Article April 29, 1961 Issue

Signs of the Times

Joseph Krimsky, M.D. in The Rotarian Evanston, Illinois

Change alone, no matter how sudden and severe, does not in itself cause the decline and fall of men and nations. A person who bends and perhaps breaks under strain is one in whom spiritual and moral anchors have slipped. The values and faiths which kept him stable have lost their hold on mind and heart. He may pay lip service to a divine Providence, but his daily conduct is motivated by materialism and expediency. And what happens to a person may happen to a civilization.

Whom do we blame for our sins? The community? Our parents? Our infantile "traumas"? Our delinquencies, we say, are not of our making. The guilt belongs at the door of circumstances. Self-discipline, self-control, self-domination, self-command—these seem to belong to an obsolete psychology, and we toss about on the stormy sea of spiritual uncertainty, intellectual insecurity, and ethical opportunism.

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