The American Dream is one of those rare myths that shapes itself to the moment.
Anyone can make it here evolved to “owning your own home” and even stretched to sending all of our children to college. I’m just not so sure it can expand to fit the world of perpetual voyeurism of the networked world. A chicken in every pot just isn’t good enough anymore.
Our inalienable rights matched reasonably well to “making it” as an ideal given European feudalism and religious wars. Class held back the basics of self determination and fear stifled worship. Setting sail before America was birthed deserved quite a bit of credit.
And of course more yearned to be a part of the dream. The homestead act giving anyone the chance to stake their claim on western land could be understood in a fit of manifest destiny even if it turned out the land was occupied. Making it meant making it your own. Property rights are as American as Apple pie.
You can see how our human wants remained boundless even centuries ago. America was ready and able to deliver it. We weren’t comparing ourselves to Kings or Kardashians.
It’s hard to say where we are now. We stack ourselves against each each instead of against ourselves. We aren’t yearning for our natural rights. Inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness have turned to desire.
The American Dream means desirable outcomes and social status items like Ivy League degrees, large homes in beautiful places and access to the finest surgeons and latest medical advancements.
I’m not one to talk as I sit looking out over the mountains, having used the latest and great medical advancements and also prepare to relax into some of medicines oldest and truest forms of healing.
The networked world has created endless opportunities for us all and many of them are quite a bit easier than tilling the frozen prairies of the Dakotas but it’s oh so hard to turn away from the addictions of envy and desire.
It’s my theory that we will see a return to hierarchy and classism as it becomes clearer that the temperance movement has barely begun when it tackled gin and tobacco.
Focusing feels impossible to so many of us so even if you could acquire a home or the best medical care can you manage the bureaucracy. Reading bedtime stories to your children is a privilege says the headlines of the latest academic papers. Food systems have given us abundance so great we are killing ourselves.
So what happens next? If you cannot focus on a goal of your own why not simply take one from someone else? If you can’t manage the paperwork or the reading why not outsource it to an artificial intelligence?
And then you realize all of these things are not really what you want. What you want is to be better than someone else. Was that always the American dream? Or is that the human condition holding you back? The freedom to pursue liberty is still your inalienable right. Unless you can figure out what that means to you someone else can always make you feel small.