Polls show that recently we have lost faith in “the American dream”. The nineties, particularly, during our great peak of capitalism claimed this loss of trust, and perhaps more so as that bubble burst. The American Dream has been an endlessly fascinating subject to writers and artists as our teenager country enters into its introspecting, brooding phase. It has perhaps played a quite visible and prominent role as we look back on the Depression, the Wars, the Return of the Veterans and as those who clung to the promises of the shared vision grew, and the dream became less of a goal and more of a presence. As a friendship begins full of ideals and plans and fades to a partnership, a company of shared experience, you can begin to ask of each other what happened to our plans? Who are we now? What is there left to do?
The American Dream arose in a time of common lowness, an ideal necessary to pull our spirits out of the muck of poverty and ugliness. Recorded by writers as Fitzgerald, ______, etc. and painters _____, it was a striving for a commonality of chance and possibility. With the glee of small children who walk in to a toy shop, we rallied and hurled ourselves head first into a nation where we could have any toy we wanted. In the beginning the Dream was one of ideology, of equality, of opportunity, but as it matured and we held the toys in our hands, it became one of comparison and consumerism, a step forward not into the chance of comfort but into the game of the most comfortable.
It is quite easy to lay blame on our Great Recession on people – on greedy businessmen, on selfish credit organizations, the mortgage lenders, the money people. But truly it is our fault as well – our over-zealousness to purchase, to acquire, to own. Our search for the Ultimate Americanism has brought us to the Eternal Fountain of Debt.
The Most Comfortable Place We Could Be, which is where we thought we had arrived, reveals itself to be the Place That Is More Comfortable Than Our Neighbors. And in a time when more and more are losing their jobs, becoming homeless, squishing into tiny apartments, as long as we get paid minimum wage and have yet to offer tea or coffee to the repo men, we are in that More Comfortable Than You Spot. But financially stretched and psychologically beaten is decidedly NOT the American Dream our nation set out to find eighty years ago.
We have come to believe, in a way, that we have a RIGHT to this American Dream, as we have the right to Pursue Happiness. But certainly these terms are not synonymous – and can one have a right to pursue a dream that by nature we, as Americans, are surging towards on a wave of social movements regardless of whether we care?
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904?currentPage=1
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