The American Dream, the American Revolution, the American Way of Life – there has long been something fresh and exciting about the “Land of Opportunity.”

No other country has been capturing the imagination of people all over the world as much as the USA. No matter the economic problems, no matter the protest, no matter if good or bad, there is sure to be an opinion, and probably a fascination. Often enough, a promise.

Recently, though, it seems to be a promise that has been perverted.Dreams of a manifest destiny have turned into certainties, as if it weren’t necessary to live up to such a purpose anymore; ideas of never-ending space, frontiers that are left to conquer, have turned into nothing more than a sense of entitlement and limitless living.

The end of history was reached, and nothing was supposed to have to change. As then-president George Bush Sr. (in)famously remarked at the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) Rio  Summit in 1992, “the American way of life is not up for negotiation.”

Black Friday with its Thanksgiving Day sales and the start of the Christmas/end-of-year shopping period is fast approaching, and – in the midst of economic uncertainty and spreading realization that things will have to be changed for the better (in terms of environment, resources, and social fairness) – will once again put all the madness that has become of America’s promises on display.

The opportunity taken by Americans will be “the opportunity to rush into stores at ungodly hours and, with plastic cards, purchase plastic stuff, which in a year’s time they will consign to plastic bins that they hide in closets and garages packed tight with purchases from years gone by.”

The fascinating thing, looking at the American Dream from the vantage point of the ecology of happiness, is just how a cultural model of what life should be like, what a people stand for and work towards, can be a map towards really better lives, or worse ones. And indeed, how it can make the ones look like the others, but still hold the seeds of change.

All culture includes some idea of how its members should live, how they are connected – or it wouldn’t be much of a continuous society.

America, thanks to manifest destiny and the American Dream, makes it easier than most to recognize something of that map. Indeed, it has been different from most societies in making so apparent what it stands for, and inviting others to forget what they were told and follow this new path. (Not that it hasn’t always been more difficult and dangerous in practice than in promise.)

Seeing it from afar, in particular, the promise has been that of remaking yourself, or at least remaking your circumstances. The American Dream, in most of the world, has been that of social rise.
You start out as dishwasher, get into business, and become a millionaire. In this image, oriented on money though it may be, there is not that much materialism… but things have changed.

We’ve always had this idea of the American Dream: a nice house, picket fence. How has the definition changed over the last few years?

It started out with the puritan work ethic that we were to scrimp and save through hard work, patience and perseverance. Then the goal was just to have some level of comfort. But we have perverted the American Dream. We’ve perverted the little white house with the picket fence and the car in the driveway to the 3-car garage with a Hummer out front, the 3,000-square foot house and jewelry and everything that goes along with it. It’s the American Dream on steroids. Today we want the easy wealth without the work.

 

(TIME’s Moneyland: Why We Can’t Buy Happiness – But Try To, Anyway)

 

Wealth and affluence have become the dominant aspect; and they are noxious. As Matt Taibbi pointed out, it has become all-too-dominant at the same time at which chances for it have been reduced:

Americans for the most part love the rich, even the obnoxious rich. And in recent years, the harder things got, the more we’ve obsessed over the wealth dream. As unemployment skyrocketed, people tuned in in droves to gawk at Evrémonde-heiresses like Paris Hilton, or watch bullies like Donald Trump fire people on TV.

For those afar, the influence may be even worse.

Occupy Wall Street protesters’ treatment barely seems to differ from that of protesters under the “oppressive regimes” the US government so likes to criticize. Affluence has proven to have been based on debt – and all most politicians, and citizens, want to achieve appears to be a return to that “normality” of a growth based on financial and ecological debts. And yet, what you typically see of the USA is the high standard of living, are the shopping frenzies, large cars and houses with swimming pools. Just tune in to TV.

It appears (like it does with parts of Europe, in different ways) as if all you had to do is show up, and you too would participate in that easily affluent consumerist lifestyle. It is this promise of easy living that accounts for much of the USA’s current appeal, and its role as model of good living to which developing countries aspire.

From within, things apparently look quite different.

The unemployment situation is dire enough, householding skill (with finances and/versus stuff) are in dire straits, and the role models that seem left are either those who have skewed the system in their favor (see Matt Taibbi’s excellent post linked to above), or those who otherwise manage to profit from it.

There is still something of an idea that you can make yourself better and create your own success, but it’s a pit of snake oil salesmen and half-truths alongside very worthwhile ideas and drives towards entrepreneurship and learning. Meanwhile, if you don’t dare to be different as (and sometimes, from) the minimalists and personal development gurus, chances are that you are firmly entrenched in the hedonic treadmill, struggling with even just the simplest J.O.B. (“just over broke,” as it’s been called).

As much as there is of affluence and convenience for everyone has provided more of complacency and obesity than of a dare to dream big and a drive to make it happen.

This same potential still exists, though. The frontier spirit sometimes reasserts itself not in the view that there’s always more, so that there’s no need to change, but in the view that there’s more to get done, more to learn, and more of humanity’s adventure to advance.

The American Dream of making it big can still motivate people to decide to change themselves, take their chances, and aim to create change for a better world. (You may notice that the ecology of happiness itself is strongly influenced by this notion.). In fact, the very desire for this possibility seems to be at least one aspect that informs the protests of Occupy Wall Street.

Revolutionary zeal and even the image of the USA as the city on the hill, the beacon of civilization, don’t always fall into the complacency of thinking that this simply is, but drive people to…

“confront new realities … redefine ‘revolution’ for our times … [reveal] how hope and creativity are overcoming despair and decay within the most devastated urban communities … [create] alternative modes of work, politics, and human interaction that will collectively constitute the next American Revolution.” (From the blurb for Grace Lee Bogg’s “The Next American Revolution. Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century”)

Question is, which path the map for the American Dream will be made to follow.
More of the same, because it has worked out alright so far? Or new entrepreneurship, a New American Dream, and a shift in ways of life  that will open up future chances and move us (American and other) out of complacency and convenience, towards better lives?