How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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devices of the individual family. The State, usually fifty to a hundred years behind the best scientific opinion, will awaken to the needs of mental hygiene prophylaxis for children, generations from to-day3 when the burden of taking care of its criminals, its insane, its psychopathic inferiors has become so great that carefully planned administration and influencing of the young child will appear cheaper in the end. When the State awakens to the knowledge which is now the property of a few far-sighted individuals, it will no longer subject young children to the pernicious influences of the family environment, as it no longer exposes its children to the dangers of contagious disease. When the old patriarchal idea that children belong to their parents as if they were so many chattels has been completely exploded, families which are so discouraged that they have but a single child will be legally compelled to give that child a social environment after the age of two years, and continue that group influence until the end of his formal education. Most of the social side-shows are directly derived from the vicious influence of family life. Thus we have egoistic, anti-social ambition as a result of competition between children and parents, or brothers with older brothers. Pride, and its derivatives, snobbery, bigotry, intolerance, are similarly products of exaggerated and artificial conflicts between the family, or the family group, and the rest of society. The cult of personal greatness, the elevation of “ uniqueness ” and “ being different ” arises out of the sense of inferiority born of family competitions. From the cult of personal uniqueness to the cult of other cults is but a step. Cultism, whether in social groups or in religious communities, is one of the most popular of all social side-shows. "The Normal Uses of Individualism Opportunities for individualism abound to-day as much as they ever did, and individualism will never be