By Caitanya Carana Dasa
The Moment we turn away from Krishna our misery begins. The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty, by David G. Myers, is one among several books that use telling facts and revealing statistics to examine the reality behind the globally glamorized American dream of the happy life through wealth and sensual enjoyment. Since 1960: • The divorce rate has doubled. • The teen suicide rate has tripled. • The recorded violent crime rate has quadrupled. • The prison population has quintupled. • The percentage of babies born to unmarried parents has sextupled. • Cohabitation (a predictor of future divorce) has increased sevenfold. • Depression has soared to ten times the pre World War II level. Has the American dream turned out to be a masked night mare? What went wrong?