The decadent ages of Great Nations are characterized by: defensiveness; pessimism; materialism; frivolity; an influx of foreigners; the welfare state; a weakening of religion; and internal political division. These are symptoms of the decline. The cause of the decline is an overwhelming obsession with the accumulation and protection of wealth.
Wealth itself is not ‘bad’; the obsession with wealth is ‘bad’. The expression: “love of money” means an obsession with wealth. The loss of a sense of duty springs from the selfishness that comes from having an obsession with wealth. The terms “love of money”, and “obsession with wealth”, may be summed up in the word greed.
America’s decadent age began circa 1980. The book The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe and the movie Wall Street directed by Oliver Stone, both circa 1987, appear in the starting decade of America’s Decadent Era. The statement “Greed is good”, made by Oliver Stone’s ruthless arbitrageur Gordon Gekko, sums up the era succinctly. To say that “greed is good” is an expression of the distorted thinking that poisons the national psyche of people belonging to once great nations in the final chapter of their global relevance.
Greed is not good. Greed is a spiritual disease. No nation, consumed by greed, can be considered great. The root cause of the decline and collapse of once great nations is greed.
The cure for spiritual disease is love.