The Myth of the American Dream

Everyone can be rich if they only try.

A meme is an unstated belief that is so deeply buried we don’t even know we believe it. One myth or urban legend I have slowly come to notice is the meme of the American Dream; if we would each just pull ourselves up by our boot straps and work really hard for a long enough time we can all be as rich as we want to and never have to get our hands dirty again. We are taught to loath ourselves if we have not attained a lifestyle of conscious consumption.

It is an unspoken meme; a subconscious belief that we are taught with every nuance of our culture from the moment of birth.

You know that the pursuit of happiness has been a success when you have a yacht or two in your private lake and all the giant mansions, fancy cars and material possessions you want. You know you are a success when you have several trophy wives hanging out at your pool because , yes you must also be male to have the American Dream. We are taught to desire this and to be unhappy with anything less than living this wasteful, selfish life style promoted by just about every TV show, commercial and popular song of today. Every American person every Chinese person and every other person in between is supposed to somehow work toward this materialistic dream of success all alone, without any help by competing against all 6 billion, (soon to be eight billion) other humans on the planet.

The meme goes:

...that if we are not in the upper classes it is no one else’s fault but our own. The reason we are not rich is because we are lazy or not very smart or simply a bad person deep down. We each dream of being the one on top while the masses below us muddle along; waiting on us hand and foot, growing the food, building the mansions, and digging the raw materials out of a wasted and bleeding earth. How can this American Dream possibly happen for each and every human being on the planet? It is like the most insane multilevel business scheme ever invented and the entire population of human beings on planet earth is trying to sell this inane empty goal to itself.

The reality is that very few people can live the wasteful material life of yachts and mansions. If we all lived like this the natural resources would be used up shortly. Even if we did have unlimited free non-polluting energy sources and robots to wait on us hand and foot, growing all the food and suck all the raw materials out of planet earth; this type of conspicuous consumption would be too taxing on our planet.

We are chasing a pipe dream, working our butts off and hating ourselves for something that does not even make the rich folks happy when they do get it and that we cannot all have because it is not ecologically feasible.

What we can have is so much more than the American Dream

What we can have is something so much better than yachts and mansions. We can walk away from meaningless jobs and focus on creating a new economy based on the actually needs of the humans and animals and plants on the planet.

We can all have fresh locally grown food and lives of simplicity and leisure just like humans have always done until very recently. Before the industrial revolution everyone ate fresh locally grown food because that was all there was. About ten to twenty thousand years ago, way before the industrial revolution, way before the invention of money, private landownership and totalitarian agricultural practices that rape the earth and each and turn each and everyone of us into slaves; everyone lived on the land and foraged freely. We can’t go back to free foraging for all at the moment but by using permaculture principles to stop wasting our resources we can use our technological knowledge to grow local foods and recycle resources so that each of us needs only do chores for an hour or two a day and enjoy the rest of our time with each other.

What is permaculture?

Permaculture is an old idea with a new name. Permanent-Culture or Permanent -Agriculture is the idea of sustainability . The term was first coined in the 1960’s by Austiran farmer Sepp Halzer and as limited to ecological land use. Austrailian scientists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren expanded the term to cover any and all systems. Permaculture is a fancy word for keeping what you use on a daily basis close to by and wasting nothing just like grandma did in her kitchen garden. By mimicking natural systems one can devise a permaculture system for any business or activity. There Permaculture means intelligent, elegant use of all your resources and intelligence in a way that create more than the sum of the parts without producing any harmful substances in the process. In a permaculture system nothing gets wasted or thrown away and it all works together just like nature always has. Today there are literally thousands of institutions and businesses using these principles and teaching them all over the world with outstanding results.

Picture green houses full of tropical fruits and local greens instead of shopping malls full of crap that does not make us happy. Picture every empty lot, every yard and every field that belts your city filled with delicious self-sustaining food forests. Picture the energy and resources we are wasting right now clear cutting rain forests millions of miles away to grow beef that clogs our arteries being used for clean local foods for each community. Picture the wasted energy; human power and resources spent growing fields of high fructose corn syrup crops going toward fresh healthy food instead. These are examples of how you could use permaculture principles.

Picture walking away from your rat-race job or designing a new job for yourself that works for you and for the environment you live in and does not harm or exploit other humans. Picture eating a meal without the aching certainty that someone had to do stoop labor for low pay in order to feed you. Picture being able to eat a meal without the aching certainty that natural systems thousands of miles a way was destroyed in order for you to eat. These are examples of how you could use permaculture principles.

Picture 6 billion (or 8 billion if it comes to that!) slim, happy, sane humans putting in an hour or two a day to maintain self sustaining organic gardens and energy systems and then having time for themselves and each other the rest of the day to play and love and learn.

Picture a world where everyone who wants to, can be happy and creative and fulfilled instead of just a few privileged people. Picture a world where each person can live up to their full potential and become as brilliant as they like because they have healthy food and all the time they need to develop their power to the fullest. These are examples of how you could use permaculture principles. Make up some of your own permaculture principles. What would you do to make things work more sensibly?

Would you be willing to trade a few hours a day growing food or retrofitting urban structures for your old job? Would you be willing to give up a lifestyle that is killing us all for true happiness and balance instead, with no trade offs and no losses but only wins? [source]

Related Articles

The Venus  Project
Satomaya: Japan's Secret Watergarden