Lorenz presents a number of ideas relating to and explaining current social unrest involving conflicts between generations. He writes: 'We cannot help feeling that organic systems are the more valuable the more highly integrated they are… There is no human vice which is anything less than the excess of a function which, in itself, is indispensable for the survival of the species… There is no path to the peaks of bliss except through the valley of sorrows, and modern man is so pampered and coddled that he shrinks from paying even the moderate toll of discomfort that nature has set as the price for all earthly joy… I believe that humanity has just now reached the critical point at which the changes in social norms of behavior demanded within the time period between two generations has begun to exceed the capacity of the puberal adapting mechanisms.'