Every culture in every age has relied upon a moral code to provide broad guidelines for conduct that is conducive to social accord and survival. Although much in these past moral codes may not seem particularly relevant to the twenty-first century, when those codes were written they were entirely relevant. They helped ensure the perpetuation of the family, the group and nation. They provided the means by which people upheld the basic tenets of honesty and mutual trust. In short, the moral code supplied the overriding principles by which men could live peaceably, prosperously and in harmony with one another.

By the start of the 1980s, however, as L. Ron Hubbard so bluntly put it, the world had become a veritable jungle. The signs were everywhere. “Greed is Good,” went a popular aphorism of the day, while obscene fortunes were made through stock manipulation and fraud. If art and entertainment were any reflection, then the 80s marked the beginning of a genuinely frightening era of casual violence. Then, too, who can forget what the 1980s marked in terms of inner-city violence, where
13- and 14-year-old children murdered one another with absolutely no compunction whatsoever; hence, the chilling resonance of such terms as “drive-by shooting” and “gang-bang.”

It was in view of this morally bereft landscape, then, that L. Ron Hubbard presented his The Way to Happiness in 1981. Typically, his approach was both historically and culturally broad. Just as all ancient cultures required a moral code to help maintain their fabric, he declared, so, too, did our own. For old values had been broken, yet not replaced by new, while religiously based codes of ages past demanded a faith many could no longer muster. Nor, he concluded, were theories that children would naturally assume a moral stance any more reliable. Thus he wrote The Way to Happiness. 

The work stands alone as the only moral code aimed at a pragmatic, high-tech and highly cynical society. The first work of its kind based wholly on common sense, it is entirely nonreligious in nature. It carries no other appeal than to the good sense of readers and is designed to help them actually apply its precepts in their daily lives. Beneath the many differences of national, political, racial, religious or other hue, each of us as individuals must make our way through life. Such a way, The Way to Happiness teaches, can be made better if the precepts it presents are known and followed.

Life in an immoral society can be far more than simply difficult when even the most basic human values are held up to ridicule. To counter such declining moral trends, Mr. Hubbard’s The Way to Happiness contains twenty-one separate precepts—each constituting a rule for living relevant to anyone in our global village. Indeed, near 87 million copies of the booklet, in more than 170 countries and 96 languages, are presently in circulation with no end in sight. Thus far, the work has received some sixteen United States Congressional recognitions and hundreds of enthusiastic endorsements by police, civic leaders, businesspersons and educators. It forms the basis of highly successful “Set a Good Example” and “Get Drugs Off School Grounds” campaigns, involving over 12 million American students, parents and teachers in more than 12,000 elementary, junior high and high schools. These campaigns, in turn, have received endorsements from more than 150 state governors and state legislators, along with directors of state alcohol and drug abuse programs and departments of education in hundreds of communities across the United States.