With today's economic woes, many of us are finding the need to get by on much less.
This article hits on a few good points. (In the age of twitter, facebook and learning how to limit our thoughts 140 characters you might struggle to read all four pages, so let me summarize.) In our quest for the "American Dream"we have essentially given up all other goals to further our material wealth and in turn find ourselves depleted of the time to fully experience and appreciate life itself. Upward mobility has essentially been at the core of the "American Dream" myth. But at what point in moving up the economic scale do we reach the point that we no longer feel the need to keep climbing the ladder? At what rung are we satisfied?
It's not secret that we Americans like our "stuff." And in ours and other developed nations, most of us no longer have the daily struggle of mere existence, yet we still are slaves to the yoke of accumulating more. So what does it mean to be rich? Does a rich life mean material goods or in having a quality of life that we can enjoy with those we love?
I don't advocate everything the author suggests, but here are some key quotes that stood out.
New American Dream: "Not to get richer than the next guy or necessarily to accumulate more and more stuff but the right to live life more fully and engage more expansively the elemental possibilities of human existence."
"In the years ahead, Americans will suffer unavoidable losses of familiar pleasures and be compelled to alter some deeply ingrained habits of material consumption. These painful adjustments can be endured if the people are confident the country is progressing toward a more fulfilling transformation. The essential trade-off could be expressed on a bumper sticker:Smaller Cars for Larger Lives."
Another interesting op-ed
article from the New York Times looks at our current economic crisis and reckons it all the way back to the Reagan era and his 'trickle-down' policy and the ending of regulations on mortgage lending. If you think Reagan was the greatest thing since Wonder Bread you won't agree but there is one point you can't deny. During that time, and in ensuing years, the amount of personal debt dwarfed the public debt. We learned to pile up debt while failing to put aside income thinking stock portfolios and rising housing values would carry people through. So much for that.
Changes in our goals as individuals and as a country will probably have to change or be altered. I'm not sure what this will entail, but the years ahead will be interesting.
