The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation

“None of the books I looked at makes anything like a systematic attempt to define the term or trace its origins; its definition is virtually taken for granted. It’s as if no one feels compelled to fix the meanings and uses of a term everyone presumably understands—which today appears to mean that in the United States anything is possible if you want it badly enough.”

The author is referring to the taken-for-granted, common-sense status that the American Dream tends to enjoy. This book is intended to help answer these kinds of questions regarding the Dream’s history and explain its different variations, including the Dream of Upward Mobility and the Dream of the Good Life. Usually, a concept or idea that “everyone presumably understands” is exactly the idea that most desperately requires examination.

“In the twenty-first century, the American Dream remains a major element of our national identity, and yet national identity is itself marked by a sense of uncertainty that may well be greater than ever before. Over the course of human history, peoples have used any number of means to identify themselves: blood, religion, language, geography, a shared history, or some combination of these. (Japan comes to mind as an example that draws on all of them.) Yet the United States was essentially a creation of the collective imagination—inspired by the existence of a purportedly New World, realized in a Revolution that began with an explicitly articulated Declaration, and consolidated in the writing of a durable Constitution. And it is a nation that has been re-created as a deliberate act of conscious choice every time a person has landed on these shores. Explicit allegiance, not involuntary inheritance, is the theoretical basis of American identity.”

This passage folds neatly into discourse about American exceptionalism—the idea that the US is fundamentally different than other countries in a positive way. Clichéd ways of broaching the same subject would be to invoke the “great experiment” of America, or the “idea” of America. Such discussions have a mythical aspect, but it’s not wholly without merit, and the author later discusses (in Chapter 2) the unique origins of the US and its founding documents.

“Once a form of distraction or comfort while awaiting the implacable hand of fate, becoming healthy, wealthy, and wise had gone beyond an instrument of salvation into being a practical end in its own right. This emphasis—some might say mania—for self-improvement, cut loose from its original Calvinist moorings, remains a recognizable trait in the American character and is considered an indispensable means for the achievement of any American Dream.”

The legendary Puritan work ethic derives in part from the predestination aspect of Calvinist theology, which insists that God has preselected the people who will enjoy eternal life in heaven although nobody can know beforehand who those people are. This produced anxiety that led to theological innovations like preparationism, which offered practical steps toward conversion, and the idea that working hard and having one’s work bear good fruit can be evidence of God’s grace.