb24]

Same

[@Bambim8]

>women