My friend told me that Kobe is the only city in Japan in which he saw hobos and where there are no rules for walking on the sidewalk. I flippantly asked him whether it was the Sodom or Gomorrah of Japan. (Hyperbole, of course!) But this usage feels wrong.
The MacMillian dictionary connotes these cities with sexual decay, primarily:
Sodom and Gomorrah
/ˌsɑdəm ən ɡəˈmɔrə/
two cities in the Bible that were destroyed by God as punishment for the sexual behavior of the people who lived there. People sometimes say that a place is like Sodom and Gomorrah as a way of saying that they are very shocked by people’s sexual behavior in that place.Wikipedia:
Sodom and Gomorrah have been used as metaphors for vice and homosexuality viewed as a deviation.
Which makes sense.
But how do we convey a sense of non-sexual decay or lawlessness?
Answer
the state or process of being or becoming degenerate; decline or
deterioration.
(google)
Degeneration is a process of decline. Anything that’s getting worse is going through degeneration.
(n) the state of being degenerate in mental or moral qualities.
(vocabulary.com)
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Maarten , Answer Author : Misti
