Dear Friends,
It seems to me that while Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed by God’s wrath, they could not have lasted long anyways… as a purely hedonistic society cannot long prosper. Hedonism is contrary to wealth creation. It, in fact, destroys wealth and creates public health disasters. Many will immediately criticize this blog as hate speech, because they know, there is no cogent, non spurious logical response to it. Using the hate speech rhetorical diversion is tried and true. No one wants to be called a hater, even when it is the real hater who is spitting at you, to call attention away, from his own inner loathing. If you think a hedonistic society is for you, read on, if you realize it is a quicksand trap, you will be interested in the argument.
Hedonism is primarily a self centered ethos. It places as it’s highest goal personal pleasure. The premise of this type of ethos is self centeredness. Thus it creates a self centered people. This is corrosive to a work ethic. Work is serving another for profit. This is tangentially self centered, and as such, is contrary to a hedonistic ethos. So we can safely say that hedonism slowly degrades the work ethic of people who practice it.
Once a people’s work ethic has been thoroughly undermined, by the hedonistic ethos, economic activity will necessarily decline. People, who live in a society that has a lowering level of macro economic growth, will always try to slice the pie more “evenly.” They will gladly trade personal and political liberty, for a handout, as long as their self centered hedonistic lifestyle is not threatened. A lowered work ethic, coupled with a self centered ethos go hand in hand, to make the people dependent on government handouts. Hedonism makes people helpless dependents.
Hedonist societies quickly fall victim to invaders. Once a society has so degraded, the people become dependent on government, it is like a house that’s roof supports it’s foundation. It creates a fundamentally unstable situation. The government will be spending in deficit and the people will be unwilling to engage in work or war. This all combines to make the hedonistic society ripe for invaders to sweep in. The invaders can take the remaining vestiges of wealth, and the people themselves, as spoils. Which will not fundamentally change their life anyways, they have been slaves to their desires any way… they have simply changed masters.
Hedonism has led to the fall of every great society since Man coalesced into the City State. It naturally undermines the societal myth. The Mongolian empire rose in virtue and fell spectacularly in hedonism. Sparta is another example despite her twisted lifestyle. Rome being the most well known… Livy warned, and Machiavelli continued where Livy left off, Roman hedonism led to her fall. In the end, the Roman people were so dependent and lascivious in their entertainment, they eschewed fighting in their own wars. They commissioned the Huns and other barbarians to fight for them, offering citizenship as a reward. When the Huns turned against them, the Romans were subject to the terror of true slavery… the terror of slaves to their masters, own desires.
Here we are, in the twenty first century, and are much more intelligent than those stupid Romans. We can engage in any hedonistic desire we have, solve it with abortion on demand, and it has no consequences. We are so clever that we can become dependent on the State without worry. The loss of the American work ethic is of no concern to the enlightened among us, because there is an unending stream of illegal immigrants, who can be worked as indentured servants because they have no documentation. They can be “protected” from our laws, but kept as a permanent underclass… like slaves. They do a better job mowing the lawn than free people anyway.
The illegal immigrants and contractors should fight our wars for us because the American people are too queasy about it. This is of course completely safe and wise. We are so much brighter than the ancient Romans. They must have been stupid to let hedonism lead to their downfall. The result was a thousand years dark age. Not a big deal to us, because we cannot possibly fall into another dark age, due to our own stupidity. Because we are so learned!
Sincerely,
John Pepin
