How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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the large number of men and women who cultivate sexual unhappiness by imitating the tragedies that occur as a result of the real difficulties that beset human beings in the conquest of life, believe that their pseudo-tragedies excuse their unconscious lack of cooperation. One mistake in love is allowable. Two mistakes are suspicious. Three mistakes, and constant mistakes thereafter indicate unconscious bad intentions, self-sabotage, sexual defeatism. No chapter on the side-shows of life would be complete without some consideration of drug addiction and alcoholism, piety and mysticism, gambling and the cult of luck , the search for pleasure and power as ends in themselves, the belief in superstition, and cults of the various pseudo-sciences of astrology, numerology, and spiritualism based on superstitious premises. These are vague side-shows, never referable to a single arena of life’s activities, but affecting all vital conduct. It is important, therefore, that the intelligent adult who is devoting himself seriously to the task of creative self-sculpture should understand the meaning of these side-shows the better to orientate his own life and the better to encourage those of his friends whom he finds hopelessly entangled in them. The Problem of Narcotics It is an admitted fact that life is not easy for man on this planet. There are problems and obstacles to our task of living happily which at times seem completely insuper¬ able. Nature has presented man with a number of solacing devices which act as buffers between him and the stark realities of nature. Chief among these are human love and the gift of laughter, tears, forgetfulness and the soothing nirvana of sleep, dreams, and imagination ; secondarily : music, poetry, and the ecstasy of the other arts. In the physical realm, fainting and coma bring relief from intolerable pain and anguish. But man, not content with these devices, or ignorant of their uses, has gone questing through the ages for