The Generican Dream - alexbogusky's posterous

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It seems I’ve written about dreams a lot. I never saw this as a preoccupation of mine, but I guess it is. A few weeks ago, I was running with a friend and talking. I run really slowly so talking is not a problem for me, even at altitude. Somehow, we got to talking about The American Dream.

The American Dream is the most powerful kind of story. The most powerful of narratives. The most powerful sort of myth. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean myth as in something that lacks truth. I mean myth in the way Joseph Campbell spoke of myths: those deeply held stories that explain to us our place in the world and sometimes how to behave.

The American Dream is a myth that has instructed generations of Americans. The phrase is attributed to James Truslow Adams. In 1931, he wrote: “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

Great words. And the American Dream is a myth that has been written and rewritten and perhaps, in its current form, has become more destructive than good. It’s too bad that, contrary to its original intent, it has come to mean owning a house and a car, and keeping up with the Jones’.

My friend referred to it as The Generican Dream because it can be particularly destructive in its single-minded version. Because quality of life isn’t best achieved by being stuck in gridlock traffic on our way to our own little section of urban sprawl: a car and a house. It’s certainly a dream that many Americans can achieve, but it’s also a dream that is less and less sustainable and leads all us dreamers to give up our more interesting individual dreams in order to attain the American standard. Hence, art students who become lawyers, not because they love the law, but because they worry about not keeping up with their friends. The no-bedside-manner doctors who are only doctors because they had great grades and it was a reliable way to make a lot of money, but they don’t actually care about people. They all had dreams that got subjugated to The American Dream.

Oddly enough, James expressly wrote, “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely...”

And went on to the part of the dream we need to focus on. “…but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

That is the secret sauce to life. But it’s also a very high bar. Can you imagine a country where we all were driven to attain the pinnacle of our innate capabilities and that we would be judged not by money, but on how well we fulfilled what we were placed on this good earth to do? I think that is The American Dream we want to get back to.

The American dream needs to be rewritten again. It needs to be rewritten because it is a myth that drives our behavior. It’s not The American Dream; it’s An American Dream. It’s not the same dream for all, but instead, a set of ideals that push us to achieve the singular dreams that live within each of us.

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