In the sense of the regime’s opportunism. Which is a different way of saying, “not at all”.

For instance, consider Nietzsche’s actual ideas about the “will to power”, which was to establish a new type of ruling class in Europe through a process that would take two centuries to complete (this is to say, four to five generations). The means for doing so would involve a very natural and ongoing process, whereby those who had already developed the capacity for more psychological complexity would run the gauntlet of the everyday, average man, who has set the rules for existence.

The superior type of person one be one “genetically selected” in the particular sense that they could survive the punishments meted out by those who represented “the rule” for humanity (that is to say, those who are of the average, the common, or indeed, the “mediocre” type).

With regard to this long term project for human development, Nietzsche expected that there would be a huge amount of suffering and destruction. Those who had developed more facility of intellectual and psychological complexity would tend to succumb again and again to the law of “the rule” and the law of numbers. Their anguish would be extreme, and barely relenting.

Finally, however, the separation between “higher man” and “lower man” would be possible after 200 years.

The results would be those who dominated on the basis of having every justification for doing so. They would have been tried and tested in the most extreme way, and would have learned all that they can do about “human nature”.

Consider this, which is Nietzsche’s actual agenda, as compared to what the Nazis made of it. Is there even a very slight comparison or sameness?

In terms of the Judeo-Christian paradigm, this is generally deemed to be something like the case. It is because from the perspective of the Judeo-Christian perspective it is unnecessary and undesirable for one person to be different from the others. From this perspective, it is desirable, rather, to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve, to show one’s openness to others. Emotions are considered authentic, especially if immediately expressed, whereas intellectual circumspection of indeed the kind of thinking that is deeper and takes longer to process is considered “a red flag”.

From this point of view, anything that is “intellectual” will also automatically appear to be “esoteric”, since any style of thinking that isn’t the norm will appear to be remote and hard to understand (hence “esoteric”).

When maturity is defined as the capacity to embrace conventions and conformity, anything that doesn’t do this will be perceived as “immature”.

It seems very trivializing. But it may be another feature of the popularization of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis itself tends to trivialize complex issues. It’s not that it is obliged to do so at all times, but when have a paradigm as to what constitutes normality, and that idea of normality is already, by definition, patriarchal, the outcome of its approach must always be the same. That is to say, everything must be returned to the convention of patriarchy.

So “hating fathers” becomes a problem to be corrected. Or at least a basis for dismissing political ideas that one disagrees with, if one would be honest.

You see, patriarchy is not some mystically correct mode of being, but is a particular social and political system that is much more stringent and difficult to resist in some countries. It may indeed be that due to the extreme conditions of the “rule by fathers” in some places, there is a build up up some legitimate grievances against fathers. Looking for a mystical solution to this, by trying to impose a change of perception about “fatherhood in general” is not the answer here, because there is NO ‘fatherhood in general”.

To be adult about this, one really has to look at the actual political and social situations that each person is in, and what they have experienced, or else one is merely mumbling esoteric, politically correct things. This is no use to anybody.

Back in the heyday of the eighties, “decadent” used to mean dark chocolate,. so I have no idea what it might mean for Generation Z and Millennials. It might be that they have made a shift to white chocolate instead.

But I am better able to answer what Nietzsche meant by the term, which in fact he employed to indicate physiological decline.

If we are to talk about whether these generations themselves are “decadent”, I would say that clearly they are not. Nietzsche perceived that weirdness and eccentricity were signs of “decadence”. So, on that note, I am more decadent, myself, than these aforementioned generations are.

As an aside: my own generation, by the way, is not so much Generation X (although it is that in the Western culture’s term of reference. But rather more so I am a member of the “Mindblast generation” — the generation that came of age after the war in Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) finished. What this means is that I have experience an extreme conservative society, followed by revolution and the opposite political extreme. People of my generation may suffer from what Nietzsche called “an accumulation of strength”, leading to a nervous condition: It is actually very costly, Nietzsche points out, to be strong for a very long time. Notably, the release of accumulated discipline and tension after the war’s end is what furnishes the label “mind blast”.

Anyway, the categories that Nietzsche’s idea of “decadent” versus “healthy” often gets conflated with are “strong” versus “weak”. On the one hand, Nietzsche was inclined to see the “strong” as those whose strength was based on a specific kind of physiological health (which enabled them to seize power), and the “weak” as lacking in the same capacity to organize and accumulate internal forces. However it was also possible to see the strong “in decline” and the weaker, more “democratic” style of man as being physiologically sound.

I think that being physiologically sound (and therefore generally robust enough) is true for Generation Z and the Millennials. Maybe never have there been healthier generations all in all.

But what these generations have to face these days is the rule of the weak. Nietzsche defined the weak as “the mob”, and stated that their main values included “sympathy for everything that suffers”, and “hardness and cruelty against privilege of any sort”.

I think the Millennials in particular will have to come to terms with what these values mean to them, and whether they have a choice about perpetuating them.