How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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CHAPTER NINE Of False Goals The Side -shows How the Family Inhibits Mental Maturity—The Necessity of Educating Young- Children Outside the Family—The Normal Uses of Individualism—The Evasion of Work—The Sexual Side-shows— The Bogey of Masturbation—The Cure of Masturbation—Homo¬ sexuality—Why Homosexuality Can be Cured—Sexual Athletics and the Double Standard—Prostitution—Minor Conversions of Sex -The Problem of Narcotics—Psychological Aspects of Alcoholism —The Cost of Flight from Reality. A FURTHER examination of the side-shows about the main arenas of our lives will illuminate some of the darker corners of human conduct, and help us in our understanding of human nature. The meaning of many traits is often misinterpreted by laymen and psychologists because they treat peculiarities of human conduct as isolated phenomena, and fail to recognize their relation¬ ship to the whole scheme of human life. We shall continue to investigate the social side-shows in greater detail. Perhaps the commonest and most important of these social aberrations is the cult of family relationships to the extent that family loyalty and filial love become the most important ends of life. The family is a product of the same weaKness of mankind that gave rise to our social structure and our civilization. If we were not so weak as human beings the family relationship would be a temporary one, as it is among stronger and better- equipped mammals. The older mankind grows, the more dependent human children become. A famous sociologist recently expressed the opinion that forty years would soon be considered the age of maturity in our towns. In ancient times, and still to-day in savage and barbarian communities, the onset of physical maturity