Sometimes, a
society or
culture in
decline knows that it is
dying, and decides to make the most of the time that it has left. It doesn't have anything left; it doesn't care, it just
parties on, hoping that the
darkness will lift so that it may return to happier times.
Materialism and
conspicuous consumption are the order of the day. From
ancient Rome to the
Jet Set of the 1980s, this is called
partying against the darkness.
We saw a lot of this sort of thing during the 1980s: we may be annihilated at any moment by a nuclear weapon launched by some person we neither know nor care about, thousands of miles away, so let's party, and pray we see the sun rise. I've always found the lyrics of the song Forever Young by Alphaville embody the above phrase beautifully.