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Positive and negative sides of the american dream
Positive and negative sides of the american dream
The american dream opportunity
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Dream or Illusion
Have we ever thought how long our dreams are? Dreams may last minutes to hours until it gets to the end; sometimes dreams have happy ending and sometimes not. The American Dream is everyone’s dream who lives in the United States because it is “the belief that everyone in the US has the chance to be successful and happy if they work hard” ("The American Dream Definition . . ."). In other words, it aims to encourage people to get what they want if they worked hard for it. By following the American Dream, people sacrifice their health, be prisoned with their debts, and never be satisfied with one dream. Therefore, in my opinion, people should not follow the American Dream throughout their life because the American Dream is just
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Their dream is essentially focused on financial achievement rather than being first physically and mentally healthy. According to the author Gary Goshgarian, who explained the value of health in his popular culture anthology The Contemporary Reader:
“Healthiness is a part of the American Dream that everyone seems to overlook. I believe that when it comes to living a so called 'perfect life ' there is nothing more important than having good health. A person can have all the money in the world; a person can have all the spare time in the world; a person can have the most loving family in the world; however, what good is all of this if he or she is dying from an incurable disease?”
In other words, people who aim to have a lot of money without thinking of their health, I believe they did not make any success toward their dream. Instead, they are making believes of a delusional dream that would lead them to unhappy
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They would be always addicted to earning more money in order to reach the ideal life that they dream about, which is basically education, luxury house, and a car. Therefore, most people work very hard and take loans in order to achieve the above goals. Following that, once they achieve their goals, they realize none of the house or car is their own, it is basically the bank’s assets that they need to pay for to own them. For that purpose, people turn to be nagged and disappointed because they feel they did not reach their American Dream, and regardless their success that they have already made. Just because they did not reach their material success, they ignore the success that they made by coming to the United States; they ignore the success that they have made to get their freedom, safety, and happiness in the United States. Instead of being satisfied with their pervious successful dreams, people turned to be greedy by following the American Dream and hunger for something called money. Thereafter, instead of following the American Dream, I believe people should be convinced of what they reached and owned even if it was twenty
In the United States there is an idea many pursue called the American dream, which differs from person to person. The American dream according to americanradioworks.publicradio.org is “a revolutionary notion: each person has the right to pursue happiness, and the freedom to strive for a better life through hard work and fair ambition”. Yet it has been said there is no real definition of American dream, instead it merely proves that it has an unconscious influence in American mentality (Ştiuliuc 1). The American dream is different for each person because everyone yearns for things that will they hope will in return make them happy. Whatever that may be, each person goes through different struggles to obtain what they want. According to Frederic Carpenter, the American dream “has never been defined exactly, and probably never can be. It is both too various and too vague” (3). The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse depicts the different interpretations on what the American dream actually is through the opinions and actions of Hector Esperanza, Efren Mendoza and Mrs. Calhoun.
In 1931 when the American Dream arose, Americans believed that the harder one worked, the more one would prosper (Meacham, 2012). In other words, they strongly believed that the American Dream was gaining a better, richer, happier life. Today, the American Dream is still hoping to earn a college degree, get a good job, buy a house, and start a family, but according to MetLife’s fifth annual survey, 41% of the respondents said it was about personal fulfillment, while most American’s say it is out of reach for many (White, ...
In the summer of 2009, on June 29 the legendary Michael Jackson was announced dead. Michael Jackson was a music genius and prodigy. The King of Pop was the most successful entertainer of all time. For four decades, Michael Jackson changed the way artists all over the world looked at dance, music and fashion, making him a global icon in pop culture. He truly changed the world. Most people would look at him and say he lived the American Dream to the fullest. From the talent to the fame, he had it all. He was successful, rich, famous, and admired all over the world but do these aspects of his life really relate to those of someone who has lived the American Dream? Many people when talking about the idea of the “American Dream” primarily thinking of the romantic aspects of this idea. People think of the key elements of the American Dream such as equality, liberty, independence, hard work and success.These romantic elements of the American Dream are then emphasised in the world. People much like Walt Disney built an empire off of these romantic ideals such as “You can be who you want”, “ If you can dream it, you can do it”, and “Hard work equal success”. These parts of the american dream are the very appealing parts of the american dream characterize. This side talks about the reverse of the romantic ideals. For example, how hard work does not always result in success, there are many other factors that contribute to those that are highly successful. Every American wants to live out the american dream of equality, liberty,hard work equals success but in reality is it very rarely obtained. These ideals from both the romantic and the realistic side of the american dream are strongly expressed in books such as Great Gatsby, The Outlier...
My beliefs lie with Goldman, in that I think people do place other core values ahead of health and pro-longed life. I believe that it is human nature for people to strive for happiness in life and I think people attain that happiness through achieving goals or doing something meaningful. I know people place health and long life in their core values but I do not believe that it is placed at the top of that list. As Goldman states, the patients go to a physician to seek out help
The American dream is the very foundation this country was built on. The belief that an individual can take their dreams and make them into reality . By actually taking the cards you've been dealt and changing your life with enough perseverance, self sacrifice and dedication and not relying on luck or chance. Initially, the dream is based on the concept of being able to achieve upward mobility in society regardless of your race, gender, economical and social background. It relies solely on the belief that everyone is considered equal. Unfortunately, it was an extremely long time before this country was able to succeed in providing those rights to all individuals. "Inequality, then, is less an inevitability than a choice… we can alter the course of inequality" (Leonhardt 543). What makes one person achieve and obtain the American dream over someone else or is it just one huge hoax?
Money, fame, and promiscuity are the three main components of the American Dream, and what better way to get to that level than through music? The truth is, almost any other profession has a higher statistical chance of achieving this goal. Musicianship is a nearly impossible career plan to survive with. An artist will spend incalculable hours learning and mastering their craft, only to be oppressed by the community. No matter how much time or money a musician spends on his/her creations, the world will typically find a way to avert their success.
The American Dream. This concept is well known as the picture perfect family, nice house and the white picket fence. As well as succeeding and excelling in life and making the future generations lives better than the current one. This concept has contributed much of the immigration from as early as 1931 to present day. However, many immigrants immigrate to the United States in order to escape oppression as well as uprising and turmoil which may reside in their home country. Though society often places people none the less immigrants into categories from social class, heritage, and prejudice they share a common thread of hope as well as facing obstacles in their journeys and once they arrive to the states. An example of this common thread of escaping their homeland in order to pursue new experiences and hopeful new life yet experiencing different hardships are shown when looking at both the Mexicans and the Irish.
The American Dream is referred to by many people as the reason to come to America. It is, or so they say, the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Unfortunately they are incorrect, there truly is no American Dream, it is all an illusion given to us by our founding fathers as a reason for the inequality in which people are treated. I have lived in this country for 16 years now and have all the patriotic bullshit about how we give everyone equal opportunity and how everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. I just laugh when I read this. Throughout our country’s 300-year history, it is all about raising one person over the other. It started with the movement of the Native Americans. They were here before anyone else, and they were moved because they did not live with all the violence our ancestors did. The founding fathers continued to push them further and further away because it was beneficial to them at the time. They said if you stay here we will not bother you anymore, then when they decided that area was nice and they needed it for the white man. Then we began to take the black man out of Africa and use them on our plantations so the white man could get more money. The President ended slavery, but there were ways around it and everyone knew it. No one ever said any persecution of the black man is wrong for years and why not, because it was more convenient for us to ignore it. Now the people from Latin American countries have come in homes of freedom, and better lives. We tell them they have to speak English, since they are in America, but I do not recall being taught the language of the Native Americans. Since they were here first should you not have to learn that language?
A writer, George Monbiot, once said, “If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire”. John Steinbeck’s views on the American Dream in his novella Of Mice and Men agrees with Monbiot because Steinbeck expresses the American Dream as obtainable, but not for everyone. In his novella, the characters George Milton and Lennie Small acquire a job at a ranch in the Salinas Valley during the Great Depression. These men have their own American Dream that they work towards, yet don’t achieve. Through these characters, Curley’s wife, and Crooks, Steinbeck illustrates that even through hard work and the drive to succeed, people may not always achieve their own American Dream.
The American Dream, it’s something as old as America itself and continues to live on. However, what is the “American Dream” exactly? It’s something that has changed over and over, and has been disputed over for centuries. First, it was to become the perfect society and person through God as defined by the Puritans (the first settlers in America), the it shifted to being the peak of moral and intellectual perfection with the Rationalists, who were revolutionaries such as Benjamin Franklin. The Transcendentalists are a group undefined by an era in time, for they were present in all stages of America’s history, and continue to be present. They had more modern views such as self reliance, and individualism; a continual theme we see today in what people describe as the American Dream. Besides that however, one wouldn’t see much resemblance to our country’s past ideals. Today the American Dream is all about money. As a nation we idolize people who have seemingly overcome huge life obstacles by themselves in rags-to-riches stories, and then we question why we can’t do the same. We ask ours...
The American Dream can obliterate any prospect of satisfaction and does not show its own unfeasibility. The American dream is combine and intensely implanted in every structure of American life. During the previous years, a very significant number of immigrants had crossed the frontier of the United States of America to hunt the most useful thing in life, the dream, which every American human being thinks about the American dream. Many of those immigrants sacrificed their employments, their associations and connections, their educational levels, and their languages at their homelands to start their new life in America and prosper in reaching their dream.
People say the root of all evil is money, but yet you hear parents tell their children “don’t pick that major, it doesn’t make much money” and yet it is also collected at churches. Many individuals emigrate their native country in hope to make a better living in the States. That through hard work and dedication you can become “rich”. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done. Ironically, many people dream of being rich so they do not have to work, yet ridicule the poor for being “lazy”.
When the term ‘American Dream’ was first mentioned in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, he described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” (Clark). When Adams mentioned the term, it had much more of an idealistic meaning, rather than the materialistic meaning it has in modern society. At the time of it’s mention, the dream meant that prosperity was available to everyone. In the beginning, the American Dream simply promised a country in which people had the chance to work their way up through their own labor and hard work (Kiger). Throughout history, the basis of the dream has always been the same for each individual person. It
I agree that it’s a trimmed down version of its self that we as a generation have changed what the American dream was like. As it states in the infographic, in the silent generation only 14% (Column) find it absolutely critical to complete the dream, while others don’t find that much of an interest in completing the dream in their lifetime. While the years going forward, the generations started seeing that the dream is as important as it seems.By Generation Y, 55% saw that the American Dream is something you need to work on to achieve in their lifetime (Column). The dream is about your abilities and achievements that you accomplish, like the ability to go to college and graduate. Have successful job that will allow more financial stability in their environment to allow a chance to complete the dream. Like building a family or getting married. Though 29% in the infographic said they would take a feeling a sense of personal fulfillment in their life as one their achievements (Column).
The ‘American Dream’, as was once known has ceased to exist in the United States and it could just be something that is not guaranteed anymore. We are merely allowed just the pursuit of happiness, as stated in the Declaration of Independence “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. We are told that all men are created equal and independent of one another, but are we really? In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness Chris Gardner goes from rags to riches displaying what it means to live the ‘American Dream’ as an African-American male in the United States. The story line ultimately suggested that you need to have a certain amount of money and stand in a certain class to be deemed successful in life as an African-American. The Pursuit of Happyness illustrates through the examples of Chris Gardener that anyone has the chance to achieve happiness if they devote a great amount of effort and time. However, in today’s world our socioeconomic factors define our meaning of happiness. Society realizes that the key to happiness is not actually determined by how much money you have, once you finally obtain wealth, money will just keep raising our bar of happiness. On the surface, this dream appears to the best thing people hope for offering the chance to better themselves, and accomplish success despite of some one’s race, religion, or family history. What Chris Gardner went through is a struggle made by socioeconomic factors which played a huge role in his ideal image of the ‘American Dream’. Money meant success to him and this is where my sociological lens becomes significant to my primary text. As an African American male, Chris Gardner, in The Pursuit of Happyness overcomes the socioeconomic factors he faced by defeating the odds and la...