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“Happiness lies in engaging in worthwhile activities. But there is only one person who for certain can tell what will make one happy—oneself.”
L. Ron Hubbard
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very culture in every age has relied upon a moral code to provide broad guidelines for conduct that is conducive to social accord and survival. Although much in these past moral codes may not seem particularly relevant to the late twentieth century, when those codes were written they were entirely relevant. They helped ensure the perpetuation of the family, the group and nation. They provided the means by which people upheld the basic tenets of honesty and mutual trust. In short, the moral code supplied the overriding principles by which men could live peaceably, prosperously and in harmony with one another.
By the start of the 1980s, however, as L. Ron Hubbard so bluntly put it, the world had become a veritable jungle. The signs were everywhere. “Greed is Good,” went a popular aphorism of the day, while obscene fortunes were made through stock manipulation and fraud. If art and entertainment were any reflection, then the 80s marked the beginning of a genuinely frightening era of casual violence. Then, too, who can forget what the 1980s marked in terms of inner-city violence, where 12 and 13 year old children murdered one another with absolutely no compunction whatsoever; hence, the chilling resonance of such terms as “drive-by shooting” and “gang-bang.”
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