What makes America unique? We could say that it's the deliciously fatty food on which we gorge, our stellar university system, our ubiquitous role in geopolitics, or even the tiny flags that sometimes express our patriotism by covering a lawn or shirt. If I had to isolate one factor that really defines us though, I would select the American Dream.
We've all heard the narrative. Kid is born in impoverished (read bad) setting, works hard and catches a few breaks to fight through high school with a strong GPA, nails the SATs, goes to Harvard, proceeds to receive gentle massage from business world and Western society in general, dies in wealthy (read good) environment.
A brief, but ultimately relevant tangent:
I've lived in Spain the last few months. While here, one thing has made me consistently wonder. There is paltry social mobility, the economy is in the shitter (and believe me, it really is; 20%+ unemployment makes even the worse parts of our recent recession seem comparatively dandy), and yet, by all appearances, Spaniards are much more content.
If my unscientific guesses from walking around on the street here don't do it for you, this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States) Wikipedia article (Wikipedia is now the source of all knowledge, so shush ye naysayers and get with the times) tells us something interesting. American male suicide rates are nearly twice as high as in Spain. Keep in mind that males are the ones most affected by a culture of business pressure.
Enough of that, back to the main thread we go.
If I had to explain the happiness divide I might point out the clear unspoken corollary to the American Dream: If anyone can make it big with the right passion and dedication, and you didn't make it big, you lack passion and dedication you worthless sack of poo. We quietly believe that financial success is an indicator of intelligence, drive, motivation, and in the more extreme value of the belief, personal worth.
This concept goes beyond just an idea, and approaches the level of being a gospel unto itself. I know many intelligent, kind people who strive towards future financial vindication like it was the holy grail, and who will consider themselves failures, even though they won't admit it often, if they don't end up as wealthy men with high powered careers.
Every day our culture bombards us with images of the socially mobile, wealthy, satisfied male. We see commercials discussing family legacy, car commercials appealing to the upper middle class, TV shows where all of the women would just love to have the clean cut, witty, and conveniently well dressed and financially endowed protagonist, success stories told in side columns, coffee shops, and dinner parties literally pitching the great dream verbatim, book jacket descriptions of authors that inevitably state their prestigious school of origin, reporters subtly flouting their credentials in one way or another, huge skyscrapers with their corporate hives practically shouting to youth that they could be a part of moneyed America, the list goes on, and on, and on.
It would be nearly impossible to miss the fast track, and then miss again the five, ten, twenty or more daily reminders of what could have been, might have happened. It's relatively hard to be an unsuccessful, content American.
So what can we do?
We could start by stopping to give a fuck. Sure there's something to be said for having big piles of money with which to buy good food, go on vacations, live in a nice house, display status symbols, and generally live in comfort, but conflating that money with actual happiness is a mistake. Money can't buy you love, right guys, right? This doesn't mean ignoring career progression and going to live in a tree somewhere. It means recognizing that corporate culture has distinct motivations and rationales from what a healthy person should have, and that work is only a means to an end. If we can see that everyone has their limitations and accept that we can and should be perfectly happy in a world where our limitations... limit us... we're going to be way more content.
Now back to studying for the LSATs,
Tim
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)