And here we come, face to face, with one of the deeper problems of the USA; the pluralism of “Gods”. We have, as a nation, people and culture, few commonly shared “ultimate truths” to our lives as Americans; unless you consider MacDonald’s hamburgers, baseball, television news, sit-coms and malls, or “your god”, as anything but shallow secular substitutes for deeply shared experience, ideas and ultimate values. Indeed, though our dollars, secular government, civic ceremonies and occasions, do often state, in one generally acceptable way or other “In God We Trust”; this is all fine, only so long as we does not inquire too clearly, just what each of us, amongst our millions, understand by “God”. So we maintain, politely and politically, our generic “God”, to bless and guide the public occasions of our state and society. And while this is, perhaps, “a necessity of state”, it is hardly an adequate relation of a society to “God”.
There is a tremendous need, and call, for a renewal of “moral values” in the USA in our time. But to the degree that such values are founded in and sustained by religious belief in “God” or other, we shall hardly be able to simply reestablish common religious values; for we do not have a common religion — not to mention the large quantity of secular agnostics in our society. Social, civic, humanitarian “morality” is about the most that can be commonly preached to all, in this secular nation. But it is doubtful — to this author at least — that any such revival of civic virtue and morality, will ever be an adequate substitute for religious morality and injunction; and thus this shall remain a continuing problem for America. [30]
Americans, considered as a whole, are woefully ignorant of history, even their nation’s own. Government reports [31] have documented these lamentable conditions, which have long dismayed and pained those sensitive, educated souls here, who revere truth and knowledge, understanding and mind, art and culture. The majority of people seem, as if, “engulfed” in some more or less solipsistic “present”; one in which only their own immediate experience, time and perspective, have any real meaning and value to them. A problem — reconsidered — by the American educator Benjamin Ide Wheeler, in an article, almost a century old:
Socrates, in the Phaedo, compares the people of his day, who thought their world about the Ægean to be the whole, to ants and frogs about a marshy pool. The ants and the frogs we have ever with us. They are the antiquarians of Copenhagen to whom Danish history is the history of the world. They are the school committee men who insist that Kansas schools should teach only Kansas history and Kansas geography and Kansas weather. They are the political historians who make the world start afresh with the Declaration of Independence. They are the financial experts who ignore the existence of international values. They are the three wisemen of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl. All those who do not know that the experience of the race is one continuous whole, in which dates and boundaries are only guide-posts, and not barriers, are the ants and frogs of Socrates. Without life perspective and historical per-spective there can be no sound political judgement, — least of all in these days, when mighty world forces are twirling the millstones of the gods, and the garnerings of the ages are pouring into the hopper. [32]
Regrettably, in our time, it is not even possible to assume, that the “ants and frogs”, know of “Socrates”, [33] not to mention the Phaedo. If it is somewhat more understandable that some such “otherworldly idealist” — as common understanding imagines Plato to have been — is poorly known by our worldly populace; perhaps it is not too much to expect that they know, or learn, somewhat more of the “idealistic” history of that “American Dream” towards which they devote so much of their lives in achieving. For, surprising though it may be to many, the apparent primary source [34] in the twentieth-century, of this expression: “American Dream”, gives clear and challenging answers concerning the questions of the loss of a spiritual sense in society; the position of politics in relation to God; the decline and possible renewal of moral values. Yet the answers are not sought for in some great political or religious “father figure”, nor in some great utopian social scheme; they are not sought for in some shared “God”, or cosmology. The answers are sought elsewhere…
Of all that could be considered from American history (which seems so irrelevant to so many), let us consider this primary historical, literary source of the expression “American Dream”; and see, not only how well it is understood by us today, but also, what it says to and of our society.
The expression “American Dream” has, of course, many precursors and related conceptions — and not only in Western culture. The Puritans’ idea of a “citie on a hill” [35] is one such important earlier relative. But the particular expression, “American Dream”, seems to have received its current, formal literary and intellectual “solidity” — and wide publicity — from a work by the American historian James Truslow Adams [36], in 1931. In his The Epic of America — which was published in what turned out to be only an early year of the Great Depression — the expression was taken out of whatever general colloquial use it may have had before and during that time, and placed solidly into the terminology and vocabulary of America’s intellectual life. In the “Epilogue” to his examination of American history, Adams wrote:
If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has been also the American dream , that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth and position…
[30] Before this work is completed, it should become clearer to the understanding reader, how the truly disheartening and disturbing attrition of civic virtue, and religious morality, in our society, could — at least “in theory” — become counterbalanced by a living, spiritual inner and outer morality; present, at least, amongst our “best and brightest”.
It is the belief of this author, that this nation, founded secularly in the Enlightenment, must someday, unavoidably, overcome itself, and its own history — as must much of the “modern” world; if it is to remain a viable entity in the greater scale of time. Otherwise it shall atrophy and die; just as empires and cultures have done throughout human history. It is probably inevitable; though certainly not inviable.
Man can not live by bread alone. But some distant day must eventually reveal Mankind’s religious childhood and passivity, surpassed by a spiritual maturity and activity. The secular modern world must someday be surpassed, even if that is only through some grand catastrophe of Death.
[31] Numerous government reports on fields of knowledge such as history, literature, English language, geography, mathematics, science, et al., have — especially during 1989 — documented these meagre conditions.
[32] Benjamin Ide Wheeler, “The Old World in the New”, in
[33] During the time when the author was completing this portion of the essay, on the occasion of a trip to a University of California bookstore, to purchase a copy of Sophocles’
[34] It is perhaps impossible to determine the precise origin of the expression “American Dream”. Standard reference works suggest — often without citations — that it was (probably) used by the “Founding Fathers” of the United States republic. Others suggest its presence or precursors in Tocqueville. However that may be, it seems true to say that the expression was introduced, in the twentieth century, into the realm of broad public and intellectual discourse — with the meaning it more or less clearly bears today — by its use in a work by the historian James Truslow Adams (for which see main text below).
There are, and have been, of course, many differing views and interpretations of the idea and meaning of the “American Dream”. From the pre-Columbian search for the westward-laying mythical islands of Antillia, to the modern cry for social injustice for “inner city” dwellers (as to their disadvantage in relation to approaching the realization of the American Dream), the image of a better, richer world has had many and great differences of understanding and interpretation. As James Truslow Adams himself wrote: “That dream was not the product of a solitary thinker. It evolved from the hearts and burdened souls of many millions, who have come to us from all nations.” Cf.
Some may dispute that it is “fair” — considering the grand pluralism of the United States of America — to focus on one man’s conception of the “American Dream” — even if this individual does seem to have pivotally helped to place this expression into the collective discourse of America. It is the opinion of this author, however, that the actual contents of Adams’ thought — in relation to his “launching” of this phrase — is essential, pivotal, provocative, and necessary, for any broad-minded and deeper evaluation and understanding of the position and presence of the idea of the “American Dream” in relation to the spiritual and cultural history of the United States of America.
Even if it is impossible to say for certain, that James Truslow Adams placed this phrase before the American psyche and culture. His indisputable contribution to the idea (and use) of “American Dream”, touches, with such kinship, the deeper questions and queries as to the nature of Man in Western history, that it is important, for this reason alone, to seriously consider his thought concerning the “Dream”.
The “American Dream” is a widely-pursued conception — in the United States’ civilization — of the best, ideal life for mankind; and, in this regard, it can only be truly recognized and understood in relation to the deeper questions as to the nature, history, life and aspirations of Mankind — especially in regard to the spiritual and cultural history of Occidental Man.
[35] The biblical imagery of a “city on a hill” comes from Matthew 5:14. It was used by the Puritans. John Winthrop, Jr. wrote in 1630: “Men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must consider that we shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are upon us.” [Cf., for example, Page Smith’s