Materialism

As a sensate phase progresses and becomes more pervasive and degenerate, both autocratic governments and democracies resort to bribing the masses in order to stay in power--bread and circuses in the Roman Empire, various forms of entitlements and welfare in the modern democratic welfare states. Subsidies for some of the more exotic elements of society through national endowments for the arts and humanities contribute to chaotic syncretism, which works against the moral consensus needed for democracy to function

-Harold O. J. Brown