Decaence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society (or segment of it). Used to describe a person's lifestyle, it describes a lack of moral and intellectual discipline, or in the CODÂ : `a luxurious self-indulgence`. In a society, it describes corrosive decline due to a perceived erosion of necessary moral traditions. (A society that discards unnecessary and outmoded values would not be considered decadent, although perceptions of "unnecessary and outmoded" significantly vary.) Due to arguments over the nature of morality, whether a society is decadent or not is a matter of debate, though certain historical societies (such as ancient Rome near its end) are generally held to have been decadent, as decadence often leads to objective decline.