The loudest outcry (大声疾呼) about poverty seemed to come in the wealthiest country by far in the world. According to most calculations, through most of the 1945-1970 period the United States had a standard of living well above Europe’’s and many times above the world average. Yet protests about grinding poverty, hunger, and dreadful need proceed from the United States than from countries with one fortieth of their living standard. (An annual per capita income of eight dollars is typical of much of Africa and Asia and not a little of South America.) It would seem strange to these people(they were only aware of the fact) that American radicals demand a retreat from an American commitment to the far concerns of the globe so that the money thus saved can be spent raising the standard of living of underprivileged Americans. What this last point suggests is not so much that human wants all never to be satisfied though this is doubtless true, and the American suburbanite (郊区居民) deprived of his second car and his color TV suffers just as acutely as an African farmer in need of a second cow and a screen door. Rather, it suggests the extent of contemporary broach (违背) of social norms—the emancipation (解放) of the individual self. People have learned that their wants are sacred and right ought to be satisfied. They have learned to consider any obstacle to personal fulfillment an intolerable insult They have greatly expended the circle of self-awareness. They no longer accept sharp limitations on individual desires in the name of the group. The amount of potential human discontent has always been infinite misery, failure, misfitting, bitterness, hatred, envy beyond telling. It has usually failed of utterance, and in the past it was accepted passively as being beyond help. The passage is mainly about______.

A. poverty
B. discontent
C. new understanding of individual fulfillment
D. unlimited human wants