AGAINST THE TIDE:

ABOUT A CENTURY ago, Friedrich Nietzsche made some terrifying predictions about the fate of man. He foresaw man's descent into a despicable creature--the last man, a beast whose only goal is comfortable self-preservation.

The 20th Century largely has been a confirmation of Nietzsche's most horrible fears. Modern man is increasingly incapable of conceiving of any end higher than mere life, or at least mere life with a second car. The sacrifices of old, committed in the name of love of God, or of nation, or of woman, are no longer understandable.

The only things modern man can grasp are that he possesses a body and that this body has desires which must be satisfied and a life which must be prolonged. In the desolate landscape of modernity, any concerns other than those of the body have no place.

Man's rate of descent into this wretched condition picked up noticeably some 20 years ago here in America. Around that time, hedonists and idealists converged as flower children and whined about giving peace a chance. When John Lennon imagined a world in which there was "nothing to kill or die for, no religion too," etc., this descent was, as modern political scientists say, "institutionalized."

Of late, the descent has become a veritable free fall. I realized this a few months ago when I came across a slogan at once simple and profound, a slogan which defines The Great Ambition of our age. The slogan, the ambition, is, of course, safe sex.

THERE WAS a time when men and women consulted Shakespeare and Dante for guidance in their relations with one another; now they consult Dr. Ruth and Masters and Johnson. That says a lot. One need only be a Dr. Ruth to speak intelligently about sex, but one would need to be a Shakespeare to speak intelligently about love.

But "what's love but a second hand emotion," modern man sings. Sex is where it begins and ends. Modern man doubts the existence of love, which is okay, because he is incapable of it.

The word love derives from the Greek eros, meaning longing. Love presupposes a recognition of one's own incompleteness; it is a passionate search for completion. Modern man, however, is satisfied with himself. He is endlessly instructed and has come to believe that one must, at all accounts, feel good about oneself--as an individual.

What passes for love nowadays might more properly be termed an alliance between men and women endlessly groping to "find themselves," each with their own "lifestyle." That a man might define himself with reference to a woman, and vice versa--and, by extension, with reference to a family--is an alien notion.

What continues to draw men and women together is the sharing of a common pleasure, not a common passion. I'm talking about sex. But "sex" alone is not the anthem of our age. Actually, this would be preferable to the one we have adopted. For "sex" alone implies "free and uninhibited sex," as the idealistic hedonists of an earlier age proclaimed.

But there can be no Bacchic revelry for modern man: our sex must be safe. It is impossible to speak of safe love. Falling in love, like falling off a cliff, involves risks. Modern man dislikes risks. Love can't be made safe, but sex can. Modern technology helps out. It has succeeded in making sex safe and sterile. Just like modern man himself.

THE NEED to qualify sex with safety is, of course, a rise of the proliferation of sexual diseases. These diseases are typically dismissed as accidental; perhaps, however, they are pregnant with meaning. Consider: underlying modern man's promiscuity is the notion of man's natural shamelessness. We have been taught that sex is man's sole and overpowering desire. Shame generally and Victorian conventions specifically are, the argument runs, radically unnatural.

But maybe this teaching is wrong. Maybe it's shame that's natural, not shamelessness. The modern effort to free man from shame would then be an effort to make him something other than what nature had intended. Sexual disease could then be said to be nature's scourge against shameless sexual promiscuity. But liberal orthodoxy prevents me from saying such a thing. So I won't.

But I will say this: it would be ridiculous to expect men and women simply to disdain sex; it is, after all, a natural desire. Yet there is something peculiarly repugnant about the form this desire has assumed. There used to be a certain coyness about sex. Along with that coyness went a recognition that sex--especially sex with passion--pointed to something beyond sex.

Modern man, however, suffers from anomie. He is alienated. In short, he is unhappy. His tenet of faith is that what you see is all there is. He lives his life accordingly.

Woody Allen once remarked that sex without love may be an empty experience, but that as far as empty experiences go, it's in the top five. He may be right. But the question we need to answer is whether a life filled with empty experiences is a life empty of meaning. And whether modern man, in his preoccupation with safe sex, has begun to resemble Nietzsche's last man.