Monday, June 6, 2016

Hypothesis/Query: Decadence Essentially the Opposite of Independence?

First, I need a single word that refers to the state of being independent of excessive oversight and of taking responsibility for your own actions both prospectively and morally.

I then suppose: is decadence the opposite of this virtue? Of relaxing into slavery and disdaining responsibility? Seems to be. What do you think?


5 comments:

Grotesque Body said...

I don't know if it helps, but lately I've been thinking about adapting Taleb's "fragile/robust/antifragile" to "naive/?/antinaive", where I associate naivety very closely with decadence, dependence, slavery etc. Naivety is the state of having lost one's epistemological competence.

Alrenous said...

I do like the idea of antinaievite. ? = skeptical. I'd prefer the names gullible/skeptical/antigullible. Antigullibility is combat epistemology - walk into a propaganda crossfire, walk out with the truth.

Grotesque Body said...

Antifragility = things that gain from disorder
Antinaivete/antigullibility = things that gain from disaster

Unknown said...

The opposite of decadent is cadent.

Grotesque Body said...

@NBS

You can do better than playing with morphology.