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Page 1 of 17 Chapter 8 of BirthQuake
THE AMERICAN DREAM
"Those whose hope is weak settle for comfort or for violence." Erich Fromm
According to Tom Atlee, the American dream has become a vision of happiness based on the ability to purchase and consume more of everything. The expectation is that by attempting to provide individuals with equal opportunities to compete for material wealth, we in turn offer greater prosperity for everyone. We've been told that the more we buy - the more our economy grows, and the healthier our country becomes. Atlee points out however, that it simply doesn't work that way. Why? According to Atlee, it's because: (1) this logic requires unlimited supplies which results in the exploitation of nature and her people, (2) it becomes necessary to have more and more space into which we can put all of the materials that we no longer want and (3) the dream doesn't acknowledge the inescapable fact that there are natural and absolute limits.
Someone said that an apt metaphor for America today is that of addiction. Like any addict, in spite of the staggering evidence warning us that our behaviors are potentially deadly to the life systems supporting us, most of us remain in denial. A number of professionals maintain that addiction is connected to spiritual alienation and that our compulsions are the result of spiritual starvation. Both William James and Carl Jung proposed that there exists a spiritual force within each of us that must not be ignored. When the voice of this force is silenced, the result is often dis-ease.
In an article for the Earthways Institute, entitled, "Living Well, Living Deeply," Bruce Elkin wrote of moving to the city to teach, after having lived close to nature in a community of like-minded individuals. Cut off from his support system, and doing work that failed to offer the emotional and spiritual rewards of his previous position, he found himself returning from work, discouraged, tired, and frustrated. As his satisfaction with his work and life style decreased, his consumption increased. He found himself turning more often to the pleasures he purchased, versus those he created. While he continued to assert that he valued simple and ecologically sustainable living, (a lifestyle he'd fully embraced previously) his behavior grew further and further away from reflecting his beliefs. He concluded that participating in a community that honored his values, and engaging in work that offered meaning, provided the necessary structure and practice required for maintaining the behaviors he most wanted to engage in.
What structure and community do most Americans possess that supports a lifestyle that can ultimately sustain us and feed our hungry souls? We're disillusioned with many of our leaders, a majority of our jobs offer little personal satisfaction and no spiritual rewards, and we're so hemmed in by the numerous distractions and demands of our lives, that our primary escape from it all has become acquisition, certain substances, and tele-vision.
Jerry Mander, author of "In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations," spent several years in commercial advertising before becoming disillusioned, and committing his significant wisdom and experience to working with public interest groups. During an interview with Catherine Ingram in, "The Sun," Mander shared his concerns regarding the abuse and misuse of many of our technologies stating:
"These technologies do act as drugs. They are what a society offers to make up for what has been lost. In return for family, community, a relationship to a larger, deeper vision, society offers television, drugs, food, noise, high speed, and unconsciousness. Not only are those the things that are available, but those are the things that keep you from knowing that there's anything else available. It's easy to see why people go for those things and why they become addicted to them, because each one offers some element of satisfaction. Watching television, for instance, keeps you from thinking about other things . . .It tells you a little bit about what seems to be happening in the world, although it discourages any relationship you might have to it. Now if you're asking me how we might change that pattern, I can only say that you have to create alternative visions; you have to get people to experience what they've lost."
Duane Elgin in a report to the Fetzer Institute reported that 98% of all homes in America have televisions further, more households have televisions then own indoor toilets, stoves, or refrigerators. Elgin warns:
"there may be no more dangerous challenge to our future than the hypnosis of commercial television which trivializes the human experiment and distracts humanity from our larger potentials. By programming television for commercial success, we are programming the mindset of entire civilizations - for evolutionary stagnation and ecological failure."
Lewis Lapham, heir to an oil fortune, has been asking people all over the country how much money they think they would need to be happy. Lapham observed:
"No matter what their income, a depressing number of Americans believe that if only they had twice as much, they would inherit the estate of happiness promised them in the Declaration of Independence. The man who receives $15,000 a year is sure that he could relieve his sorrow if he had only $30,000 a year; the man with $1 million a year knows that all would be well if he had $2 million a year . . . Nobody ever has enough."
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