How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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not according to your individual caprice, but in terms of
the social demands of the group in which you live. We
have indicated again that there is but one solution of the
individual's problems of existence, and that is the
solution which conforms to the technique of living which
the human race, through millions of years of trial and
error, has found good.
Isolation : The Basis of the Inferiority Complex
It now follows conversely that any individual who does
not solve the problems of existence in a socially acceptable
manner is liable to the same feelings of inferiority and
inadequacy that threatened the primitive caveman who,
being separated from his clan fire, was exposed to the
ruthless dangers of an unfriendly world. We can well
imagine this isolated caveman ancestor shivering with fear
in the face of the lurking dangers about him, when by
accident he became detached from his fellows. We can
imagine him straining every fibre of his body to return
to the magic circle of flame which stood between him
and death. Proof of our contention that the race has
solved its problems of inadequacy by social union, and
evidence that the origin of society lay in primitive man’s
fear of isolation is found in the fact that every modern
individual, isolated from his fellows, for one reason or
another, shows the identical fear and trembling which is
the inevitable accompaniment of the inferiority complex.
This brings us to one of the most important axioms in
our book : The inferiority complex, as it exists to-day in the
individual, is an expression of his isolation from the body of
mankind, either physical, mental, or emotional. The chief
emotional accompaniments of the inferiority complex, fear,
anxiety, hesitation, indecision, are linked together by a sense
of personal inadequacy. We know that the individual in
his development from a single cell to the complex billion-
celled organization of the adult, recapitulates the
evolutionary stages which the race has experienced as a
whole. This is one of the first laws of biology. It is
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