The problem of self-justifying ethical systems

It is a matter of frequent observation that during the era of modernity - i.e. for the past several hundred years - that there has been a continual pressure to change ("reform") generally-applicable religious moral systems in ways that conform to a need for people to justify their own personal and specific desires and pleasures.

Most often the impulse is sexual. 

I could not count the number of twentieth century political figures, intellectuals, and authors; whose anti-Christian atheism has been (more or less explicitly) motivated by their desire to have systemic-justification for their own sexual desires. 

(The same applies to other, non-sexual, preferences. It is quite normal and unremarked, for people to argue from their own preferences to the conclusion that everybody and everything be organized-around their gratification. But sex and sexuality is the commonest and most obvious example.)

At first this was a desire for extra-marital sex, then for (a lot of) promiscuous sex, later for same sex relationship, then for changing sex and all the rest of it. But whatever the personal desire happened to be in an individual - this was linked to a general demand that social/ civilizational ethical codes and moral values be altered to endorse it positively. 

This kind of systemic self-justifying morality is so "normal" in our era, that it seems (somehow) admirable to the modern mind (as well as supposedly inevitable) that people will advocate and propagandize to encourage society to allow/ encourage/ subsidize their personal sexual aspirations. 

This powerful desire for societal - indeed civilizational- ethical systems to permit/ approve/ enforce one's personal sexual (or other) preferences has become the almost unquestioned basis for a good deal of organized radical politics for many decades. 

And yet; such an attitude is both very unusual in world historical terms. 

It is also, and  would have thought very obviously, an incoherent and unsustainable way of developing social ethical frameworks! 

In the past it seems to have been normal for those who devised societal ethical systems to construct them on the basis of what they supposed to be "the general good" - albeit that the "general" was typically restrictively defined, to almost entirely the ruling class, priestly class, or whoever had greatest influence on societal morality. 

Individual desires were (at least among the powerful) accommodated by "hypocrisy" - in other words, those who gratified desires deemed unethical by the general system; nonetheless supported the general system - on the simple basis that: the general morality was best for most of the people (i.e. people who mattered) for most of the time and over the longer run.  

But here-and-now, it is usual and normative for an individual person - but particularly the intellectual class - to reason that because he personally has a particular sexual desire; therefore society ought to be restructured to accommodate and enforce the fulfilment of that desire. 

Personal preference is projected into the demand for social norms to be built-around it. 

This goes with a fanatical hatred of hypocrisy, regarded as The Worst of ethical transgressions - which increasingly permeates literature and the arts from the late 19th century. 

Such that it is now regarded as much better for someone to be openly and explicitly cynical, selfish, even evil - and explicitly to advocate a low standard (or even inverted) morality; than to express belief in the rightness of high moral values, but then fail to achieve them. 

Consequently the anti-hero, a selfish, cynical (but charismatic) villain who does whatever he desires and takes whatever he fancies - is the admired character in modern cultural productions. 

Whereas anyone who espouses high moral standards (higher standards than he personally can achieve) will be portrayed as boring, coercively-authoritarian, coldly cruel - and he invariably gets exposed as a vile hypocrite before the end. 

Such has been the inversional-denouement of most mainstream, popular, and (especially) critically-admired TV, movies and novels for several generations. 

It is a bizarre but stark reality of Western Civilization here-and-now that the primacy of general morality over personal gratification has become so very enfeebled as to be almost ineffectual. 

And instead the dominant societal ethic has become one in which it is explicitly argued that gratification of individual sexual desires (of one sort or another) ought necessarily and always to be the basis for general, societal, ethical systems*. 

However... Does it really need to be pointed-out that maximizing a multitude of selfish short-termist sexual desires is - and surely obviously? - a reliable recipe for social annihilation?  

Self-justifying ethical systems are clearly a blueprint for cumulative moral destruction. 

Yet it is remarkable how seldom that surely-destructive consequences of self-justifying ethical systems have been noticed or acknowledged by the most influential commentators of the past few generations...

On the other hand; sex is very far from being the only example when obviously and necessarily destructive consequences of their moral projects are invisible to mainstream intellectuals!  

Which facts tell me that the the mass of the most prestigious and powerful intellectuals of The West, have been (for a long time, and continuing) actively promoting degenerative social destruction, and are therefore (whether witting or unwitting) allies and servants of the demonic party.

This blind or wilful mass servitude to the agenda against God, Divine Creation and The Good; is something we ought continually to bear in mind when we consume the outputs of officialdom, mass media, news, science, the arts, education - and everywhere else that intellectuals are employed.

Especially whenever we suspect that general moral systems are being pushed on the basis of self-justification. 

Because I think the problem lies with a rather specific moral weakness of intellectuals as a class; which is a burning desire for ethical self-justification - at almost any cost.  

*I am here pointing out the evil of self-justifying ethical systems. But this destructive fallacy would not have arisen to dominate had it altogether lacked moral appeal; had there not been significant and oppressive evils in the previously-existing justifications and implementations of group morality - sufficient that these could seem intolerable. 

Such that a return from where-we-now-are to pre-modern morality is not just unattainable but undesirable. 

As so often; both alternatives presented by modern culture for our choice are bad; although the pre-modern is certainly the lesser evil. 

My inference is therefore that we are each required to discover a third - and genuinely good - alternative; and I observe that society does not offer us any genuine alternative ready-made. 

Therefore; moral exploration and discernment is something that each must do for himself.