The "American Dream." This vague term instantly conjures up hopes of unlimited opportunity. So long as you work hard enough and are smart enough (which you are, of course), you will find success. Moreover, it is these hard-working, gifted individuals who form America's elite. In other words, meritocracy should make everyone happy, both individually and as a member of society.Or, so the legend goes. One of the dangers of trying to put meritocracy into practice, however, is the tremendous mental strain it places on individuals who, after working hard to distinguish themselves from others, still fail. For their entire lives, they have told themselves that they are the only obstacle to their success, so in the end all they can do is blame themselves. This leads to frustration and even intense self-loathing. This is the dark side of the American dream.
Here is how Alexis de Tocqueville put it, in Democracy in America (Vol. II, Part II, Ch. XIII, "Why the Americans are often so restless in the midst of their prosperity"):
“When all prerogatives of birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are open to all and a man’s own energies may bring him to the top of any of them, an ambitious man may think it easy to launch on a great career and feel that he is called to no common destiny. But that is a delusion which experience quickly corrects. The same equality which allows each man to entertain vast hopes makes each man by himself weak. His power is limited on every side, though his longings may wander where they will…
“This constant strife between the desires inspired by equality and the means it supplies to satisfy them harasses and wearies the mind…
“That is the reason for the strange melancholy often haunting inhabitants of democracies in the midst of abundance, and of that disgust with life sometimes gripping them in calm and easy circumstances…
“In France we are worried about the increasing rate of suicides; in America suicide is rare, but I am told that madness is commoner than anywhere else.”
4 comments:
Success is, as it has always been, primarily about effort. Those who work hard regularly surpass those who are gifted but lazy. However, in America as in any other county, "capitalism" or "democracy" doesn't provide an ultimate meaning for life. How is success measured, anyhow? Friends? Money? Power? Clearly something transcendant is needed to give meaning to this life, no matter what economic model you live under.
It seems to me both democracy and capitalism promise to remove most barriers to human freedom, creating unlimited possibilities. This is more or less true in a political and economic sense, but as Jeremy astutely points out, these are not man's only limits. A greater freedom is needed for full "success".
This is, I think, the problem with Progressivism in its full-blown form: it assumes that political and economic changes will result in changes in man's very nature. Either this is a glaring oversight or it is crass materialism, the heresy the spirit does not exist but only matter (cf. Karl Marx).
Hmmm...I think you two read Tocqueville somewhat differently than I do. I agree that Tocqueville is talking about material success here. More importantly, though, what he's getting at here is that no matter how you define success, egalitarian democracy leads to the belief in most people that their success or failure is due entirely to their own merits. If you fail, you must be a failure yourself.
Tocqueville, I believe, viewed the world as controlled in large by fortune, just as Boethius did. Boethius, you must remember, was not a failure. He was a gifted man who worked hard and rose fast; events beyond his control, though, knocked him down from his high position. Does that mean that Boethius was personally a failure (as opposed to a man who failed in something)? Of course not. In the end, I think Tocqueville is driving at the point that Americans by and large cannot accept that some things are simply beyond their control.
I have to recall von Mises, I think, writing that even if one doesn't control all one's own destiny, it is best to think that one does, because that way one works harder.
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