So, I just watched "American Dream", a movie about the meatpacking workers of Austin, Minnesota and their struggle against the Hormel corporation to protest cuts in their wages during the 1980's, and it made me think about this idea of the American Dream.
What I wanted to say about the concept of the American Dream, is that I've never really believed it. We're preached to about this dream, this privilege, this amazing opportunity to be "one of the few to make it" as if that's so great, as if that's worth it as something to strive for, eat our ideals for, justify stepping on the rest of the world and the original peoples of this place for, and as far as I've seen, for too many, it's not even a real possibility.
But even if it is possible, why should we want it? If my thriving is at the expense of my neighbors, my family, my people, who are all the people of the world, falling, then how could I be happy and whole? If my thriving is at the cost of being disconnected from my people, then how can it be thriving? Without our people, how can we be whole? How can there be an American dream, at the cost of a human dream? Why do we keep swallowing this lie, and grinding our lives out through the teeth of this capitalist machine, in the name of being the conquerer instead of the conquered for once; In the name of being comfortable at the cost of complicity?
Shouldn't we not only hate to be oppressed, but more importantly hate oppression itself, and all acts which further it? Shouldn't we not only fight for our own liberation, but also the liberation of all beings, so that our success may be whole, and shared? Shouldn't we not only push back against discomfort, but also against the causes of suffering?
And if we do not do so, what are we building but an illusion, not a dream, to be soon shattered by our own division, our own incompleteness, our own smallness?
I think most of us aren't working towards the American dream, really. I think we're scrambling for survival, and I mean scrambling, really scrambling, because that's what we are, we're scrambled. Without a human dream, without a human mission, without a whole and complete drive to raise all people from oppression, and unite all people for the thriving of our species and our planet, we are nothing but a brief and temporary illusion.
Despite the falsehood and the hypocrisy of this idea called the "American Dream" though, I still dream that we could be so much more, and I'll keep advocating this higher World Dream, in which we all succeed together. It's not worth it to leave anyone behind.
