Let's Clarify the American Dream

Immortality is a long shot, I admit; but somebody has to be first. – Bill Cosby

When the Media, the fourth branch of American government, forces political candidates to clarify their promises and exposes contradictions among those promises, they keep politicians honest. But they also force voters to be honest with themselves—we need to realize when our expectations are unrealistic, when the kind of candidate we want simply doesn’t exist. I think the Media should attack not only candidates this way, but the American Dream itself, to bring America back to reality.

If the American government has a social contract with Americans, a "Dream" it offers, part of it must be in the phrase, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It isn’t in the Constitution—it’s in the Declaration of Independence—but that doesn’t really matter. A social contract, promise or dream is less about what was signed and more about what expectations we hold, and the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is pushed around so much, we can’t help but form expectations around it.

So let’s demand that our government clarify its promises regarding “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Let’s make sure we are all rallying around the same flag.



In grammar school, I assumed the phrase, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” must be a promise to me as a grammar school student. We are born unable to survive independently, subject to adults, powerless in most pursuits, and I thought the phrase was given to me as a promise to raise the powerless into positions of power. “If your parents do not provide the food and shelter you need to grow strong, we’ll cover it. If they do not provide the education you will need to get hired, we’ll cover it. We’ll make sure you have opportunity to turn hard-work into happiness.”

I didn’t think deeply about what the promise meant to older Americans. I figured they knew their lives would be meaningless without a next generation to carry forth their legacy, so to provide “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to old people meant to raise up a new generation to relieve them of the wealth and power they worked so hard to accumulate. But as I become old, that is not the perspective I am gaining. I am not expecting the next generation to carry forth my legacy, and I don’t think future generations can make my life any more meaningful. If “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” is a promise to more than just the young, it must be something else.

“Pursuit of happiness” implies that we can get our way tomorrow by making sacrifices today. Such pursuit is meaningful only if the deal is enforced, if those who make us pay our dues will later be obliged to give us what we paid for. Surely, any government that expects us to pursue happiness must promise to enforce that deal. And, if you know anything about people seeking a better tomorrow, you know that they are seeking something permanent. The deal must entail that whatever wealth and power we earn will continue to grow, so that we never have to pay our dues all over again. And we must be able to spend what we earn as we please, including spending it to extend our lifespans. Thus, the deal must be exactly the opposite of what I expected as a child—it must be a promise to let the privileged delay the day when they have to relinquish their power to others.

Is that it? Americans accept that few can be privileged, so what they expect from government is to prevent others from stealing our chance, even if that chance is no more than a lottery ticket? I think that over-simplifies typical motives. For many Americans, I think lottery tickets are no substitute for casinos. Casinos don’t just let us try to win big—they also let us live big while trying. We don't choose the casino with the best security to protect our winnings, but the one that lets us live like winners, at least for a little while, even if we don’t win.

America is famous for letting people live beyond their means. In America you don’t have to be wealthy to get the variety and service of a shopping super-center. You can get credit-cards and mortgages beyond your means. And anyone who can get a job can experience the thrill of trying to “make it big”. To the working class, maybe “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” is a promise to let us get our casino fix, to let us trade our labor for an escape from reality.

I find it ironic to claim that the right to “pursue happiness” is given to us by our creator. If we receive the right by grace—not because we pursued it—then why wouldn’t our government suppose happiness itself is to be received by grace as well? That's certainly what our best science tells us. Psychologists have studied happiness in great depth and discovered that typical humans are either insatiable or easily satisfied. In either case, the pursuit of happiness (beyond getting training on how to appreciate what we have) is a fool’s errand.

If the social contract we hold with our government is a foolish one, that’s all the more reason to suspect that the different parties to the contract have different expectations. The young, the workers and the retired want different things from America: the young want investment in the environment and a robotic labor-force, the workers want distraction from reality, the retired want protection for their empires.

It is inconvenient for politicians to have to pick sides, but failure to pick has a cost: failure to coordinate. For example, a student can better prepare to contribute to society if they know whether America will side with the young or with the retired. If it continues to side with the retired, then it is better to train to be a doctor, lawyer or investor than to be an engineer. However, if the government will side with the young, then doctors, lawyers and investors will be stripped of the resources they would otherwise receive to combat the effects of age--their training would be a waste.

Let’s demand clarification. Don’t let America be like a political candidate who makes different promises to each constituent he meets. Let’s face reality, so we can move forward as efficiently as possible.