The Next American Dream
What's in your future?Reporter's notebook: Sam Eaton
Is the American Dream sustainable?
It's been 80 years since James Truslow Adams first coined the phrase "The American Dream." He called it "the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone." To many, this definition is still myth. Especially when "better" and "richer" are financed with credit cards and five-year, interest-only ARMs.
So what exactly is the American Dream anyway? It's a question I never gave much thought to until the mortgage crisis and recession turned that dream into a nightmare for so many Americans. Our series examines whether the fundamental beliefs that brought us here are sustainable, and whether people are modifying their American Dreams in order to hang on to those beliefs.
Hundreds of people we've heard from through our Public Insight Journalism network have declared the super-size version of the American Dream to be dead. But the belief that Americans can better their lot and expand their choices, and their children's, through hard work is still alive. It's just being recast in a period defined by limits instead of bubbles. Limits to the environment, to economic opportunity, and to the abilities of people who depend on both for their livelihoods. In other words, every one of us.
Those limits have forced people like Meredith McKenzie, the 56-year-old former real estate agent I profiled, to rethink their measures of success. McKenzie has significantly downsized her life. She now lives in a small, rented cottage and works at a nonprofit devoted to restoring an urban watershed to its natural state. And she's happier because of it. So are the young parents raising their son in the city instead of the suburbs.
Rather than viewing these limits as obstacles to achieving the American Dream, many have embraced them. And they have expressed a newfound sense of freedom in the shift away from an American Dream populated by "things" to a dream where value is assigned to the non-material: opportunity, choice, more time to spend with family and friends.
But even these values are still out of reach for many Americans, a luxury achieved through education, socioeconomic status, and not a small measure of luck. So answering the question of whether the American Dream is sustainable is tricky. And in the end it may depend less on how we define the next American Dream than on who that dream includes.
-- Sam Eaton
Your American Dream
Insights from people in our Public Insight Network
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The next Dream I hope will be one that is not based on a notion of solely individual success and achievement, but one that acknowledges the social nature of success.
Erin Silverstein, Brooklyn, N.Y.
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Almost none of my peers expect to do as well as our parents did, or at least not better than they did. Our "American Dream" has been both altered and downsized.
Liza Barry-Kessler, Milwaukee, Wis.
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I'd like to see a return of the middle class. Remember them?
Lorie Johnson, Sherwood, Ariz.
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Times have changed and the American Dream is no longer relevant today. The American Dream needs to evolve to this changing planet of overpopulation and excess materialism.
Faraz Hussain, Peoria, Ill.
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The next American Dream would be self-sufficiency and sustainability, spirituality, inclusiveness, education and art. Less greed and "keeping up with the Joneses."
Anna Ayres, Appleton, Minn.
Support
Support for The Next American Dream is provided by the Kendeda Sustainability Fund.
Comments
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From santa fe, NM, 05/12/2009
Suburb children of the fifties and sixties, we became the back-to-the-land farmers in the seventies, sure that the world would collapse back then. We learned and taught our children skills that they have taken forward into their urban lives. We now are back to the garden and dinners around the table with a few fine friends. The return to some bits of that life are their own reward. Thank you for your series. Catherine
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