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Is it Time to Revise the American Dream?
What is the American Dream? I’m not sure there is a specific dream, but in as much as there is one, I think it might be in for some revising.
First, what is (or has been) the dream through the generations?*
§ It started out as a dream of gold and the opportunity to expand European power.
§ Then it morphed into political, religious, and economic freedom, during the revolutionary period.
§ Then there was the state’s and equal rights period. I might also call this the struggling with our own stated values period. (This is not a contiguous period overlapping concurrently with the next period.)
§ When the
§ Eventually, as peace and prosperity became commonplace, the dream has morphed into the “get conspicuously rich**” stage, being the stage we are currently in.
So, why might it be time for a change in the dream rhetoric?
I think this is likely to send things in one of two directions.
1. Paranoid, xenophobic rhetoric escalates as American governance continues to worsen. The middle class evaporates, real class struggle begins, and over a generation or two, we see a radical restructuring of the American political system accompanied by some fairly severe civil unrest. (None of which ends well for most involved.)
a. Big Government vs. Small Government: It isn’t about the size of government but about how well it governs, and about what it governs/provides.
b. Market Economy vs. Social Safety Nets vs. Communism: It isn’t about who gets what or why. It is about something else, about growing and nurturing the whole to create a great society rather than just great people.
c. Religion vs. Secularism: I don’t know where to go here, but someone brilliant is going to make a break through. Just before the Vogons show up. J
d. Et Cetera, et cetera: You get the picture.
* I apologize but this is a pretty limited series of definitions based on one white kid’s perspective.
** I feel like wealth is also tied up in a sense of moral rightness, but that is another topic entirely.
8 comments:
*i like it when you post.
**i understand most of what you're saying, but haven't had enough time to really focus and process it all.
***i really like you.
****now i've used more asterisks than you.
*****posts from this blog should now ALWAYS include pictures of your new little bundle. always.
******i love you anyway.
Man, B-hal, you are really good with links! I had so much fun reading your post and clicking on all the links that I felt like I was playing a game. I think you ARE a good thinker and I like your ideas. And if the brilliant kids you guys are all raising have anything to do with the future of this country, I think it will get reshaped just fine. I'll be dead by then but maybe I will get glimpses from the world beyond, ya think?
And yes, a little bundle picture (like Lola said) is always a nice touch.
P.S. Your first link CRACKED ME UP, although I was a little bummed out by the answer to that question.
i wish i were one of those brilliant people with ideas to post, but i'm still waiting for them to tell me what to think while i enjoy the links.
great post, b-hal!
Epic post, homes.
MAY I PLEASE BE A PEDANTIC ASS?
I will take your silence as a yes.
Did you know that the "American" Dream predates the discovery of the New World? It even predates European nation states. There were Greeks and (later) Romans positing longingly the existence of an other place where things were different, better, more pure and unspoiled centuries earlier. When Christianity took these pagan predecessors' places (still centuries before Leif Ericson, not to mention Christopher-come-lately Columbus), the Other Side was idealized as a perfect place for Old Worlders to redeem themselves and do things the right way.
Three hundred years before Joseph Smith, Catholic theologians (including Diego de Landa, Bartolomé de las Casas, José de Acosta, Diego Durán, Bernardino de Sahagún, Garcilaso de la Vega, etc.) were speculating that New World indigenous peoples were descended from the "lost" ten tribes of Israel, and that the New World had been prepared for them by God as the site of the New Jerusalem that they would build. (The lattermost was a favorite of Columbus who was always half afraid that he would actually find New Jerusalem.)
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I totally agree with your prognostication: clearly the U.S. is not going to last as it is forever. Even barring some sort of social suicide by intentional or unintentional apocalypse (nuclear, biological, ecological, you name it), the U.S. is doomed no matter what by the fact that no society has ever lasted much longer than 1,000 years. Nowhere in the world, ever. There's no way the U.S. exists in anything like its present form even 500 years from now. Probably less.
So yeah. I see your xenophobic forecast as the most likely. I don't know that society will reorganize itself along racial, religious, cultural or other lines. What's fairly certain is that times will change radically, that what we now think of as the West will decline for a period perhaps supplanted by the East or by African powers, or that all nation states will fragment into small ethno- or economic groups like the ones Neal Stephenson predicts in Snow Crash and The Diamond Age.
After an age which will probably be thought of as (and perhaps actually be) "dark," some group will cohere around some set of values, and the whole shebang'll start up all over again. The dream of a better place—a dream that existed before it was called American and will exist again after that name has been forgotten—will reemerge with a different set of values and a different name.
he knows TOO MUCH and must be destroyed. except, no. he's so interesting and entertaining to listen to/learn from, that i would discourage anyone from trying. he'd obviously know you were coming.
by "he" i mean both of you brothers of mine.
if ally is a part of the "rising generation" of which you speak, we can all count on returning to a cows-as-currency economic model, because milk will be revered above all things.
This just in, Ally predicts India, not China, as next global superpower.
Thank you everyone for your comments.
On a side note, we need to make sure we train some astrophysicists as well as political philosophers (pophis) in order to fight off the Vogons when the pophis have their big TA DA moment.
J. Picked up "No Country for Old Men" last night and almost put it back down immediately after reading the first 10 or so pages. But then the guy found the case, now I am hooked.
If I can get through this one without despairing I may take another crack at "Blood Meridian."
Also, I picked up "Quicksilver" again and it started to get interesting (by which I mean this part is easier for me to understand).
Also also, "First King of Shannara" is making me want to chew my own arm off. Terry Brooks 2, Brian 0.
Sorry to say, but getting through No Country is no guarantee that you'll enjoy Blood Meridian. No Country and The Road are McCarthy's gentlest, most hopeful novels. There's nothing even remotely hopeful in Blood Meridian.
If you decide not to read No Country, I'll buy it from you. Somehow lost my copy.
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