The Pleasures of Decay in Houellebecq's Submission

In Michel Houellebecq's 2015 novel Submission, Western humanism is dying, and cannot be revived, in part because it was historically linked with the nation-state, which is itself moribund. Once there were Jewish and Christian theistic alternatives to humanism, but these Houellebecq depicts as options Westerners can no longer take. The only way to go on is to submit to the most viable form of theism today - non-Western, globalizing Islam. Houellebecq demonstrates that a humanistic education provides at least this benefit: such an education guides and sophisticates the Western man's palate for the pleasures of decay.