God Arises
The Life We Seek
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means—theft, fraud, bribery and so on. In so doing,
they may materially compensate for their low
incomes, but they then place society in that very
predicament in which they had initially found
themselves. The ideal of personal happiness has a
catastrophic effect upon the happiness of society as
a whole.
In modern times, human society has been affected
by a novel, and extremely alarming malaise —
juvenile delinquency. We must ask ourselves how a
child becomes a delinquent. Since this problem is
peculiar to modern society, we must attribute it to
circumstances which did not in the past exist. And
if such circumstances now exist, it is because of
present day preoccupation with material happiness
to the detriment of law and order. Matrimony too is
no longer the respected institution that it was. It all
too often happens that newly-weds, after
exhausting the initial pleasures of married bliss,
become tired of seeing the same face and making
the same physical contacts and, in order the better
to satisfy their sexual desires, go out in search of
other partners. Eventually, whatever survives of the
material relationship deteriorates to the point where
