In the 1995 film version of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, the noble Col. Brandon refers to Mr. Willoughby as “the worst of libertines,” a word not much used today but common in Austen’s time.  A libertine was an unrestrained, sensual person who put his own desires ahead of what was decent and acceptable.  A libertine flouted moral principles, and his conduct (and there were female libertines as well) was condemned as immoral by all right-thinking persons.

Today, there is less moral consensus regarding personal behavior, and this loss is reflected in every aspect of our culture.  Many don’t know what to think, or withhold judgment because it is not “cool” to judge, about matters like adultery, promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse, and other irresponsible behaviors.  The attitude is “look the other way” or else “it’s a personal matter,” not for society to judge.

Few of us wish to return to the rigid Victorian morality of the past, where the mere suggestion of wrongdoing was enough to exclude someone from society (as seems to be happening to Pete Hegseth, with the charges brought to light just at the moment he was nominated for secretary of Defense).  Those of us who grew up in the 1950s may recall the climate of fear that accompanied every meeting with members of the opposite sex and even how we dressed or wore our hair.  Those social mores went far beyond what was moral or good: they derived from a collective psychosis focused on body and appearance and bore little relation to what was truly good.

But today, partly in reaction against Victorianism evident in generations of writers and thinkers (Henry Miller, Gore Vidal, and Simone de Beauvoir come to mind), the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction toward a refusal to judge any conduct immoral.

Many today are not sure what to think about males competing in women’s sports or entering women’s bathrooms and changing rooms.  Many are not clear as to whether college graduates should have to pay off the loans that they agreed to.  Many believe that pornography should be “protected” as free speech and even taught in university courses (as it is at Temple, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Barbara, and many others).  And some cannot bring themselves to condemn shoplifting or even violent assaults.

This moral ambiguity applies in the realm of art as well.  A banana strapped to the wall with one strip of duct tape sells for $6.2 million because there is no consensus concerning the nature or purpose of art — or perhaps because the buyer, who subsequently consumed the banana, calculated that he would receive widespread attention.  Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” (a photograph of a small plastic Christ on the cross submerged in a jar of the artist’s urine) was funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and ultimately sold for $145,000.  Marcus Harvey’s 1993 “Myra” is an image of a woman who, with her boyfriend, was convicted of raping and murdering five minors in Britain.  (The youngest was ten.)  Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” was equally disturbing: the Virgin Mary was constructed from clippings of pornography and mounted on two balls of animal dung.  These goes beyond the desire to free oneself from Victorianism; it seems to represent a virulent hostility toward any moral restraints.

There are, of course, numerous definitions of morality.  Roger Scruton proposed “the true, the good, and the beautiful” as the test of art, certainly an improvement over the examples above and many funded by the NEA.  Though hard to define, a timeless and universal standard for art, and for morality, does exist, because sensibility and morality are grounded in human nature.  Honesty is better than lies; health is better than disease; the pleasing is better than the ugly; happiness is better than unhappiness, and these innate qualities are meant to guide us through life.  But many are intimidated against making their judgments public, even if they recognize these distinctions.

In fact, the emphasis on perversity and degradation, with outrageous attacks on traditional values, is now a recurrent feature of art, literature, philosophy, and every other aspect of our culture, and especially in media and entertainment.  The moral vacuity of modern art is mirrored in the real-life “look the other way” quality of the legacy media and general culture.  A Venezuelan criminal illegal alien, boarded at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York and then flown to Georgia at taxpayer expense, brutally rapes and murders a 22-year-old nursing student, and the mainstream news reports on the politics of the case (“a right-wing rallying cry”) and refuses to focus on the horrific suffering of the girl and her family.  The legacy media maintain a cool tone of factual reporting, and liberal politicians refuse even to say her name.

“Piss Christ,” the Laken Riley underreporting, and the acceptance of unfettered promiscuity are all elements of the same ethics.  They are not merely “related”; they are products of a single cultural disease whose symptoms are a desire for unwarranted personal freedom; a refusal to condemn what is wrong; and, over time, an inability to distinguish right from wrong.

The word “libertine” is little used today, perhaps because there is no consensus as to what it might signify and how it can be judged.  The traditional definition of one who pursues unrestrained pleasure and sexuality is irrelevant in a society in which pursuing pleasure and sexuality are the theme of much of our advertising and entertainment, and are for many the ultimate goal of life.

What is overlooked in our libertine culture is that promiscuity violates human nature.  For the vast majority of human beings, it is essential to live within a chaste, monogamous relationship, stable and inviolable, in which one is valued highly by one’s spouse.  This essential fact is not a “lifestyle choice”; it is innate and rooted in our nature as caring, loving, self-restrained human beings.  For those individuals who recognize the virtue of monogamy, a society in which persons switch partners every year, or month, or evening, must appear disgusting and cheap.  The lifelong devotion of a monogamous couple takes on a value that many in our society cannot even  imagine.

There is only one way to restore the goodness that our culture lacks: for individuals to live by their own chaste moral standards.  By doing so — by living as they know is right and shutting out the culture that violates their nature — over time, individuals can restore goodness and morality.

Fortunately, there are tens of millions of decent, moral individuals in America.  This silent majority works hard, raises families, knows the difference between right and wrong, and recognizes the cultural drift at work in our society.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Image via Pxfuel.