I’ve seen only a paucity of movies in my time, so I thought
retirement might be a good time to catch up on a few of the more notable
productions through a movies course in the OLLI program (Osher Lifelong
Learning Institute for people over 50).
The theme of the course turned out to be “The American Dream”. Several of the movies chosen for presentation
and discussion were movies that suggest the American Dream is gone.
So I thought I’d better find out – neversomuch too soon: just
what IS “The American Dream”?
“The American Dream is a national
ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the
opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility for
the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few
barriers.”
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
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So, if the American Dream is gone, when did it go, where did
it go and who stole it?
Here are some confounding realities:
- It’s always been held that education would solve our economic problems and assure that we all could achieve the American Dream. However, despite billions of dollars being poured into education at all levels annually, it remains a sad fact that too many high school students are neither job-ready nor college-ready, and too many college students are not career-ready.
- More than a few people with Masters and PhD degrees can’t find jobs.
- Corporate enterprises complain that they can’t find enough qualified people to fill open positions. (IBM, alone, had 1,400 unfilled vacancies in 2014.)
- Too many people are trying to raise families working minimum wage jobs.
- Increasing numbers of jobs are being eliminated by automation.
However, there’s also the fact that jobs in Green Energy
enterprises have substantially expanded – and are expected to continue to do so
for the foreseeable future – and foreign nationals are filling increasing
numbers of jobs in science, medicine and engineering that can’t be filled by US
citizens. NOTE: The
foreign nationals are not “taking American jobs away”, they’re filling a
desperate need that’s not being met.
That’s also happening on the low end of the scale. Why are so many immigrants so anxious to come
to the US seeking a better life?
But let’s take a deeper look at the economy. In recent years, the exploding ‘Baby Boom’
generation expanded the economy many fold, not only by getting themselves
“established” in civilization, but by UPGRADING … getting newer, bigger cars,
bigger houses … more stuff and bigger places to put it. At some point – and we may well be near
reaching that point, or are past it – they will have had enough, and will be
downsizing.
However, what concerns me more is that perhaps we have misjudged
what life – and the “American Dream” – is all about and how it works. America remains the wealthiest nation with one
of the best education systems on earth, yet we haven’t figured out how to make
it more inclusive and more sustainable. Worse,
there’s some evidence that folks have quit paying attention:
“So Mr. Rohn – you’re living in the richest country in the world,
you’re broke, in a dead-end job, with a family and no money in the
bank …
Tell me – WHO SOLD YOU THAT PLAN?”
Jim Rohn … recounting the words of his mentor, John Earl Shoaff
Maybe – just maybe – we’ve bought or been sold a “Bill of
Goods” that simply doesn’t hold water … and the leaking barrel is only just now
starting to cramp our style.
It started innocently enough. Our parents didn’t want us to have to work as
hard as they did to get where they got, yet they wanted us to go so much
farther. So they worked even harder to
make life easier for us so we could apply ourselves to higher endeavors. However, a bunch of us took “easier” for
granted. Along the way, virtual
realities became a more prevalent part of our lives, starting with sitcoms,
superhero fixations, then video games morphing into the ever-present internet,
smart phones, YouTube and social media.
Who has the TIME, ENERGY or INCLINATION anymore to do something useful!?! And is all that really necessary? Aren’t we entitled to sustainable
indulgence?
In essence, life has become so good in the halo of legacy
gains that only the excessively driven see any need to go out of their way either
to keep a good thing going or to go for “better”. With so much prosperity all around us, one is
tempted to believe we have already won!
Point to Ponder
The American Dream didn’t evolve during prosperous times but
through desperate yearnings of desperate times where the only thing to hang
onto was hope, and the thing most cherished was opportunity – something more
than a few folks were even willing to die for.
It seems the Dream dimmed as desperation dissipated following hard-won
victories carved out of deeply-mined opportunities many had to create for
themselves.
Additional Points to Ponder
- About 476,000 new businesses were created each month in 2013 across America.
- The Latino share of all new entrepreneurs in 2013 was 20.4 percent, up 4% from 2003.
- The Caucasian share of new entrepreneurs declined significantly during this period.
- 430 out of 100,000 immigrants start businesses each month compared to 250 for native-born Americans.
These are broad brush strokes. There’s no question that opportunities are
much more selective and that competition is much tougher than it was at any
time in the past. However, opportunities
still DO exist, and the American Dream still DOES exist, but the terms and conditions
for its acquisition have been taken up a notch.
We can poignantly say that ‘Life
will never be the same again’, but perhaps, all along, we made “The Good Life”
out to be a lot more than it really is for a lot less effort than is really
required. Or maybe the core of the
American Dream hasn’t really changed at all.
If we look closely, we will see that those who’ve achieved it on their
own terms have done so at considerable personal sacrifice. If we substitute “personal sacrifice” for
“hard work” in the Wikipedia definition, it will perhaps translate more
accurately to both current and future circumstances. Quartermaster
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