indiscipline;
loss of faith, weakness or absence of purpose. Most serious of all,
perhaps, western peoples are learning to ignore principle, live for the
moment, satisfy their already sated appetites and pay little or no
attention to the future. These attitudes are widespread in the western
world of the 1970's, particularly among the young. These effects, on the
whole negative, are offset by a number of positive factors. Human beings
are curious and imaginative. They are also ingenious, inventive and
intuitive. All of these attributes are assets when dealing with the
future and the unknown.

In a previous generation, preceding the war of 1914-18, a very large
part of the West was under the influence of the Christian church, which
promised good things in the hereafter. During the ensuing years of
military conflict, planned destruction and wholesale murder, another
considerable part of the West, both socialist and liberal, was promising
security, comfort and convenience here and now. The influence of the
Christian church on life style, even among its own membership, has
declined in the past half century. Affluent monopoly capitalism,
meanwhile, has provided the rich, the middle class and important numbers
of workers and farmers with necessaries and amenities far beyond the
levels imagined by reformers and revolutionaries of a previous
generation. As an integral part of this maturing revolutionary situation
a generation of human beings born since war's end in 1945 has come on
the scene, surrounded by the concrete and glass buildings, block printed
nylons, the automobiles and domestic appliances of monopoly capitalism
and by the social security of socialism. In both segments, capitalist
and socialist, the more gifted, original, sensitive, creative members of
this comfort-pampered generation have turned their backs on affluence
and security and begun shouting a new slogan: "We want to live!"

There is nothing surprising about this development. Many trained,
experienced observers have been predicting it. Youth, idealism,
aspiration, optimism, ambition--cannot be satisfied with status in any
form. They want to live, to achieve, to face difficulties, to overcome
dangers, to express themselves, to create. They are not content merely
to arrive at physical affluence. Affluence and social security cannot
satisfy. They merely sharpen the appetite for a continuance of the life
journey, on the best terms permitted by the current time