by Steno Sari — There is something deeply altered in current times. Vulgarity, verbal aggression, scornful sarcasm: it all unfolds before everyone's eyes, without any shame. There was a time when shame played a crucial social role: it regulated behavior, nurtured an inner awareness of limits. Today, it is considered an obstacle to authenticity, a constraint to be eliminated. Yet without a sense of modesty, civil coexistence disintegrates and the social fracture becomes systemic.
Decency has evaporated from the public scene, supplanted by a shamelessness elevated to model status. Indecency reigns and corrodes mutual trust. It destroys the moral fabric that binds a society together: that minimum shared ethical basis that allows human beings to live together without hurting each other. Where everything is licit, nothing has any value.
Modesty has vanished and there is no longer any discomfort in insulting, denigrating, verbally prevaricating.
Shouted opinions are cloaked in truth, the emotions of others are mocked, sensitivities trampled on carelessly. As if respect were a bourgeois quirk to be dismissed. On social media, on talk shows, even in institutional contexts, excess has supplanted measure. Those who speak in hushed tones are ignored. Those who shout gain visibility.
We are witnessing a profound cultural transformation that has corroded the collective sense of limits. Where there was modesty, now there is exhibition. Where there was discretion, today there is clamour. Zygmunt Bauman expressed it with lucidity: “The crisis of mutual respect is the most dangerous of all, because it undermines the foundations of coexistence.”
What is taking place is not only a transfiguration of language: it is a relational degeneration. The other is no longer an interlocutor, but an adversary. Empathy is retracted, indifference is propagated. The ethic of respect is mocked as a sign of weakness. Scholars speak of “collective desensitisation”, a sociological phenomenon whereby the more we expose ourselves to rudeness and aggression, the less they affect us. And the more “normal” they become, the more they are emulated. The outcome is catastrophic: the threshold of tolerance towards improper conduct is lowered, undermining the sense of respect and solidarity. The result is an impoverishment of social relations and a growing difficulty in preserving a civil coexistence based on shared responsibility.
Of course, everyone has the right to their own expression. But freedom cannot be turned into a weapon to injure. Civil coexistence demands a recovery of a sense of limits: restraint, thinking before speaking, questioning whether what we express edifies or demolishes. Respect is neither a mere optional nor an obsolete formality: it is the inescapable threshold of shared humanity. A mature public ethic is founded not on the right to utter anything, but on knowing how to remain silent. Self-control, tact, sobriety - scorned today - are actually the invisible pillars of a healthy society. It is time to stop considering decency a mere relic of the past: it is, on the contrary, the key to remaining healthy in a sick world.
Article published by Libero on 19 August 2025 and republished with the author's permission
