May 4, 1973 : Los Angeles
Srutakirti: Srila Prabhupada often described the differences between Vedic civilization and western civilization. This day he was walking around his room chanting japa on his beads. He looked out the window of his sitting room and saw a young couple talking to each other. He turned to me and said, "Boys and girls. Now a man, he wants to do something. He sees some woman and says, 'I'll get that woman'. He'll go up to her and say, 'What are you doing? Why don't we go out?'"
"When we were young," he continued, "the same desires were there. The desires haven't changed at all. We also had desires like that. You see a girl. You become attracted. But the culture was there. The culture was so strict you couldn't even look at her, what to speak of talking to her or making some proposition. Everything was the same, except the culture. Now, there is no culture. You just go up and say anything you want. We had all these desires, talking like school children, but you could never approach a woman. It was unheard of. You wouldn't consider it."
He continued, "When I was young the culture was such that if my mother was going to visit a friend across the street, it was required that they would send a carriage to pick her up at her door and bring her to the door of the house where she was going. The culture was so strict. A woman would not walk across the street unaccompanied."
"When we were young," he continued, "the same desires were there. The desires haven't changed at all. We also had desires like that. You see a girl. You become attracted. But the culture was there. The culture was so strict you couldn't even look at her, what to speak of talking to her or making some proposition. Everything was the same, except the culture. Now, there is no culture. You just go up and say anything you want. We had all these desires, talking like school children, but you could never approach a woman. It was unheard of. You wouldn't consider it."
He continued, "When I was young the culture was such that if my mother was going to visit a friend across the street, it was required that they would send a carriage to pick her up at her door and bring her to the door of the house where she was going. The culture was so strict. A woman would not walk across the street unaccompanied."
Reference: What is the Difficulty? - Srutakirti Dasa
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