On the American Dream

Follow-up piece on my previous essay, On the Purpose of Art. On the concept of the American Dream during a pandemic.

I have yet afforded myself, in my so far short-lived writing career, the opportunity to truly rail against the American Dream. I’ve taken time in other articles, such as On the Purpose of Art, to explain possible paradigm shifts in relation to art, and other generational happenings that occur every couple of decades or so; however, I have, as of yet, not let my true opinions known.

I believe I have not done so, because up until very recently, I prescriped heavily to the thought of the American Dream. I was supposed to achieve to such an extent that all my dreams and fantasies would finally come alive according to my wildest imaginations. I was supposed to use my twenties as an opportunity to conquer the world through the power of entrepeneurial spirit and youthful exuberance. Yet here I am at age 25 — tired, and ready to admit that life was not all that I had expected it to be.

The American Dream requires work. An infinite amount of hours of it. Once you reach that platform, indeed, the work doesn’t cease. For every time that you allow yourself to level up, you only gain more responsibility, and a heavier workload. When does it stop? They say that it’s not so much about the destination — it’s more about the journey. But how does this piece of advice work on an ideal that believes it’s not about the journey — it’s about the destination. Have you ever heard someone say that the, “Ends justify the means?” This Machiavellian piece of advice that excels so much in a capitalist society appears to go against our very nature of understanding what the true destination is.

And so, in order to live up to the expectation of who we should be, we are tempted to sacrifice a part of ourselves to reach that goal. We are tempted to work more and more hours until our lives are swallowed whole by our careers like Jonah and his whale. We are tempted, as Faust once had done, to convene with spirits who may show us any kind of secret knowledge that would allow us to gain a leg up on our competition. We are tempted, like Rockefeller and Edison, to pulverize our competition until we are the only Leviathan in our industry.

The American Dream is poison, plain and simple. There is nothing at the end of that tunnel but excess and cannibalism. Most of all, there is materialism, and this may be the greatest poison our system has to offer. It might make sense for one to sacrifice onself in order to benefit a family member, or a friend. For example, a single mother might work 3 jobs when she can in order that her son would eventually be able to go to a good college, and break her family out of a line of generational poverty. Here, we see that someone would be using the capitalist system not for purely selfish reasons.

Even despite the fact that this person may not be prescribing to the American Dream for selfish reasons, they are still at heavy risk of being broken down by it. Just because what they are doing is selfless, does not mean that it won’t take a toll. Furthermore, a majority of people who operate within the system, to be sure, only do so to exploit it for personal gain. One of my artist friends made a song that was extremely popular in our area a couple years ago, and the chorus went, “The cars and the clothes, the boats and the hoes, living for the cash and the cream. It’s the American Dream — the American dream,” and I believe that these lyrics really hit the nail on the head.

People are not living the American Dream for happiness — and when I say “happiness,” I mean actual true happiness. This is the kind of happiness that is not contingent on achievement, conquest or earning the most money out of everyone. True happiness should not be contingent on whether or not you’ve earned enough money to buy a nicer car than your neighbor. It should not be how well you can compare yourself to those of your graduating class who may not be making as much money as yourself.

Now, obviously, people need to make a decent enough living to survive. There is a threshold level where people must make enough money to live comfortably, but not too much where vices such as greed and avarice tend to fester beneath the surface like a plague. At one end of the continuum, the presence, or an overabundance of money, is likely to destroy character; and at the other end of the spectrum, a lack of enough money to live comfortably is apt to destroy character. Both ends of the spectrum result in the same degradation of character, and yet America is all too familiar with only operating on these ends of the spectrum — even when we know that the presence of a strong middle class is one of the few indicators of how strong a nation’s economy is.

Now you might be reading this, and you might completely disagree with everything that I have said so far. Your response might be, “How could a person like this rail against something that has raised him, and given him everything he’s needed?” It is true that in coming from a capitalist system, I have inherited all of it’s inherent boons; however, it must be recognized, in the same way, that I have also inherited the inherently toxic aspects of capitalism as well. For whatever good comes from the system must also be equalized by a necessary amount of bad.

The most specific example I can think of in regards to the dangers ofthe American Dream would be that of one of the characters from one of the greatest American novels — The Great Gatsby. The book was not F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most popular book while he was alive, but over the course of the last half of a century, it has come to be recognized as one of the greatest works of American fiction to have ever been written. This is mainly due to, in my opinion, the commentary on the American Dream that the novel provides. I will attemp to go into some depth on this commentary without attempting to give too much of the plot away.

Basically, as the narrator comes to know The Great Jay Gatsby, we find him out to be a mysterious man who is fond of throwing magnificent parties at his mansion. The narrator slowly comes to know Gatsby and finds out that he would like to arrange a meeting with the narrator’s cousin, who goes by the name of Daisy. As it turns out, Gatsby and Daisy had once been in love — a love which had been deemed forbidden as Gatsby was only an officer in the army, and Daisy came from a long lineage of what can only be identified as “old money.” Old money simply means a family which comes from a long line of money, and extends their dominion through connections and fortunes passed along through generation after generation.

As we can only assume, Gatsby attempted to obtain great fortune in pursuit of what he felt would bring him the most happiness — his love for Daisy, her need for a spouse who could provide for her and her previous way of life, and the validation of owning any nice thing he could put his mind to.

Gatsby’s plans, however, of winning over Daisy’s heart once again were dashed by Daisy’s husband, Tom, who also, importantly, comes from old money. Tom blames Gatsby for the murder of a small-town working man’s wife, and the man, in a blind rage of despair, murders Gatsby. In all actuality, it was Daisy who murdered the poor man’s wife, as she suspected the women of having an affair with her husband Tom.

If we disregard the human nature of these quarrels, and how petty they might seem to us, we allow ourselves to gaze upon a tapesty of human suffering that Fitzgerald so eloquently breathes into this masterpiece. Gatsby might seem like the hero of the story — the book is named after him, after all. But he is no more than a tragic character from which we must learn our lesson. No one wishes to come to Gatsby’s funeral, and his estate falls into a quiet dissarray upon his death. As it turns out, no one actually cared about Gatsby. Perhaps this is because he did not allow anyone the opportuntity to do so, but the point remains.

Even Daisy, who had claimed her love for Gatsby again while she was married to Tom, immediately leaves her estate with Tom and her child, upon finding out about Gatsby’s death, and acts as though he had never existed. The narrator is appalled, but ultimately must accept reality for what it is. Thus, we see the effects of the American Dream, and how they take shape into a tragic reality.

Gatsby, looking back into his past found that his greatest source of happiness came from being with Daisy, and so every day fought for himself to become the type of man who could betrothe himself to a woman of her background. He even situated himself on a dock that was on the opposite side of the lake from her estate in order that he could see where she lived just by going out into his backyard. In doing so, and by engaging in activities that allowed him to become rich much quicker than the average man, he sold his soul to a vision of happiness that could not be harnessed in any reality. As the famous quote from the story goes, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Gatsby is perhaps the best example because of how elegantly he is portrayed, and the contrast this creates with the grotesque reality of those we’ve known to sell their souls to such a dream. Nevertheless, his example provides the best model for the point I am trying to make — the American Dream is an empty promise.

I am willing to acknowledge that the reality of my upbringing, and the fact I have grown up as a milennial, might inhibit myself from seeing a reality that others may have seen in the past. The economy that we inherited is not the same as the great American economies of the past.

Regardless of any of that, a pursuit of any kind of happiness should not rest on a sense of self worth that exists outside of oneself. It is just not sustainable. The world that exists outside of ourselves cannot be controlled in any way, and attempting to do so is only winning a small battle that will eventually fold in the long run.

In the end, happiness is what we make it, and even I, myself, will continue to suffer and fight through the plagues that are inherent in our society, even as I rail against them. Hope provides a dismal image in continuing next to the every day tasks that will amount to our ultimate freedom.

Thank you, as always

Gabrielknowseverything