The American Dream You are Chasing is a Hoax

by Guillermo Vidal | Dec 5, 2018 | Uncategorized

From the moment you were born, the surrounding people — parents, siblings, teachers, extended family — have been helping to mold you into a member of society. This is not a bad thing, for had our ancestors from the Stone Age not formed societies, our species would not have survived. These early efforts proved that the good of the whole was greater than the sum of the good of individual parts.

Today, our American Dream no longer seems to support the good of the many, it is more aligned with “what is in it for me”. From early on, our mentors have taught us to strive to meet standards that say we are adequate, we are successful. This starts with our parents, who gave us rules, i.e., how to be a good boy/girl, to clean our rooms and eat our vegetables. They corrected us when we failed to fulfill those expectations.

They sent us off to a school where teachers taught us many subjects, graded us and compared us to others to determine if we were superior or mediocre. We learned to make friends and joined a peer group of people who shared our interests. Adults celebrated our winning, but not our failing.

In high school we were told to a get and education that would get us a good job so we could buy a nice home and car. With these things in hand, they…