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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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An attempt to summarise the decadence discourse

This has been the most interesting debate on the Motte for several months, possibly because it is only tangentially related to the main thrust of the US culture war. Given the messy debate across multiple top-level posts with various allegations of strawmanning, I thought it was worth trying to isolate what we still disagreed on.

Given that this started with a discussion of Brett Devereaux's Fremen Mirage thread I am going to call the sides broadly in favour and broadly against Devereaux's thesis pro-D and anti-D for brevity's sake. I am decidedly pro-D, but my goal in this post is to identify consensus and disagreement, not to engage in the debate.

Things both sides appear to agree on

(At least within the local Overton window)

  • The most literal, stupid interpretation of "hard times make strong men" - i.e. that growing up in material poverty makes you a better soldier, is straightforwardly false. Richer societies normally (but not always) produce better soldiers than poorer ones. We don't agree how many people posting versions of "hard times make strong men" on Twitter believe this literal, stupid, wrong interpretation - the pro-D side suspect large numbers of them do, the anti-D side think that the pro-Ds are strawmanning.
  • Civilisations don't last for ever. Eventually good times are replaced by hard times, and hegemons cease to be hegemons. Thus any prediction of the form "good times make X, X makes hard times" is likely to come true eventually - including the instant case where X is "weak men".
  • It is possible for states to become militarily ineffective in a way that is not immediately obvious. States which this has happened to will collapse surprisingly quickly if attacked by a determined (if not particularly strong) enemy. The states most at risk of this phenomenon are powerful states that have enjoyed an extended period of peace. When it happens, it looks like good times making weak men in the ex-hegemon and hard times making strong men in the periphery.
  • Moral factors and human capital matter in war, and one of the way militarily ineffective societies sometimes lose wars is by producing large, expensively-equipped armies which then can't or won't fight.
  • The process where this happens is gradual, over timescales of at least a generation and sometimes longer.
  • It is very hard for a state which has become militarily ineffective in this way to recover, but it can take a long time for the collapse to come if the state was sufficiently hegemonic before it became militarily ineffective.
  • This is roughly the popular meaning of the term "decadence". (And "decadence" doesn't have a technical meaning distinct from the popular one).
  • This may have already happened to the United States of America. It has almost certainly already happened to the countries of Western Europe.
  • The trope maker for this process is the Roman Empire (and later the Western Roman Empire after Diocletian splits the Empire), which was militarily ineffective by 410AD at the latest and ceased to exist as a result in 476AD.
The disagreement
  • Pro-D think that "decadence" is a word like "dormitive virtue" which people use to sound sophisticated while obfuscating their lack of understanding of the phenomenon they are talking about. Anti-D think that the popular meaning of "decadence" describes a well-understood process and the connotations of the word accurately reflect what is going on in a decadent society.
  • Pro-D think that the way societies become "decadent" is complex and multifaceted, and is sufficiently different in each case that trying to define a single overarching model is fruitless, but it probably has something to do with the decay of institutions. Anti-D think that the process is sufficiently simple and sufficiently consistent over space and time that something like Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings serves as a timeless warning comprehensible to normies, and the primary driver is moral decay of individuals (and particularly the individuals who are supposed to be warrior elites).
  • Anti-D think that decadence has specific visible markers:
  1. Decline in "warrior values" or "warrior ethos"
  2. Increased emphasis on physical comfort among elite-class males
  3. Decreased willingness to inflict physical pain, including reduced use of harsh training and corporal punishment
  4. Decline in sexual morality and/or traditional gender roles
  5. Increasing willingness of people who are not battle-tested warrior elites (including priests, merchants, politicians, women, REMFs etc.) to interfere with military decision making
  6. Left-wing politics more generally, including increased wealth redistribution. (I'm not sure what fraction of anti-Ds would include this)
  • Pro-D think this is a bunch of hooey, and that militarily ineffective societies can and frequently do maintain the outward appearance of warrior ethos and traditional masculinity right up to the point where they lose on the battlefield.
  • Anti-D think that material wealth is at least somewhat causative of a decline into decadence such that "Good times make weak men" is a useful way of thinking about the process. Pro-D think decadence is associated with wealth because we call military weakness in rich societies decadence and military weakness in poor societies something else.
  • Devereaux argues in another thread that Rome declines as a result of the 3rd century Crisis and that all earlier decadence-callouts in the Latin literature, including Cato the Elder's call for austerity and Augustus' bachelor tax, are therefore wrong. Anti-D think that the early decadence-callouts are accurate early warnings of a long-term negative trend. There hasn't been much discussion of Rome specifically on the Motte.
Things that are peripheral to the disagreement
  • The subthread about Sparta. Devereaux thinks Sparta is Stupid Evil, most but not all anti-Ds think there is something to learn from Sparta about cultivating martial virtue.
  • @SecureSignals digression about dysgenics.
  • An argument about whether the Somali fraud ring in Minnesota should be counted as a successful invasion.

I don't understand this focus on "warrior ethos" in the modern world, it seems badly misguided.

"Warrior" seems like a better description for gang members than professional soldiers.

Ever since WWI wars between governments have been all about long range capabilities, like aircraft and artillery (and ICBMs in the Cold war). You don't want your artillery man to have a warrior ethos. You want him to be a mix of gym bro, accountant, and auto mechanic.

When governments are fighting insurgencies, or just groups of people, the importance of artillery declines a lot. But I'm still not sure "warriors" are a good description of the type of soldier you need. You need a mix of police officer and diplomat. A "warrior" sounds like a soldier that will rile up the population even more with misdirected acts of violence.

Can anyone charitably explain this "warrior" obsession?

Perhaps because of the long range capabilities you describe, governments have ended up fighting insurgents an awful lot. (Obviously insurgencies go back centuries, I am not claiming they are a new innovation caused by the invention of missiles.) Even in Ukraine (a very artillery-heavy war between one of the top #3 military powers and probably one of the top #10 military powers) point-blank combat with firearms is still very relevant. I can't vouch for it, but I was just reading the other day that (despite all the drones, bombs, and shells) about 5% of casualties in Ukraine were caused by small arms fire. That 5% isn't insignificant, it's the last-mile violence that's achieving the political ends of the states in question.

In either context, elan is going to be extremely helpful. The US just got a big geopolitical W in Venezuela because, basically, a bunch of dudes were willing to fly at night in helicopters to seize the leader of a country who knew they were coming in his own army base. Russia might have gotten a massive W at Hostomel due to the elan of the VDV - they were foiled in part by fancy technology (the US SIGINT apparatus, as I understand it) but, at the last mile, the guts of the Ukrainian defenders who were willing to attempt to push them out of the airport, which may have scrapped plans to establish an airbridge, and the failure of the Russian ground troops to link up with the VDV at the airport (which might reflect poorly on their "warrior ethos" or what have you, I am not sure of the details there.)

Either way, troop quality makes a big difference. You could describe that troop quality by referencing the "warrior ethos," I think, but I am not convinced that is the best way to describe it. I think there's a lot of very good and valid criticism of the "cult of special forces" in the United States, but at the end of the day having a bunch of guys who are acculturated to violence is pretty helpful. Whether or not "warrior" is the correct way to describe them, I suppose, is a semantics question - the word doesn't give me the vibe you describe, but I will cop to being leery of the idea of professionalized soldiery.

I had quite a few responses talking about the definition of soldier vs warrior. So I'm responding to @Shrike, but this is also relevant to nearly everyone that responded to me: @gog, @Mantergeistmann, @PokerPirate, @Grant_us_eyes, @coffee_enjoyer, and @MadMonzer

I think the distinction between warrior and soldiers in my mind is where their capacity for violence comes from.

For a soldier the capacity for violence comes from without. They are trained and drilled repeatedly to enact violence. They are trained to obey orders to a fault, and when the order comes to enact violence they will obey. They'll need an ideology that allows for their violence to be righteous and correct. They will also form tight social bonds with those around them, and protecting them will also allow them to enact violence. When the war ends and they go home their problem will be PTSD. They may be haunted by the violence they enacted, or the violent situations they were placed in. But they can also put the war and the fighting behind them and live normal lives.

PokerPirate quotes a US military thing that I think perfectly describes a soldier's ethos, despite it being called a warrior ethos.

The United States Military Academy at Westpoint has literally been training artillery men to have a "warrior ethos" since forever. They define it as

I will always place the mission first.

I will never accept defeat.

I will never quit.

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

They will obey orders, regardless of how difficult, and they will maintain the group loyalty that allows an easy path to violence.

For a warrior the capacity for violence comes from within. Through either repeated exposure or personality compatibility they are fully capable of enacting interpersonal violence on others. When the war ends and they come home, their problem will be that they miss the excuse for violence. They will seek other excuses for violence. They will have trouble living normal lives, because the desire for interpersonal violence will spill out far more often.

I think within a modern military there is definitely a contingent of "warriors". You definitely want such men in special forces, or in any groups that see heavy close range combat repeatedly. But I still think that mainly what you want is men with a soldier's ethos. After all, a soldier's violence will always be pointed where you want it. A warrior's violence can be pointed anywhere they wish including up the command chain, or at civilians.

Too many warriors in a society is a bad thing. They end up as gang riddled or honor culture hell holes. Where young men are inculcated into violence and warriordom as soon as they get out of puberty. They'll fight each other for sure, but they'll also beat the snot out of all the women and kids around them as well.

I think these are useful and helpful definitions that point to clusters of ideas. It seems necessary to me to center the definitions around capacity for violence. Masculinity is its own thing, and women seem attracted to both soldiers and warriors. Being willing to enact change seems like the wrong definition for warrior, because I think its the tools that matter. The tool of a warrior is violence, the tools of a propagandist are ideas, both are willing to enact change but calling them both warriors seems to darken rather than enlighten.

PokerPirate's quote makes me think this is all just a semantic misunderstanding. If the US military and Pete Hegseth mean what I think of as "soldier" when they say they want a "warrior" ethos then I withdraw any objections. Words are important and I hate euphemism treadmills, but I've learned to stop arguing over such things.

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