# 5
I had the American Dream but I woke up sweating and screaming.
At the heart of the American Dream is a paradox in that we often stress individual success and yet there is also a strong tendency to conform. We have been told that the Dream is to have a good job and thus we can work hard to have a beautiful home, a spouse and two kids and two cars in the driveway. The problem is, of course, this is a cultural dream and it isn’t individual. While we do see the individual being the one who is largely responsible for the own success, we only accept certain expression of that success. Ortega y Gasset once said something to the effect that we no longer are satisfied with an ordinary life, now we are only happy with an extraordinary one, which of course makes the majority of us miserable.
This is so profound. People travel to this country to find the freedoms spoken about in the American dream. If you work hard you can get any job you like, you can decide everything for yourself without the hand of the government deciding it for you. And you can say and write anything because you are free to do so. Regrettably, this extraordinary lifestyle to those outside the U.S. is not even available for those already in the country. Extraordinary is the minority and most are lucky to live an ordinary lifestyle that they do not live in fear of starvation or homelessness. Yet, the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids still fuels a hope that the country almost never fulfills.
ReplyDeleteWe have to make sure it doesn't turn into a white picket prison.
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