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> A considerable amount has been written by the european experience of america and an almost ubquitious theme in the accounts is "the feeling of unlimited possi
by dap 13y ago
> A considerable amount has been written by the european experience of america and an almost ubquitious theme in the accounts is "the feeling of unlimited possibility", an ostentatiousness and pre-occupation with wealth, etc.
You say "etc." there like those two things are related in some way and a reader could figure out how to extrapolate. Surely the feeling of unlimited possibility does not entail ostentatiousness and preoccupation with wealth? They're just two things that you ascribe to Americans without much argument.
The "American Dream" is an idea about the distribution of money in a society, not about money itself. If it were just about money, lottery winners would be considered realizations of the American Dream. If it were even about success in business, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies would be heroes in American society. (From political debates to popular media, they're decidedly not.) If there were some government policy by which all Americans could be made filthy rich (ignoring the intrinsic impossibility of that), I don't think anyone would consider that a realization of the American Dream either. The dream assumes that money is a central value in society, of course, but maybe that's because things like inner peace, being a good person, and deeper notions of happiness haven't historically been explicitly constrained in so many human societies the way the ability to accumulate money has.
Out of curiosity: if Americans are prototypically self-motivated and desire to make money, push the frontier, explore, and invent, and that Europeans don't (as a culture) dream of those things, do Europeans have widely shared dreams? What are they?
- tripzilch 13y ago> Out of curiosity: if Americans are prototypically self-motivated and desire to make money, push the frontier, explore, and invent, and that Europeans don't (as a culture) dream of those things, do Europeans have widely shared dreams? What are they? There aren't any. "Europeans as a culture" simply does not exist. It's just a bunch of very different countries with very different cultures that decided to make a union. The only difference I've found that holds between the USA and the whole of Europe[0] is that our price-labels all list the price after taxes. I found that quite weird. But they all get to have some unique quirks, so otherwise your culture is very recognizable in the sense that it might as well be another EU country :P [0] someone is bound to correct me on this, I haven't been to all of the EU countries.