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American popular culture
has lost sight of the truly valuable, although ordinary,
experiences that life has to offer.
Too much emphasis has been placed on the
acquisition of
material possessions.
The items of
true value,
friendly conversation, time spent with
family, enjoying the summer
breeze, watching the birds feed and preen
have been relegated to a subordinate position.
The
Industrial Revolution in America was the
motivating factor in the
corruption of the American Dream.
During this time, sometimes referred to as the
Golden Age of the Entrepreneur, Horatio Alger wrote rags to
riches novels. In Horatio Alger's
novels a pauper, through studious labor,
always became a rich tycoon.
The
prevalent philosophy today is a
corrupted form of social Darwinism
which preaches that survival of the
fittest in the economic terms of
acquisition,
control and manipulation of
resources - the mark of the successful
pursuit of the American
Dream.
There are modern
reasons as well as the
historical reasons for Americans
to
elevate the
acquisition of
possessions to such a lofty plateau.
A major one of these is the advertising
industry.
Americans are constantly and consistently
bombarded by advertisements pushing a
menagerie of products.
Most
play upon the
individuals
sense of self worth.
The individual invariably
compares his or herself to the flashy,
successful, adventurous or lovable characters portrayed. Explicitly implied is
the idea that once one becomes the owner or
user of certain advertised commercial
products one's social status will be elevated to a position above the
current one. These new users will become as the
individual portrayed -
attractive, smart and sophisticated.
Much of what Americans purchase are
called "positional goods" - objects whose value is measured in relation to the
purchases of other individuals within the same social cultural niche.
" We would all be better off if we decided
collectively to rachet down the economic one-upmanship and instead devote more
time and resources to the leisure goods we claim to desire." - Ezra
Klein When individuals
become trapped in the hamster wheel of ever increasing
desire to be seen as the
actors they attempt to emulate
and even though these characters are
fictitious there is a fine line between
reality and fantasy which can be and is bridged in the
subconscious mind. (see thoughtimage)
This "bridging" allows an
individual to swallow
wholeheartedly the deception that
happiness can be found and
dreams fulfilled through the continual
willy-nilly purchases of the objects
they have been taught to desire.
In
American popular culture
a man's worth is judged by his possessions and his ability to
manipulate resources.
The
American Dream
has been corrupted into a
dream in which an
individual
achieves great
power and wealth
and the means in which this is done is unimportant.
"What
America really needs is a
policy vision
which sparks community building and cooperation among its
citizens rather than instructing them to
simply spend their way into the
American Dream.
What Americans don't
realize is in so many ways
it is in their self interest to
work in cooperation." - Mark Winston Grifith
"Studies show that
happiness rises with incomes - up to the
point at which basic needs are met, after which it stagnates as aspirations
also rise with income. Nobel Prize-winning
economist and
psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls this a "hedonic treadmill." Like the
proverbial rats, we run faster and faster - and so do our aspirations - but the
bottom line is the old cliche: Money can't
buy happiness." - Andrew L. Yarrow
"It may be too late for this year, but next year
the malls and stores can put up their real
symbol of the season and
Jews and Christians alike will be able to get behind it: a
12-foot gilded dollar sign, decorated with credit cards and shopping bags." -
Marta Goldstein
"What is the chief end of man? - to get
rich. In what way? - dishonestly if we can;
honestly if we must. Who is god, the one only and true?
Money is god.
God and Greenbacks
and Stock - father, son, and the ghost of same -
three persons in one; these are the true and only god,
mighty and supreme." - Mark
Twain"Wait a minute - you're going to help firefighters and
police to attain the American
dream while some of us can only
dream! Let's see, we help
school teachers, we help
welfare mothers (Section 8) and now we want to
help firefighters and police who already
make a good salary. There's a group of us who are just under the "middle class" who get no help at all.
Am I jealous? You're damn right I am." - Charles Martin
"A survey for the New York Times in 2005 found that 80 percent
of those polled believed that it was possible
to start out poor, work hard and become
rich, compared with less than 60 percent back in
1983.
By international
standards, America has an unusually low level
of intergenerational mobility: our parents' income is highly predictive of our
incomes as adults.
Intergenerational mobility in
America is lower than in France, Germany,
Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark.
Among high-income countries
for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a
lower rate of mobility than America.
The intergenerational findings paint a portrait of a
society in which family background matters a great deal.
For the middle
class, an increase in income volatility has led to an increase in the
frequency of
large negative income shocks, which
may be expected to translate to an
increase in financial distress.
Despite solid growth in GDP,
household short-term income mobility at
the median in 2003-04 was no more favorable than in the recession years of
1990-91. The recent economic
expansion has generated tepid growth in median
household income, and a considerable
increase in the risk of major income losses
from year to year.
Today's record levels of both secured and unsecured
debt mean income
losses may have lasting effects on finances.
Both large upward and large downward movements have become more
frequent, and it is coherent to argue
that this combination produces greater insecurity compared with a more stable
economic environment.
This may be evidence
of a fundamental shift in the
relation between economic growth and economic security, as may be the finding that even
those who work overtime on a consistent basis no
longer appear to be able to generate much upward mobility for their
families." - Tom Hertz, American University
In 2001 married couples were twice as likely to file for bankruptcy or
more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure than childless couples or single
adults.
To most families in
America today a second income is not a luxury
but a necessity.
Because it takes two incomes to
survive, financial shocks such as the
involuntary loss of a job or a health crisis,
are much more likely to devastate the family.
In America today over 30% of marriages
end within the first 10 years.
Working Americans are now being
forced to chose between
economic security or getting
married and having children.
"This debunks the myth
of America as the land of
opportunity, but it doesn't tell us
what to do to fix it." - Bhashkar Mazumder, senior
economist Federal
Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
See Social Control
See American aristocracy
See
The Subversion of American Democracy |
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This website defines a new religious
ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification
of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern
propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an
international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt
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international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The
international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking
system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military complex of America and is
responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior
and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation.
Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.
American social mores
and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt
international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the
ability to deceive the populace in general through mass media by pressing
emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through
prior mass media psychological operations. The results have been the
destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not
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