What's the problem?

I do not believe that repression is America’s major problem, as some writers maintain. America’s problem number one is the self-profanation of man, the perversion of the eighteenth-century conception of the pursuit of happiness, the loss of reverence, the liquidation of enthusiasm for the attainment of transcendent goals.

Our conception of happiness is based on an oversimplification of man. Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness.&tninsp;. . . Man’s true fulfillment depends upon communion with that which transcends him.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 30–31 (emphasis original)