This week, I have been spending way too much time on the New York Times' website. A daily series of articles by Errol Morris, along with an article on law school grade inflation, have been the most persistent to capture my imagination.
So I let Errol Morris' idea of social anosognosia ["Can a group of people, perhaps even society at large, devolve into a state of destructive cluelessness?"] percolate thru my dreams last night, and this blog post is the result of where that went.
Yesterday I had recalled a post on my blog titled "on mass delusion," which held one worthy idea: that if we can construe society as an addict, then it's not much of a stretch to construe society as the drug itself.
That post was based on Mark P. Line's post regarding ideology as a contagion, and a constellation of beliefs. Re-reading his post yesterday started me thinking about the ideology of the American Dream and what it really represents.
So what is this American Dream? Well, at its most surface level, it's a market-friendly tag line. "American Dream" is far easier to remember (and certainly more positive-sounding) than an awkward portmanteau like "social anosognosia."
You can find clues to its meaning within the lyrics of certain pop songs, since the best of those (like fairy tales) tend to be mirrors of mass consciousness -- e.g., "a better way of life" (Rhythm Nation 1814, Janet Jackson).
So what are the components of this better way of life?
Mostly they cluster around Maslow Level 4 concerns ("thwarting of needs is usually a cause of stress, and is particularly so at level 4"). Thus we're back to aspirational self as a source of stress (edginess). And an organism (or swarm) under sufficient stress tends to reorganize itself at a higher degree of functionality, if entropy doesn't TKO it.
As Leane Roffey Line explains, there are three options: breakthru, death, or stagnation (a kind of living death).
One component of the American Dream is higher learning. We have believed until now that an advanced education was a likely ticket to success. ("Success" vis a vis the American Dream is a whole other discussion.) This delusion is beginning to shred at the seams, as this week's New York Times article on law school grade inflation points out. As evidenced by the Comments section, here are too many boys pointing at the emperor's naked body, too many Princesses calling Rumpelstiltskin who he is.
In short, there just aren't the jobs to support the delusion. Legal grunt work gets outsourced to India; end of discussion.
Life is a balancing act and a moving feast. Not only do we have our own progress to track and maintain, but the very ideology that supports it is constantly changing.
Thus it serves us well to remember that career is a path, not a destination.
Yet waking up is hard to do -- and, as with career, it's a process. Once the scales fall from your eyes, what do you do? Where do you go? Most of us really can't face the truth about our pathetic condition, and thus the past becomes a good buy rather than just a good-bye.
So, whether the Tea Party movement is grassroots or astroturf, its rise may betray an effort to evolve to higher ground. Resistance can be strongest just before the levee breaks.
Wishing you a beautiful day,
Bill Brent
[this page last updated: 2010.06.24, 7:05 p.m. Hawaii time]
