A FRANTIC WORLD

Evening Star, Issue 19198, 15 March 1926, Page 1

A FRANTIC WORLD

THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS [By Sin Phii.ip Gibbs,, in the ‘Sunday Chronicle.’] Wo are all searching separately and secretly for the ideal state of happiness and it’s all very difficult! This nation of ours is crowded with human craving for some sure spiritual guidance, for some new and certain faith, for some inner light revealing the meaning and purpose of life. It was rather pitiful after the war to see the feverish way in which the men who had escaped and the women who had agonised behind laughing masks of courage tried to find the happiness which peace had promised. For a imie there was an orgy of plea-sure-making. One lived to the music of a jazz band. Youth danced all over Europe, even in the coujitries stricken with ruin and starvation and disease. In London night clubs sprang up and flourished for people who wore determined to be “ gay," until exhaustion brought uneasy sleep. Theatres, *’movies,” every'kind of entertainment were thronged by those insatiable for pleasure. And yec somehow they were all bored. Over and over again I heard them whisper to each other at these shows: Tin bored stiff. • • • Good heavens, what rot this is!” DISEASE OF THE SOUL.

It was a disease of the soul i his devastating scn.se of boredom which had followed the nerve strain of war tune. All this socalled gaiety was unsatisfying, and by decrees intolerable. There was no purpose *n it. no moanin?, no joy. Even now. after that time of fever, the nation as a whole has not found itself again, or become content with (lie humdrum drudgeries of life. One sees in all classes a restlessness of mood which did not hcIniK' to our character as a people before tho war. It has affected the younger generation to whom the war is hardly a memory. They, too, get very bored if there is nothing doing in the way of excitement. Nobody is content to keep still. They are all rushing around in motor cars, which some of them can’t aflord, or on motor cycles with a £irl in silk stockings on tho “ flapper bracket.” They aro resentful of life, embittered, it their week's wage, or pocket money from their parents, is not enough to provide incessant entertainment in their spare hours. Tho “movies” aro no longer a luxury, but a necessity of life. The wireless anparatus is installed above the chimney pots in order to bring comic songs into the parlor and jazz music to break the deadly spell of an evening at home. Yet there is no ideal state of happiness in all this. They aro still restless and discontented; they .think that if only they had more money and more pleasure they might be perfectly happy, hut somehow tho theory doesn’t work. One may see that by the unconcealed boredom of rich folk who seek their pleasure on the Riviera, gamble at the tables in Monte Carlo, drive about in Rolls-Royce cars. What unhapniness one sees on soino of those faces! What disillusion with-life! Even they have not attained the ideal happiness with all their money. Tho truth is that thc~peoplc of our nation, and most people belonging to our modern civilisation, aro searching for an ideal happiness which is continually eluding them. It is partly tho fault of an education which lias unsettled the old certainties of the human mind and destroyed its old loyalties to a simple code of faith and duty. In the old days mon ami women did not expect much of. this life. 3 hey put their hopes rather in some future hie when they might, get soino splendid and eternal reward for all their drudgery and natienco and poverty and hardship. But now to many people that faith in a fnim’e state of hanninoss is a poor and donbtlnl thing. The books they have read about evolution and philosophy and odd scraps of science have destroyed their belief m that religions consolation. They are 'pry sceptical" of God. Anyhow, they want their happiness hero and now. DANGEROUS PATHS.

Those novels they read aro rather disturbing. They deal mainly with ideal love, hut somehow or other, this love game has’ not worked out well in their oases. The wife is rather sharp in her temper at times. She is losing some of her good looks. They bore each other, get on each other’s nerves. Perhaps one day is strained beyond the breaking point, it only they could find the ideal woman or the ideal man! Meanwhile they arc damnably unhappy. .. It is. perhaps, the curse of nerves! How is il that our grandfathers and grandmothers seemed to jog along so happily m this servitude of married life with many children and no cry for “paster divorce . Perhaps we think too much, brood too much, are too sensitive to the hillo worries and fnlilitirs of life. Perhaps wo have wrong ideas oi happiness. , , ~ Everywhere, outside the ranks of those still satisfied with the old forms of tiutli —not very many in the nations as a whole —there is a groping for some spiritual guidance which will give a new meaning to this unsolved riddle of life. It is * eal , in " many people into strange paths, iat her dangerous, I think. FANTASTIC BELIEFS. In London at the present tinny and I suspect also in other great cities, Spiritualism of different brands is taking possession of many minds. Tabic lapping, tal gazing, automatic writing, spirit photographs. materialisations, arc exciting the curiosity of intelligent men and women, desperate to find some new interpietation of life’s mystery. Some of them toll mo that they get comfort out of Una. Some of them have tried to drag me into it, though to my mind it is ail mixed up with the most sordid kind of fraud and has a disastrous effect noon the mentality—and sometimes the morality —of those who get drawn into (hose circles ami seances.

My letter hag is filled with correspondence from people- -mostly women—who have taken up other theories of life, wildly fantastic, and in some cases quite mad. Some of them are convinced that the British people are the lest tribe of Israel. The Tliiiosonlii.-ts under Mrs Bcsant have just produced a new Messiah—a. handsome young Indian -who claims, io fulfil the second coming nf Christ. £ receive pamphlets from disciples of loanna Sonihcoto with the assurance that when her boxes' are opened by the bishops all will bo well with the world. SEARCH FOR, A NEW WORLD. But vastly more numerous than all these strange sects and secret ,searchers behind the veil of mystery aro masses of men and women who, without fanaticism or superstition. and with no more than a wistful yearning, are trying to find some faith or code which will give an uplifting purpose in life, a straight road to follow, a goal ahead, an inner flame of happiness on their way. Not easy to find with SO much criticism! Happy arc those who go to some old church with simple hearts and no doubts. A good deal of our political unrest is due to the desire of the human heart to he caught up by some tremendous interest outside the little drudgeries of tho daily round, and to become absorbed in some new effort to attain the ideals of human happiness. Socialism, even Communism, in its psychological aspects is not merely an economic theory. They aro both substitutes for revealed religion, although the Russian blend of Communism is anti-Chris-tian and declares that any form of religion is tho “ opium of the people.” But it has its own pricsls, fanatics, and inquisitors. It has established a tyranny of intolerance and dogma, to deny which is death.

The soul of the people is distressed by many false prophets, confused by a multitude of counsellors, and has no fixed faith or purpose such as united it in self-de-fence—and. exalted it to great heights of sacrifice beyond the range of individual selfishness—in time of war. Now in time of peace it seeks to find something to replace that spiritual intensity, and cannot find jfl the flagging quarrels of jetty politics,

or in a. round of pleasure, or in the squalor and poverty of back streets, or in their social conditions. BACK TO SIMPLICITY, To rne there comes the conviction morn and more that the happiness for which we ali seek is to be found in-a simplificatiqn of life. We must get back to simplicity in material conditions and social habits, avoiding, as far .as possible, a 3 those complications of modern life which tqurture our nerves and waste our energies. “ Life would bo endurable bqt for it* pleasures,” said a French philosopher. It would be endurable and good if we could get back closer to the earth and sky, limit our desires In love and beauty, the elementary needs of the body, and liberty for the mind and soul. With a sense of humor, a little courage, a smiling tolerance. and some faith in God life would not be too bad oven in poverty and hardship. Perhaps,. after all, that is the ideal state for which the world is searching with a thousand theories. But how can we attain the simple life in this industrial and sceptical and nervous: age when the very vibrations of the air proclaim a hopeless conflict of ideas through the .headphones or a loud speaker? .Simplicity is the hardest thing of all when the sou! of the people is being bawled at by every cheap jack in Vanity Fair.