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"The values of the weak prevail because the strong have taken them over as devices of leadership."

Nietzsche

"What Nietzsche grasped that many modern conservatives, who dislike Nietzsche almost as much as Karl Marx and Hillary Clinton, don’t grasp is that what looks like decline, decadence, and decay to conservatives appears to the champions of such trends as progress and the birth of a new civilization."

Dr. Samuel Francis

"It is commonly said that the modern world is reverting to paganism, and [G.K.] Chesterton would agree, but for quite a different reason than that commonly proffered. When alarmed pietists say the world is reverting to paganism, they mean the modern person is enjoying himself too much. When Chesterton says the modern world has reverted to paganism, he means the modern person is, like the pagan, no longer able to enjoy anything. "The pagan set out, with admirable sense, to enjoy himself. By the end of his civilization he had discovered that a man cannot enjoy himself and continue to enjoy anything else." The secret sin we share with the pagans is egocentric despair. We, like they, are first sated, then satiated, then bored, then unhappy. The twenty–first century may become even more pagan than the twentieth, and if it does, it will not be because its citizenry is shamelessly happy, but for the very opposite reason: they will have reached the same end that paganism reached. "When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos, he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead.""

David W. Fagerberg

"The secret sin we share with the pagans is egocentric despair. We, like they, are first sated, then satiated, then bored, then unhappy."

Are all pagans dour? In the postmodern world are they not playful (Derrida)? Free from the heavy constraints of authority? If god is dead then all is permitted... a time for creative nihilism?

But I suspect that is why they should be sad... in the end there is only death. But I wonder if death alone is a sufficient enough reason for living an unhappy life. Can we still be happy in the face of death? Some existentialists would argue that the realization of our death is the true condition of any kind of meaningful, authentic happiness...