Read Hanne’s The Herland Report.
“The worst we have done is spiritual. We privatized morality and destroyed the moral order. We took that essential moral order that keeps people together and decided that it is up to you to find your own values. If what is right and wrong depends on what each person feels, then we are outside the bounds of civilization. Without a strong moral order it is hard to have trust, it is hard to find your meaning in life,” says author and political commentator David Brooks in his 2025 Alliance for Responsible Citizens (ARC) speech in London.
The left-wing elite has since the 1960s purposely destabilized traditional institutions and moral norms without offering a positive conservative vision. Mental health issues, loneliness and societal despair have risen sharply as a consequence of these cultural shifts.
TheMarxist contemporary vision of isolated liberal individuals pursuing personal desires often mirrors an immature, hedonistic pursuit likened to that of a child acting on immediate gratification. This immature model of selfhood is unsustainable and leads to societal and individual dysfunction. The higher aim is not to love oneself only, but to care about others and create a society in which trustworthiness, honesty, faithfulness and compassion with others are key ideals.
Clinical psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto Jordan Peterson covered this topic in an ARC Conference panel, in which journalist and author Louise Perry pointed out: “Traditions are experiments that worked. What we have found, having rejected the sexual norms of the past, is that they were there for a reason.”
When Friedrich Nietzsche pronounced the “death of God,” it implied that humanity must create its own atheist values. His fellow atheist Karl Marx had been remarkably blunt about the desire to destroy Christian morality to establish a new set of ethics detached from the traditional Christian values that strongly influenced Western civilization. If God is removed from the equation, only meaninglessness remains. Materialism and the tangible world – with its bodily pleasures – becomes man’s only goal.
Hailed since the 1960s, the Marxist ideal implied the rejection of traditional sexual norms based on faithfulness in a marriage, in favor of an approach including a rapid change of sexual partner and a culture of aborting unwanted children. The 1960s sexual revolution established that consent is the only rule governing sexual relations, without the constraints of the conscience. The social legalization of hedonism idealized women that freely engaged with numerous sexual partners and not only their husbands. A social consequence is the breakdown of traditional family structures, and children growing up without biological fathers, which is linked to highly negative outcomes.
The modern hedonist focus on selfish pleasure as the goal of life demonstrates its greatest flaw – the failure to recognize that compassion for others is a fundamental component of genuine happiness.
While human beings are naturally inclined toward short-term gratification impulses, it can be detrimental if not moderated, the Peterson panel pointed out. We need good cultural influences and moral boundaries that will integrate these self-destructive impulses, guiding individuals to make decisions beneficial for long-term well-being and not only short-term self-gratification. A healthy culture nourishes the development of virtue, meaning and higher-order values. Nihilism and social fragmentation arise when culture fails to provide this nourishing environment.
The conclusion of the ARC panel discussion is that a society organized around individualistic, hedonistic values is doomed to fail. Such a model neglects the necessity of higher-order values essential for survival and flourishing, namely the ability to look beyond self-gratification, greed and selfishness and evolve into the realm of selflessness, humility, honesty and accountability.
The atheist, socialist groupthink creates borderless individuals, devoid of deeper meaning and disconnected to the historical greatness of Western civilization. Philosopher Friedrich Hayek criticizes this extreme form of relativism in “The Constitution of Liberty.” He points out that in history, to be a liberal meant fighting for personal freedoms and performing one’s duties and obligations to the community. Freedom is not the right to be selfish, but rather the right to be a responsible citizen. Egoism is a path to bondage and a form of slavery in which the individual, in his loneliness, slowly enters a state of depression and meaninglessness.
Without compassion, empathy, humility and self-discipline, stability in society will crumble. If man is no longer bound by the social contract or responsibilities toward others, the sole goal becomes to serve the self and its passions. So, true education must guide individuals to embody virtues that transcend mere personal liberty and impulse satisfaction, rooting identity and freedom in transcendent truths, compassion for others and commitments to the broader good for society.