“We cannot become a great democracy by giving ourselves up as individuals to selfishness, physical comfort, and cheap amusements.” It is a question, says Adams essentially, as to what is a worthy, noble life, for the individual (as a human being) and society of the United States of America; and what are the higher values by which a society may live and thrive, and how are they to be determined. The answer to these questions, Adams answers so:
If we are to make the dream come true we must all work together, no longer to build bigger, but to build better. There is a time for quantity and a time for quality. There is a time when quantity may become a menace and the law of diminishing returns begins to operate, but not so with quality. By working together I so not mean another organization, of which the land is as full as was Kansas of grasshoppers. I mean a genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life. [45]
A “genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life”. So that it is to the individual human being, and their striving, towards which Adams looks to determine the true and important values in life, and how the “American Dream” is to be realized. “If the American dream is to be a reality” we must strive as individuals for a higher “communal spiritual and intellectual life”. He states further:
I have little trust in the wise paternalism of politicians or the infinite wisdom of business leaders. We can look neither to the government nor to the heads of the great corporations to guide us into the paths of a satisfying and humane existence as a great nation unless we, as multitudinous individuals, develop some greatness in our own individual souls. Until countless men and women have decided in their own hearts, through experience and perhaps disillusion, what is a genuinely satisfying life, a “good life” in the old Greek sense, we need look to neither political nor business leaders…So long as we are ourselves content with a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions, it is absurd to think that the men who can utilize that public attitude for the gaining of infinite wealth and power for themselves will abandon both to become spiritual leaders of a democracy that despises spiritual things. Just so long as wealth and power are our sole badges of success, so long will ambitious men strive to attain them. [46]
This entire quote merits long and thoughtful consideration.
It is important to note, that, after Adams rejects leaders in politics and business, he does not then look towards some great religious figure, nor to any ready, utopian ideology of any sort; in order to help us to determine what is a “genuinely satisfying life, a ‘good life’ in the old Greek sense,…” He looks, rather, to the individual human being: the simple human being, who must search and strive to discern the better and richer life, and who must participate in raising “our communal spiritual and intellectual life”. The individual human being, who, in multitudes, must “develop some greatness in… [their] own individual souls”. This is the actual core idea, the spiritual core of the idea of the “American Dream” — by that person who helped definitively place the expression before American mind, and solidly into the language of the American people. It is a call, to the “simple human being” as such; that they develop “to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable”. And it is the fully developed human being, which, in multitudes, must seek to determine, “through experience and perhaps disillusion”, what is to be the “good life” in America.
We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal round. The alternative is the failure of self-government, the failure of the common man to rise to full stature, the failure of all that the American dream has held of hope and promise for mankind. [47]
Here Adams’ conception verges on a secular “religious vision” for America, and of the simple human being in America. His thought is not so much a description, as a call, an injunction, a summons to human beings in America. Hence, per Adams, the idea and realization of the “American Dream”, is inextricably involved with the lives of individual human beings-and with their own inner lives; their own spiritual lives and striving.
This is all quite far away from the general description of the current popular image of the ideal realization of the “American Dream” which we presented above [48]. Whatever else might be said, the predominate, contemporary image of the ideal, successful life, and the ideal of the individual, here in America, is not that of some wise, learned sage. It is not the cultured, self-educated man or woman of letters and mind, soul and spirit, towards which our society aspires and labors, towards which it gives reverence and praise, and around which ù orients itself. It tends rather more to so view financially wealthy individuals, with “megabucks”, a grand estate(s), material plenty and a glamorous [49] lifestyle. This “rich” individual, is more the “role model”, the pinnacle of “success”, for our society; die ideal is certainly not some gadfly sage, or Holy man.
Certainly, there are those for whom die first portrayed image of the achievement of the “American Dream” would not be considered full or complete, as to their conception of it [50]. However, it is certain that few Americans are well-aware of the literary origin — or its actual content — of that dream about which so many talk, and towards which so many labor.
The term “American Dream” is certainly one of the more familiar and common expressions in use m America, which attempt to describe our life and society, at its best So that it is quite unfortunate — but very revealing -, that it is truthfully and well understood by so few. It is more than safe to say, that very few, if queried, would accurately imagine the original literary content, and injunction, which I have here recounted. The material aspect of the American Dream is well known, but not so…the spiritual call in the American Dream.
As Adams gave voice to it, the “American Dream” will not come true “unless we, as multitudinous individuals, develop some greatness in our own individual sorts.” As he saw it, that which America “held of hope and promise for mankind”, depends on multitudinous individuals, who are willing to travel the “long and arduous road”, to ‘develop some greatness in their own individual souls’.
[45] James Truslow Adams,
[46]
[47] James Truslow Adams,
[48] See the first paragraph to “The Spiritual Call in the American Dream”.
[49] Strange though it may seem, it is more that fair to say, that “glamour” is an unrecognized external form of degraded magic. Consider its etymology:
A documentary on American-British relations indicated, unintentionally, a part of the story of “glamour”, by describing how the image of women being (physically) “glamorous” was transferred — with no conscious malintent, surely — from America to war-recovering Britain in the early 1920’s. One certainly does not need, in the twentieth century, to be “learned”, to be “glamorous”; but “glamour” certainly has a kind of power!
If a “vertical” conception of the human being is true, then it is more that a little interesting, and revealing, to consider that “glamour” — in a woman — has to do, not with an inner presence and power (not to mention purity); but rather, with an external, physical one. It is, one might say, the “grammarye” of physical, bodily attraction! And in this, it is probably kin to that power which the bewitched Kundry had over Amfortas in the stories of the Grail. The western “beauty pageant” has been recently introduced into Russia.
[50] Certainly there are people who recognize, that the American Dream realized, means more or other than “material plenty” (“a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions,” Adams). But however much efforts towards the artistic, the cultured, etc., are pursued in our society; they are seldom pursued, as some crucial element and necessity of human nature, or with the idea that they are the exemplar around which our culture should orient itself.
Even if I had not used the content of the idea of the “American Dream” in this work, to call into question the reigning impulse, direction and goal of American life; the history and reality of America, its culture, life, character and people, would need, in any case, be viewed in the large historical context of the entire spiritual history of Western Man, in order to be evaluated in the deepest and broadest ways.