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I think degeneracy in some respects requires a poetic and religious sensibility. Hedonism, decadence, and degeneracy are often seen to be bedfellows with nihilism: there are no higher values except pleasure and the material. But I think that’s not really the case, to find meaning in these things go against the definition of nihilism no? Of course, there are many types of philosophical nihilism but I never looked further into them and I don’t care to. When people think of values and principles, they often think of religion or a worldview and system that point to “higher” values, the Apollonian as Nietzsche would put it: values of altruism, rationality, order, discipline, faith in a higher being, etc. The imperfection of base materiality compels us to go beyond its instincts and sensations. Hedonism and decadence are often associated with decay especially moral decay.

Once you reach a certain level of existence and comfort, there’s no compelling and motivating reason to strive for anything. There’s nothing to really meaningfully live for. It seems like there are a couple of options to take at this point but one of them is to descend further into the bowels of existence, into the forbidden fruits of life. This is why decadence is often associated with wealth. But I don’t think this descent has to be a nihilistic one.

I really don’t think there’s a huge difference between perverts, mystics, and soldiers. To be in the mindset of these types involves a certain romanticism and the desire for the extraordinary. To live on the fringes of existence confers a certain type of gnosis, a knowledge of oneself and the world that otherwise wouldn’t be possessed in normal circumstances. The soldier, in war, is always on the precipice of death. Or at the very least, their mortality is always at the back of their minds. The precarity of existence is always salient.

The mystic desires union with God and is willing to renounce their own needs to achieve this ultimate desire. The mystic sees God in everything and the boundary between the material and the numinous is thin. Now the pervert. The pervert is a sophisticate of sorts. They understand the sacredness of the taboo. There’s almost a sacrosanct nature to their perversion. The ritual of engaging in these acts is imbued with symbolic meaning, colored with semiological richness. It’s not just about sex, it’s about the ritual and that ritual being the playing of meaning and symbols.

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Spectres from the future imbue themselves into the past and present. Retro futures inform me of my present. I look to the horizon and I experience flashbacks.

I describe my desires as haunted; they’re like ghosts that follow me everywhere I go. Some people say desire stems from lack or privation and that these ghosts fill in the lacuna that desire originates from. It’s a ghost called hunger, a spectre called yearning, and a revenant called invidia.

The evil eye that covets its object of desire, the eye that wields its black magic against those that obstructs its will. Desire conjures up a darkness within me and within the shadows, these ghosts roam and fill the space with their wails. Ghosts are not the past haunting the present but a future that was obstructed from coming into being.

What lies beneath isn’t what was but rather what was that could’ve been.