Can a "Dream" Work for You?

Some "American Dream" Isn't Working for You?  Really?

"Happiness" abstractions are ideas different from our thoughts during sleep, which are comprised of   elements from our daytime lives.  Awake, we produce numerous thoughts that neither you nor I could ever count.  Yet, we use these same abstractions as tools much as a hammer is used to physically pound in nails.  Conscious thoughts do mental work for us as we roam the earth; sleep thoughts are scrambled ideas that we occasionally recognize if we remember them upon waking.  Conscious, mental tools are applied especially if we're exposed to them and if they're useful.  Yet, it matters little whether we're conscious believers or if we're nurtured into belief.  We believe because it helps us survive.

Dismiss this if you want, but why do you believe you need to work typing on a keyboard every day?  What's the real importance of your social life to your physical survival?  Is the "bad day" you've had without coffee really so or would it be trivial by other standards?

Arguing about abstractions is the reason why we have art, culture, or even war.  We dispute ideas from our own perspective, our own understanding of  ourselves, our happiness, and our comparison of ourselves with others.  Maybe, it's shared with others because they are "like us."  Maybe, it isn't and that's why "they" are wrong and maybe we should even hate them.  Whether it is the concept of "land ownership," "social justice," or some "holy war," mankind fights over what it thinks the real world is about.

We can still fail as species despite our best efforts.  Feelings of "failure" and "misery" are probably still going to be present in the real world, even if some people in places like America continue to feel happier.  Unless, some savior figure or some abstract system has some kind of world more perfectly organized and gifted to us because of their benevolence.  Wait!  Marxism and Nazism have failed in the real world so far, yet maybe someone can do them right?  Thank you future benefactor, whoever you are. (end sarcasm)

This unrelenting difference in belief is why humanity has disagreements.   Our undefined, abstract happiness stems from us as disagreeable beings because there are others that we can never have absolute control over.  What we've done with these beliefs is history.  But, how and why we believe in things often veers into a fruitless, metaphysical, and unsolvable debate.  (See Haybron for Happiness metaphysics).  Nowadays, does the average person really know what metaphysical means anyways?

Some abstractions should be useful as positive tools for individuals.  "The American Dream" should just be a goal-setting device, a positive, abstract direction that many people living in this "country" use to challenge themselves and to bring some greater sense of "happiness."  It's an explanation for individual drive and motivation here.  It is not the full attainment of all physical and emotional desires either for the individual or for society.  The abstraction does not describe happiness now, in the present.  Likewise, believing in the dream doesn't mean you believe that everything is perfect right now or that improvements can't be made to our lives.  So, why hamper or attack a belief that simply motivates individuals because it doesn't encompass a completely happy society?

It's just a future belief, something good and helpful.  It's a positive belief, a tool, that I've never felt wrong accepting.  Am I wrong to believe in "American Happiness" as INDIVIDUALS striving for a better future rather than having some objective state of happiness that MUST be given to everyone?  Why should we despise positive challenges when short of perfect luck, we're all going to face the good and the bad ones?  Can we  really socialize challenges so that everyone must rise to them?  Should the State do this?  Can the dream be imposed and should it?

(Don't answer...now)

Can anyone really say what "Happiness" SHOULD BE?

 

I saw an advertisement for the television show "Enlightened" that inspired me in a different way than the writers probably intended.  In the ad, Laura Dern said about America that "people are living under the illusion that the American Dream is working for them."  My first instinct was to groan.  What a defeatist attitude towards life and the problems we all face!  Recovering, I tried to figure out why this criticism was so widespread, why the "American Dream" abstraction was being attacked from such a lame show? What illusion was I under because I thought differently than these unhappy fictional people?

I researched and came to a different conclusion.  Many intellectuals groped about their existence in this place (America), yet did not flee to "better" places with less people, less diversity, and less responsibility in the world.  Apparently these other places have greater social systems where happiness flutters down from controlling governments. Where was this ultimate happy place?  Some say Denmark was it, the so-called happiest place in the world.  Really?

Others support this notion.  Writer Kerry Trueman believes that "Denmark" is better and happier.  Her idea of the place benefits many more people especially when put into contrast to the supposed failures of America and its huge impoverished underclass.  Denmark's social happiness comes from trust in each other and "at least in part to Denmark's legendary income equality and strong social safety net."  In the same article, she also attacks a strawman she sets up, whereby "Tea-party types" would probably attack Denmark as a hotbed of socialism, when it's really "just practicing a more enlightened kind of capitalism."  Again, America's critics view themselves as enlightened, with better ideas based on rationality, while those content with the ambitious nature of the American dream are uninformed, supportive of a system she believes willfully impoverishes millions.  As a group of "unenlightened capitalists," they hope for a ridiculous dream that will not come to pass with society left the way it is.

So, Danes must be happier all around.  The stats show it and their people must believe it.  And those who possess this positive formulation, a "pro-American interpretation" of some of the most complex abstractions mankind has ("aspirations," "happiness," "contentedness," etc.), don't rationally understand why Denmark is better or why a social safety net is necessary.  In fact, they probably don't understand much of what enlightened people like Ms. Trueman have planned for them.  Right?

Not exactly.  If these "Enlightened" are right, why was this foreign happiness so restrictive to tiny Denmark and not made available to people like me in America?  Nordic countries have smaller problems than the American superpower that has protected them.  They're smaller geographically, have smaller shares of the world's resources, and that's just a few of the geographic factors that don't allow for easy comparisons.

The people themselves are different.  Interconnected as though the two peoples might be, the USA has a lot more people, a greater cultural diversity, more immigration from more places and the problems that result from that complexity.  And there's the ideas that certainly differentiate the two.  The US is much younger than its Nordic competitors for happiness.  At its best, it is seen as a beacon for people seeking freedom everywhere.  At Denmark's best, they are Danish people with a shared identity, race, culture, as well as a long and colorful history that is incomparable to the American Republic.  Denmark even has a popular constitutional monarchy.  America threw out its king 238 years ago.

Denmark welcomes non-Danes to its country, but citizenship is different from cultural or ethnic identity.  Does being "Danish" have the same relation of shared historical, ethnic, cultural, linguistic abstractions to its believers as being "American" has with someone living in the USA?  I do not think so at all.  Those differences result in different institutions, in different acting people, and a translation of that difference to how those societies function.  Basically, they're just different "nations" with different people.  Some objective level of happiness between them would be nearly impossible to determine and trying to do so is self-serving for those seeking to change the lives of Americans.

Skepticism of Remedy:  A Critical Look at "Happiness" Abstractions and Their "Truthfulness"

I'm accepting the critic's form of argument about the American Dream.  We're putting two abstractions, two "countries" into a contrived confrontation along the lines of Ms. Trueman, one that she does for the purpose of boosting one side to chastise another.  Clearly, I do not intend to boost Ms. Trueman's side because I never perceived "American enterprise" to be a futile tool, or even one that is threatened with extinction if desired changes aren't made.  Is there a better model that can be rationally constructed and applied to reality so that the most or ALL people can achieve some objective level of happiness?  Maybe.  But, I'm not willing to give up my life for another person's conception of the world unless I feel it improves the good things we have now. 

And the better model question opened up a thousand more.  If Denmark was MORE happy, what were the requirements, the standards set by these Danish adjudicators of happiness?  What did Americans  have to do to make happiness appear as it apparently manifested elsewhere?  Should we empower these judges just so that we could meet their standards?  What authority of argument should we confer on Ms. Trueman or the fiction writers at "Enlightened" to allow them to disrupt and change the world we know?  In other words, why pick them to change us and what makes their vision of happiness right while others have to be wrong?  I didn't know.

Was it because Ms. Trueman claimed the Danish system was enlightened?  Was it because she attacked the Tea Party who, regardless of their arguments, must be bad and thus not worthy of us reading or deciding the validity of their beliefs ourselves?  Name-dropping and sarcastic references used in conjunction with logical fallacies must be acceptable forms of argumentation IFF they come from enlightened people.

A Glorious Past as Evidence of the American Dream?

(subtext: Certain things worked better in the past.  Therefore, empower the "Enlightened") 

 

America's social critics often look towards material happiness at either a desired future point of existence, someplace so designated on the planet today, or in some society that has gone or is in danger of going.  Yet, I easily found a more comfortable version of the dream, something still more familiar to 70% of Americans even today after all of our national troubles (See the Economic Mobility Project).  It was and is defined as something useful that many Americans still understand despite the turmoil in their individual lives.  It is individualistic and motivational, yet from our past.  It is without perfect social safety nets or "enlightened"  philosopher kings.   Yet, we've held on to this abstraction despite the negativity of the materialists who'd change us to be more like them. 

Let's look at the past because that at least doesn't venture into fortunetelling and these views resonate with at least surveyed opinions of what the American dream should be today.  Alexis De Tocqueville provides the most interesting early view of American material happiness and the American dream.  At the same time, de Tocqueville never painted an utopic picture  of America, bereft of some abstract concept of inequality or poverty.  America was not perfect, nor necessarily better, just different in outlook as he perceived it from "Old Europe" back home.

In Book two, Chapter ten of "Democracy in America," De Toqueville writes of the "general" feeling of Americans for the "passion of physical well-being. "  He contrasts the complex American democracy and the general feelings he observed of its citizens to equally abstract "aristocratic communities" where the wealthy, "never having experienced a condition from their own, entertain no fear of changing it."  In 19th century Europe, the rich, landed and heredity-privileged possessed economic and social stability and did not feel the need to advance.  Likewise, in such abstract societies, the poor become used to their lot.

But, he saw "America" differently.  He saw the love of well-being as the main taste of the nation where even the wealthy continue their quest for more because many knew poverty at some point in their lives.  It is this attitude of happiness that best exemplifies the "American Dream."  Americans enjoy "the bootless chase," where only death ends their unending quest for happiness.  We are "restless" in a land De Tocqueville called abundant (Book 2, Chapter 13).

I find this vision of the American dream vastly more appealing not because it places Americans at some higher level of humanity.  Rather, it presents an "American Dream" for what it is.  A tool, an ambitious one at that, but one that provides opportunities for good and bad among those who accept the challenge.  The challenge is not a social directive, where more rational people (like Trueman) or more socially unhappy people (like the "Enlightened" characters) decide what is best through more abstractions and government actions.  Rather, the American Dream is fundamentally individual and can only be conceived as motivation. 

De Toqueville's theories have further interesting applications for those who complain about the American Dream today.  He wrote that abolishing all privilege and fortune (let's say chance of birth or circumstance) is essentially impossible and dangerous.  Cloners or social planners beware!  When all jobs are made open to all, total equality would mean all citizens are less able to attain happiness because of "universal competition" where endless struggle overwhelms those individuals willing to use their unique talents to get ahead.

De Toqueville is also correct logically when he states that we will "never establish any equality with which [American] can be contented."  How does everyone enjoy independence and freedom without "anxiety and impatience?"  Critics today worry about the equality of condition, that altering the physical must translate into the mental.  But, De Toqueville contradicts this position when he wrote that a people "will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level."  Even if they did, "the inequality of minds would still remain, which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the laws of man."  That's plenty abstract.

Natural law aside, why has the circumstance of my birth, education, and growth rendered me unable to comprehend the vision of happiness that reduces the element of "freedom" and "motivation" and increases the role of the government as a helping hand?  Can I ever understand this view point, to comprehend a powerful safety net at the expense of individual choice?  Is disagreeing with the critic's understanding of happiness simply to be dismissed, relegated to an irrational criticism coming from a privileged elite group?

Clearly, we have an inequality of minds as a people about the truth of the American dream.  But, why destroy my conception of the abstraction to justify your actions in affecting my freedom, namely by taking away more things I believe I own?  While you believe you are helping the needy become "happy" by taking stuff from some, to those who object to your seizure, you are making others less happy by violating their beliefs in working and owning what is theirs.  Both conceptions of happiness cannot then be acted upon by the two groups at the same time, with the same limited resources in contention, while keeping both opposing groups happy.

Is it your right and responsibility to increase the number of happy people in society because creating a social safety net will neccessarily result in that action?  Is that action guaranteed to increase happiness if we are going to alter reality for all to meet your vision?

In my case, I am motivated to achieve my own sense of happiness.  Because I am struggling with a positive attitude, I am not recklessly or even intentionally acting in a way that takes from other people.  Remember, ownership is simply believing that something is yours and not someone else's. Yet, I believe that we all benefit when people of all races, incomes, or creeds are motivated to do things for themselves so we share some useful concept of "America." 

Remember, getting angry about complex abstractions like "the American Dream" and "Happiness" is a waste of our limited time on earth!

 --> Do something yourself first and encourage motivation in those who lack it!  

Then we'll all be better off!

Sources:

Adams, John Truslow . “The Epic of America.”

"Does America Promote Mobility as Well as Other Nations?" Economic Mobility Project, November 2011. www.economicmobility.org

Daley, Suzanne.  "Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault."  The New York Times.  April 20, 2013

Isaacs, Julia B., Sawhill, Isabel V., and Haskins, Rob.  "Getting Ahead of Losing Ground: Economic Mobility In America."  The Brooking Institution
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/Economic_Mobility_in_America_Full.pdf

Haybron, Dan, "Happiness", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/happiness/>.

Kamp, David.  "Rethinking the American Dream." Vanity Fair.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904

O'Brein, Matthew.  "RIP, American Dream?  Why It's So Hard for the Poor to Get Ahead Today."  The Atlantic

Traub, Amy and McGhee, Heath C.  "State of the American Dream: Economic Policy and the Future of the Middle Class."
"http://www.demos.org/publication/state-american-dream-economic-policy-and-future-middle-class"

Trueman, Kerry.  "Looking for the American Dream?  Try Denmark."  10/07/2011  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/looking-for-the-american_b_1000928.html

http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/here-comes-the-tidal-wave-on-enlightened