It seems to me the real American Dream is not measured solely by money, it’s more a measure of the freedom to Start Over.
The conventional definition of The American Dream is anyone can achieve middle-class security if they work hard, work smart, persevere and are frugal / prudent / save and invest a healthy chunk of their earnings.
I don’t consider it demeaning to call this ordinary success: the whole point of The American Dream is that ordinary people can achieve middle-class security through their own efforts.
For some, The American Dream is to achieve extraordinary success of the sort reserved for the few: fame and fortune.
What struck me about the early 1800s was the great mobility of the non-slave populace in an era where roads were mostly muddy tracks and travel was slow and arduous. Americans were constantly on the move seeking better opportunities elsewhere, buying and selling farmland, starting home-based enterprises, finding a different employer or kind of work and so on, often far from their previous home base.
Being on the make / enrepreneurial was part and parcel of American culture, and this has continued in varying ways to the present.
European visitors to America in the early 1800s commented on how every conversation soon turned to making money. Though Charles Dickens observed many positive traits in American culture, he also noted this obsession with obtaining material wealth:
“All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars.”
“Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars.”
This latter quote expresses the reductionist quality of the conventional conception of The American Dream: how to make more money?
There is of course an element of human nature in this desire, which Alexis de Tocqueville described: “Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.” How do we increase our comfort? By making more money.
But de Tocqueville too observed Americans’ obsession with increasing their material wealth:
“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”
Herman Melville’s under-appreciated 1857 novel The Confidence-Man explores the porous border between entrepreneurial endeavors and perpetrating a con.
I explored this fascinating portrayal of Americans on the make in a blog post: The Con in Confidence (October 4, 2006).
Mobility is not just of value to the individual conception of The American Dream, it’s also a key dynamic in the economy, which depends on the mobility of the workforce to move locales and careers to increase productivity.
The book mentioned in last week’s Musings Report, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Appelbaum, discusses how the financialization of housing has reduced household’s ability to move even if opportunities await them elsewhere.
This chart from the US Census Bureau shows the peak of mobility was between 1985 and 1999, and has since declined significantly.
It seems to me the real American Dream is not measured solely by money, it’s more a measure of the freedom to Start Over, to make a fresh start, to take an opportunity, pull up stakes and move to another locale, another profession, another circle of contacts and friends and another mode of living. This has both material and internal qualities worth exploring.
The material qualities boil down to the liberty of mobility in place and priority. We can physically move, or move careers without physically moving, or we can make travel–constant mobility–our priority. Moving has its costs–often high in money and sacrifices–but stripped down to the basics–a suitcase and a few boxes– the majority of people have access to Starting Over.
Any move has risk, and we have to accept risk as the nature of change. As I’ve noted in blog posts, The Chinese characters for the English word crisis are famously–and incorrectly–translated as danger and opportunity. The more accurate translation is precarious plus critical juncture or inflection point.
Many of us only embrace Starting Over when we have no other options left. Many people Start Over after they’ve been wiped out financially by bankruptcy, divorce, illness, etc.
The internal quality of Starting Over is an manifestation of self-expression and the pursuit of happiness: we seek to Start Over to leave dead-end jobs and situations for an opportunity to find some way of living / livelihood that’s a more fulfilling match for who we are and what we want to do with our lives.
This may not generate more productivity in the economy when measured in money, but it certainly enhances the productivity of the individual.
The other manifestation of The American Dream is to retire early and escape the drudgery of work via assembling enough wealth to generate an income without doing paid work. This dream-goal is the source of the FIRE meme: financial independence, retire early.
The question then becomes: what do we do with this leisure? Some people make travel their new “job,” basically replacing work goals with travels goals (visiting 50 countries, etc.). Others do work that they enjoy but that doesn’t generate an income.
Others discover that a life without work is boring and dissatisfying, as leisure / vacations only have value as breaks in a purposeful life. Endless vacations are not a replacement for a purposeful life, and some who have the financial means to never work again go back to work for this reason.
The desirability of FIRE reflects not just the high demands made on workers but also the prevalence of work that isn’t fulfilling, i.e. lacking in meaning, what author David Graeber called BS work–jobs that serve a role in the economy but are detached from sources of meaning.
It seems to me that meaningful work is a core feature of The American Dream and Starting Over: yes, we want to increase our wealth and comfort, but we also want to increase the quality of our lives in the non-material realms of work, meaning and purpose.
This is why I subtitled my book A Radically Beneficial World “The Future Belongs to Work That Is Meaningful,” as meaningful work has an irreplaceable role in our life satisfaction.
There is another source of “wealth” in Starting Over–the value in having a variety of life experiences, including those that may not lead to financial success. I often ponder the gulf between the experiences of those who stayed in each place that I left and my own experiences, which generally featured financial disappointments or failure but a fortune in unique experiences.
In terms of experience, I’ve piled up a kind of wealth I wouldn’t trade for money, even if that were possible, just as I wouldn’t trade my mobility or opportunities to Start Over for money, or control of my enterprises for money. Each of these is priceless in ways that we cannot measure in money.
My recent books:
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The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF)
Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF)
The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF)
When You Can’t Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF)
Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF).
A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
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The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free
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