For almost a decade, I’ve observed—initially with jaw-clenched discomfort and now with open criticism—our culture and its hunger for hedonism. It is easy to condemn it under the collective umbrella of “moral rot and confusion” but it requires a keen eye and the uncompromising syntheses of writers, past and present, to explain what’s taking place right now.
Writers should feel obligated to keep civilization from falling apart. This responsibility is felt by those with a sense of humility and urgency with relation to family, God, death, decay, and moral value—a combination of these things, add or subtract. Unfortunately, I see writers of my generation facilitating spiritual dysgenesis. This is bound to happen when you’re too busy writing polemics about how hiking is an activity gate-kept by white supremacy.
But forget writers for a second. Even in everyday conversations, I don’t see people willing to discuss public morality. I have yet to meet a secular humanist who looks at our state of affairs—from the shocking nudity and kink in the name of “art and expression” that has numbed our senses to the point where even the faintest protest is swiftly shut down in the name of “freedom,” the increasing and rather insidious push for normalizing OnlyFans, how there’s a 51 percent increase in suicide attempts by teen girls, the fremdscham-inducing displays of girlboss-dom in both adult women and little girls to our refusal to show any empathy, let alone comprehension, for the “incel” issue, the nascent disarray young people have expressed on the gender ideological front, the nearly ordained state of subversion and rule-breaking to be your “most authentic self” no matter how destructive that is, how parental authority and discipline is routinely likened to “tyranny,” low birth rates, and other forms of cultural sclerosis—and tells me, “This is a problem. We should do something.”
Instead, I regularly see otherwise well-meaning people call these legitimate worries “moral panic,” “puritanical,” “alarmist,” “orthodox,” “self-righteous,” “dog-whistling,” and other forms of Russell conjugation meant to downplay and dismiss such concerns.
I took the past month and a half to search for writers who were alive during times when it was still possible to state what one saw as opposed to taking refuge behind rhetorical prostration. I wonder what they would say about the widening chasm between one class in America that is more than happy to let its most vulnerable subjects—children—grow up splintered and emotionally malnourished and the other side that is trying to voice disagreement without losing access to jobs, social repute, and friends.
This round, as we get into the polarizing issue of public virtue and sexual morality, I share a few observations from Karl Menninger's book, Whatever Became of Sin?
The individual and the state mark two points of ontological priority. In this world, gratitude to the past and obligations to the future are replaced by a nearly universal pursuit of immediate gratification: culture, rather than imparting the wisdom and experience of the past so as to cultivate virtues of self-restraint and civility, becomes synonymous with hedonic titillation, visceral crudeness, and distraction, all oriented toward promoting consumption, appetite, and detachment. As a result, superficially self-maximizing, socially destructive behaviors begin to dominate society.
Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed
It isn’t chic to be religious these days. At least not in the traditional sense. Sure, there’s the church of wokeness and the church of libidinal excess as I discussed in the last Substack post but the actual church, mosque, that sort of thing has been forced to recede into the shadows.
When was the last time you asked a friend, the person you’re dating, or a neighbor, “Notice anything off about our society? The lack of filial piety, how no one really fears moral consequence, how you can’t ask questions about hormone therapy and other procedures without having your life destroyed, how our kids are twerking on stage, and we’re supposed to be OK with it, if not enthusiastic?” You stick to talking about succulents and self-help books instead, and how the most “problematic” show on Netflix is the one where the biracial couple didn’t “affirm” each other enough — whatever that means.
Menninger predicted this cyclical schema of endless frustration and satisfaction brought on by the removal of a standard for right and wrong. In 1973, he warned that there will be a time when "sin" (a “weary word” of “energetic and destructive” consequence as Bernard Murchland put it) would no longer be part of official vernacular in the United States. In place of "sin," the psychiatrist said humanism and relativism would dominate social theology. Postmodern prophets at the dais, you know the type. In place of strict guidelines for morality, he wrote there would be a singular doctrine: gratification of the human experience as the ultimate salvation. Any questions or worries would be considered too restrictive and old school for such an individualist culture.
You don’t have to agree with Menninger’s entire treatise. But it is rare to read someone willing to discuss virtue and vice so openly nowadays. It is rare to read someone who is willing to say that sin is ultimately replacing others' welfare with the narcissistic indulgence of the self. Although Menninger doesn't expand on this in his book, I posit unbridled secular humanism has led us to a point in society where evolutionary necessities such as shame and guilt—which, in calibration, encourage social cohesion by discouraging injurious behavior—have become almost unacceptable as regulatory practices simply because self-gratification trumps all. “Who are you,” a hyper individualist asks, “to deny people maximum pleasure, maximum validation?”
As we encourage anomie in the name of "self-expression" and “liberation” upheld by the one and only (limited and ultimately insufficient) standard of "consent,” we are sacrificing something sacred. You could say we are mangling collective responsibility, individual restraint, a healthy sense of guilt which keeps us anchored to our conscience, public morale, the appreciation one must have for contrition and restitution, and decency. But I personally believe that we are sacrificing something even more delicate and exponentially more difficult to heal once it is wounded: the mental and physical integrity of our children and ultimately, their right to innocence.
Our current social conditions deprive children of their right to stable socialization, in more sterile terms. It should not be controversial to state this fact but over the years, I have noticed many people from the left and right balk and hiss at the tiniest suggestion of moral continence. If you’re looking for the latest development, simply behold the hysterical and dishonest outrage unleashed at the hosts of the TrueAnon podcast.
Their sin was to highlight the obvious case of grooming in this New York Times report. In this incident, the group grooming the child into prostitution happened to be trans-women. Of course, TrueAnon’s criticism was taken as full condemnation of the trans identity itself. And if you’re familiar with being called a trans-genocider on social media (as I am), you already know what happens after this.
So swift and vicious was the backlash that the podcasters begrudgingly withdrew from the e-battlefield, deleting the tweets, fearing account suspension. If the stakes were low, I’d laugh. But this concerned a child. Why are we lying to ourselves?
It would have been quite the treat if Menninger was alive to witness our social relations today. I would probably email him to see if he’d sit down for an interview or run a Clubhouse room with me, which would inevitably get reported for “violence” and “abuse.” Regardless, the man has relevant wisdom for us.
He leaves behind two lessons.
This is on us: Law and order as well as political leadership alone cannot make for sustained guidance and stability in society. As I mentioned, writers should feel obligated to keep civilization from fracturing itself (unless you’re at Vice writing about drinking “cum cocktails”). Civilians of a republic should feel responsible for encouraging social health, too. Leaving wrongdoing “to the police is like turning over the coach horses to the hostlers, while the rest of us sit down and enjoy dinner, and listen to the speeches,” Menninger wrote.
“This simply won’t work,” he warned. “It used to work in medieval manor days when the king’s peace was all that mattered. Police are not priests, prize fighters, thugs, yardmen, psychologists, saints, or supermen. They cannot possibly do what some expect them to, aided by all the revolvers, billy clubs, cattle prods, and tear gas bombs on earth.”If you’re unsettled by the nature of affairs right now—and many of you are based on what my inbox tells me—you should state your unease. The fear of reprisal from your peers is real but you should be more afraid of losing all sense of right and wrong.
No blackpilling allowed: Scathing as his observations were, Menninger maintained an unwavering compassion for human beings. Even after he saw the early hints of collateral damage brought on by the sexual revolution, he refused to believe that society was beyond repair. The purpose of castigating our moral lapses is not to say we are irredeemable but to insist that we can and must do better. If not for ourselves then for the young of our society.
This work requires belief in a purpose more important than the self, the individual. It is the antithesis of the fashionable apathy that surrounds you in the guise of trendy humanism, which appears hellbent on denying biological truths, the risks of constant self-indulgence, and the problem with doing away with standards altogether under the banner of moral nihilism. It requires listening to—not personally and professionally destroying—the people who tell you, “Something is wrong.”
“When in an apprehensive or deploring mood,” Menninger writes, “we seniors are tempted to dispense to our successors cautionary admonishment and dire prediction, we should first reflect on the moral history of mankind, which can be summarized: They hang prophets. Or ignore them, which hurts worse.”
“Yes, so they do,” he says. “So they always did. But the urge to prophesy comes upon us, nonetheless, and we must tell it, if not ‘like it is,’ at least as it seems to us to be. Morituri salutemus et crucem manebimus. But by speaking out, we shall have tossed onto the cenotaph of human history another pebble from the quarry of hope.”
I’ll see you next week.
I love this post. Thank you for writing.
"Sin" seems like a forbidden word these days, the idea of which has been something to be mocked, at best. As if simply saying it comes with a flood of Christian judgment. And this has grown to the point where it's not just "sin against God" that's laughable or even insidious, but the idea of sin against others or oneself as well. That erasure of the notion of sin leads to a lot of what you've mentioned here, I think.
Your writing makes me glad that I work where and how I do. It's an all-boys' arts organization, and we regularly get hyper-woke leftist types decrying us for not having any girls in it. The purpose of excluding girls has nothing to do with placing a value on girls and everything to do with the fact that when the organization was established, there were such spaces for girls already, but there were NO safe, upbuilding arts programs that were just for boys. Which is still a wide need that many overlook in the name of political correctness these days.
The organization's values are a lot around the type of thing you write about - developing a sense of morality, stable identity, and community responsibility in the boys we work with - and so I often think of it when I read what you write.