The Wanganui Chronicle THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1950. AMORAL CONDUCT AND DIVORCE

Wanganui Chronicle, 21 December 1950, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1950. AMORAL CONDUCT AND DIVORCE

THE increasing wave of divorces that is cluttering up the law courts has been spoken of, not without sympathy, as evidence of amoral conduct. While it is true that such conduct would lead to divorce it would be unwise to assume that such is the only or even the chief cause of divorce. It would be wiser to look deeper for the cause of both amoral conduct and divorce. The modern view is that a marriage that is no marriage in fact is the better for being recognised for what it is. To have a large number of persons in any community who cannot continue to pretend to live in matrimonial shipwreck but are unable to contract valid and acceptable marriages would lead to very undesirable results. There are twenty departments in Paris and marriages “in the twenty-first department” became commonplace when divorce was difficult. Once a marriage has been dissolved in faet then the legal fiction that it shall continue serves no good purpose. The problem which has to be considered is not the divorce but what goes before it. Too often that does not arise from amoral conduct: such conduct generally marks the complete breakdown that is already accomplished. To discuss the mark made by the cause and not the cause itself is unlikely to lead to a solution.

The purpose of marriage is for two people to live together with of bringing up a family. It is improbable that many persons can live together without getting tired of each other unless a family or a substitute family surrounds them. The willingness with which decent people today adopt children either legally or factually by assisting in the upbringing of relative children indicates the general hunger for the wider association than can ba provided by one man and one woman living together as a lonely pair. Every individual needs to express his or her personality, but it is too often forgotten that no one has a personality tp express apart from society. Take society away from the individual and his personality does not exist. Human personality operates'upon the individuals surrounding that human personality. There are two sides to a personality, one looking out and the other from the outside looking inwards or towards that individual. The foundation of education, therefore, is to teach people to relate themselves to others within a group. Too many people, especially in large cities, endeavour to live their lives in unrelated isolation. They leave a small town where they know everyone, but on taking up residence in a larger town they find their amusement more in publie entertainment and not in the, smaller social groups in which they found their happiness in the smaller communities. Their personalities are starved of a sufficiently full association and communion. The weakness of their structure of living lies in the endeavour to live in an unrelated environment. From that basic fault others soon become operative. The search for excitement, the casual acquaintanceships, the easy living which casualness engenders, leave the individual unsatisfied. When a marriage is sustained by only such occupations, when there is no basic philosophy of life growing within the partners to the marriage, when a sufficiently wide range of interests are not shared, the way is opened up for a rupture of domestic relations. When such a rapture does occur the question which has to be considered is not the degree of fault of either of the parties. This search for the degree of farZt is an unprofitable undertaking for it leads to the one sitting in judgment on the other. From that attitude or approach to seek first legal aid and arising out of that the liquidation of the marriage are but natural steps. When disaster threatens a home the problem is to convince each party to the pending disaster that the route they are about to tread is a barren one. Those who can best advise on that are those who have trodden that stony path. The overwhelming majority wish that they had not done so. In order to combat the growing tendency towards divorce a movement has been launched in Chicago along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous. This Movement comprises persons who themselves have been divorced. Their chief line of action is to meet those who contemplate divorcing their spouses and tell the tale of what happens afterwards. The isolation of an insufficiently associated marriage is intensified for the divorcee. The success with which these groups have met as a result of their canvas has inspired them to continuous effort and groups arc forming almost spontaneously throughout America. When Mr. T. S. Eliot wrote his recent play “The Cocktail Party” he presented his audience with a pretty shoddy lot of people. Husband and wife were already established with a paramour, and neither is heroic in any way. Little interest can be taken in their subsequent histories because they are not worth bothering about. A psychologist, however, tolls them to turn their minds to considering each other, and when they do that the domestic breakup is avoided. The play makes that problem appear too easy and to that extent the play is a poor one. The truth of the matter is that when adult persons fail to establish a common ground it is due not so much to that overworked word incompatibility, but to lack of knowledge of how to live. What is lacking in the first place is the art of living. Until two persons have learned how to live they cannot hope for long to live successfully together. Here is the kernel of the divorce problem, the lack of knowledge and training of the art of living. It is that which must be taught if successful marriages are Io replace divorces. The art of living is the getting of the best out of life. The best of life is that which gives lasting pleasures. Lasting pleasures and immoral conduct are incompatibles so it follows that in order to have the greatest measure of happiness in life of which the human being is capable of enjoying the moral latv must not be transgressed. The good life is no restrictive condition, it is the human approach to perfect freedom. All those who think of goodness as a system of taboos miss the mark concerning goodness. When in ordinary language a thing is said to be good, a good dinner, for instance, it provides the height of enjoyment of which the class of things to which it belongs is capable. A good life in the true sense of the word is no tabooridden existence, it is the method of enjoying human freedom at the highest level. The good life, however, is not to be had for the asking: it must be earned like any other worthwhile possession, and the earning of it is the art of living. Strangely enough the greatest pleasure to be obtained from the good life is to be found in the earning of it.