The Great American Dream
Capitalism is a great slave, but a pathetic master.This truth unfortunately gets lost in our chase of that elusive dream, especially in America, the land that has been marketed as land of dreams,“The Great American Dream”.It’s the dream of being independent masters of our lives, the dream of making big bucks and the dream of being happy even if that happiness is being bought by money which all of them chase out there. No doubt, the U.S, on its part has been
fairly successful in creating material comforts aplenty.It has upped the living standard of it’s average citizen to an extent that it stands amongst the highest, even if that is a result of more than 200 years of unbridled growth and exploitation.
I have constantly reffered America as a Shop on various occasions, the shop window of Americanism looks lucidly attractive, you have got all of them standing there from Bill Gates to Micheal Dell, from Tommy Hilfiger to Ralph Laurens. And that is what has made the rest of the world mindlessly chase Americanism. All because the shop window looks impressive and it has been marketed very well. But a deep look inside the shop tells a different story , a different world lies behind the designer clothes and designer dreams, a world that is not quite visible to the starry eyed millions for whom the American way of life seems to be the ultimate dream because this side of truth about American Society , unfortunately hasn’t found marketers.
Thus we have Indian Girls having their dream to get married to an NRI, preferably settled in the US, and Indian Middle Class fathers dreaming of their sons reaching the Bay Area and landing tech jobs, unmindful of the second-class life they end up leading in U.S . What goes unseen and almost unheard is that America also happens to be the land that is right amongst the top in terms of the number of divorces per thousand, the number of single parent families per
thousand, the number of old people living in Old Age homes, the number of Rapes per million, the number of suicides and homicides, and also the number of School/College Shootouts.
And why not! After all, in a society where “what you are” is equal to “what you have” plus “what you consume”, the only way to achieve is to have and consume more(That is why people call U.S a Consumerist Society ,and it’s culture, Consumerism), and therefore constantly driven towards higher profits and materialism . Expectedly , this materialism comes at a cost that the world is paying today.The interesting fact about material things is that they only give a illusion of happiness; and even such happiness is momentary in nature. For example- You
will feel that you are the most happiest person in this world after buying a sports Car, and just a few days later, that very possession will cease yoy happiness, because you are already thinking of a bigger Car.While you chase the bigger car to become larger than life in order to be happier, for this you can perhaps neglect those elements which have got the maximum power to make you happy like family , emotions, Values, Love. Prolonged abstinence in employing emotions finally destroys them; and you don’t even realise that when you become a dry-eyed moron ( Yes! America also happens to be the land which has got the maximum number of dry-eyed people).
fairly successful in creating material comforts aplenty.It has upped the living standard of it’s average citizen to an extent that it stands amongst the highest, even if that is a result of more than 200 years of unbridled growth and exploitation.
I have constantly reffered America as a Shop on various occasions, the shop window of Americanism looks lucidly attractive, you have got all of them standing there from Bill Gates to Micheal Dell, from Tommy Hilfiger to Ralph Laurens. And that is what has made the rest of the world mindlessly chase Americanism. All because the shop window looks impressive and it has been marketed very well. But a deep look inside the shop tells a different story , a different world lies behind the designer clothes and designer dreams, a world that is not quite visible to the starry eyed millions for whom the American way of life seems to be the ultimate dream because this side of truth about American Society , unfortunately hasn’t found marketers.
Thus we have Indian Girls having their dream to get married to an NRI, preferably settled in the US, and Indian Middle Class fathers dreaming of their sons reaching the Bay Area and landing tech jobs, unmindful of the second-class life they end up leading in U.S . What goes unseen and almost unheard is that America also happens to be the land that is right amongst the top in terms of the number of divorces per thousand, the number of single parent families per
thousand, the number of old people living in Old Age homes, the number of Rapes per million, the number of suicides and homicides, and also the number of School/College Shootouts.
And why not! After all, in a society where “what you are” is equal to “what you have” plus “what you consume”, the only way to achieve is to have and consume more(That is why people call U.S a Consumerist Society ,and it’s culture, Consumerism), and therefore constantly driven towards higher profits and materialism . Expectedly , this materialism comes at a cost that the world is paying today.The interesting fact about material things is that they only give a illusion of happiness; and even such happiness is momentary in nature. For example- You
will feel that you are the most happiest person in this world after buying a sports Car, and just a few days later, that very possession will cease yoy happiness, because you are already thinking of a bigger Car.While you chase the bigger car to become larger than life in order to be happier, for this you can perhaps neglect those elements which have got the maximum power to make you happy like family , emotions, Values, Love. Prolonged abstinence in employing emotions finally destroys them; and you don’t even realise that when you become a dry-eyed moron ( Yes! America also happens to be the land which has got the maximum number of dry-eyed people).
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