篇一:《american dream》
The term ‚American Dream‛ is used in a number of ways, but essentially the American Dream is an idea which suggests that all people can succeed through hard work, and that all people have the potential to live happy, successful lives. Many people have expanded upon or refined the definition of the American Dream, and this concept has also been subject to a fair amount of criticism. Many people believe that the structure of American society belies the idealistic goal of the American Dream, pointing to examples of inequality rooted in class, race, and ethnic origin which suggest that the American Dream is not attainable for all.
The idea of an American Dream is older than the United States, dating back to the 1600s, when people began to come up with all sorts of hopes and aspirations for the new and largely unexplored continent. Many of these dreams focused on owning land and establishing prosperous businesses which would theoretically generate happiness, and some people also incorporated ideals of religious freedom into their American Dreams. During the Great Depression, several people wrote about an American Dream, codifying the concept and entrenching it in American society.
For people who believe in the American dream, anything is attainable through hard work. The concept plays on the idea that American is a classless society, although it is obviously not, as any honest examination of the United States will reveal. The idealistic vision of the American Dream also assumes that people are not discriminated against on the basis of race, religion, gender, and national origin, another thing which is unfortunately not true in the United States. Critics of the American dream also point out that many versions of the dream equate prosperity with happiness, and that happiness may not always be that simple. These critics suggest that the American Dream may always remain tantalizingly out of reach for some Americans, making it more like a cruel joke than a genuine dream.
People with a more skeptical view of the American Dream sometimes say that the American Dream represents the possibility of living better than your parents did, and a desire among parents for their children to lead happy lives. This is especially true in the immigrant community, as many immigrants have come from extremely difficult circumstances.
Some one who manages to achieve his or her version of the American Dream may be said to be ‚living the dream,‛ and everyone has a unique interpretation of what the American Dream might be. Fundamentally, the American Dream is about hope and the potential for change, and one could argue that people who enact change in some way, even a small way, are living the dream.
Discuss this Article
We only called it the American Dream because we are americans, but the truth
is every human being has dreams and goals. After reading many posts, I can see
everyone is correct because the dream is extensive and infinite, just like your anon226720
Post 98 ideas.
Calling it the American Dream, I would think of freedom, liberty, to wake up
in the morning and without being questioned and go after whatever your dreams{american,dream作文}.
anon206543
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anon185573
Post 89{american,dream作文}.
anon180241
Post 85 were the night before. The American Dream is that a black man from Kansas can become the most powerful man in the world in this country. 'Nuff said. Nowadays it is certainly not easy to life the American dream, but i think we should never forget that money is not everything in life. Some amount of materials, money or other goods are not as important as a healthy family in your background. In times of globalization it has become more and more important to be happy with small things. The next point is that you can live this dream today also in other parts all over the world, for instance, in Austria or moreover, in Europe. But take care that it is really your dream and then try every day to give your best, never give up, push yourself and try to gain as much experience as possible. Then each of us can achieve much more than you think.
The american dream is subjective. Lets not forget what the latter half of the phrase is. I have enjoyed reading the article and the comments. There have been proponents of both sides of the debate and i love this rapport. I don't usually do the "post my opinion" thing, but i have been inspired by a few things i have read. First, i would like to speak to the students using this as a resource for a paper on the american dream. Yes, the ideas are great, but on such a subject i would search myself for what the dream means. Ideas and opinions are great, but it is your interpretation that makes it the dream. Easy paper? Ok, it has to be five pages or something. I'd say my dream is to have a single paragraph count as five pages, then debate it (extensively) with the teacher until they cave. A lot of my teachers hated me, but in the best way possible. Second, this one is to number 9. This is not intended to be a personal attack,
but i feel that somehow it will come across as such. The person who taught this
in school is extremely cynical. However, that viewpoint does apply to all greedy
people. Not all are so greedy, you just don't notice them for their lack of{american,dream作文}.
whining about everything. I once learned in school that the u.s. won the vietnam
war. Just in case you learned that too, we lost.{american,dream作文}.
For my last trick, i will attempt to explain what the american dream means to
me. At the core, the idea is about progression, the idea that things will get
better. If i am lying to myself, it beats being lied to by someone else.
Seriously, it means being kind, decent, and respectful of others no matter what
the cost. I'm not talking about being a doormat either. Its about supporting
your neighbors and helping someone in need if you can. Helping someone can be
anon159810
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anon152348
Post 78 as simple as having a two-minute conversation with a complete stranger and just asking them how they are today. This is only one of many ways to show you care about others. I do my best to live up to it, but invariably fall short at times. But life isn't about how many times you fail, it's about the successes! One man made me realize that idea. His name was Thomas Edison. Inventor of the light bulb, something within plain view of all who read this. He failed so many times trying to make it work over many years, but when he had success with it, well, the rest is history. He is not remembered as the guy who wasted years of his life failing at something; he is remembered as the man who invented the incandescent bulb. We should all hope to leave such a mark on humanity. I didn't really mean for this to be so long but look what happened. Oh well.
Cheers, everyone! The American Dream is the hope that every one of us has the chance to be all we can be. It is being blown away by the takeover of predatory international monopolies who are buying elections and "our" (ha ha) legislators and our airwaves for their propaganda. They are the new Big Brother and we are fast becoming America Inc. I do believe the American Dream is possible, just that people nowadays forgot that America was not built in one day, neither in a year. That same frame of thinking applies to the American Dream. For some it may take decades, for others, it may easily become true in a year, and yet, we all are responsible for making it come true for every American citizen. Hard work actually means a lot of things like working smart, working better, working safer and working much much more productive each way, and yet, not everybody can make it the whole way. We should never forget we are humans and we get sick, and that may compromise the American Dream even more, and yet I think it doesn't compromise it at all. Once we achieve it, what is next?
I believe it would be to perfect it and to enjoy the fruits coming out of it, for our quota would be done, and next generations will be enhanced and allow newer and better solutions, as long as humanity does not lose the track and does not become egocentric and too greedy to know what is valuable and what is a tool. To me, money is a tool, I may not be rich, and yet, If i work hard and If I have my bills paid, I may be happy enough to tell I'am satisfied. For some others, it may be a miserable view and a miserable perspective. It is relative to everyone's ambitions! --AC S.
anon150377
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anon138158
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anon134498
Post 63 I rather resent the opinion of those that the American Dream can be achieved from working harder. My entire life has been spent working hard and saving at the expense of enjoying the day I was living in. At the end of 20 years after saving every penny, working to the maximum and experiencing very little outside work, what I have to show for these efforts is three emergency visits to the hospital for exhaustion, Where I was advised to take it easy; one hemorrhaged disk, medical bills that I worked even harder to cover and landed myself in the hospital again against much protestation. (I collapsed at work and an ambulance was called) After a few days in the (which my insurance wouldn't cover) I thought about it. I've been working my whole life for an unattainable goal. I've robbed myself of 20 years of experiences so that I could be at work to overachieve without award. The whole time I was working and going to school to get a better job. I never got the better job and am still paying back the loans. I was grateful for the opportunity I had to have a job and never questioned that faith to continue killing myself while wearing thrift store bargains and residing in a lower income area and having the marvelous experience of being persecuted for my beliefs. Life? Liberty? Pursuit of happiness? Well, OK, I have pursued happiness but what happened to equality? What happened to that dream? Now, I am in the wonderful position of not having a job because after this last hospitalization I've been diagnosed with degenerative bone disease and a heart condition that is inoperable caused by chronic stress and exhaustion. I think I can say at this point that I've worked hard enough to attain the dream. The dream still remains elusive. To me the American dream is to have all the necessities of life, including opportunity to have the fruits of your labor. If people work and do not get ahead, do not better themselves, what is the point? The American dream is to have all the basics that all people share. That means a normal portion of water, food, shelter, clothing, fuel, friends, and opportunities to improve life. Just because the American Dream doesn't happen for everybody -- or doesn't happen the way someone wants it -- doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. America is the
land of opportunity, and offers freedom and chances to those who aren't able
anon63741
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anon45383
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opmom
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anon25375
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spasiba
Post 1 to acquire it elsewhere. That was what the American Dream originally was and, if you think about it, it's still true today. I don't agree with 35977. I know that that is probably not your opinion of it though. I think that we can achieve the American Dream if we work hard enough. We have to! As a lot of my friends and family say, great things come from hard work. If you work hard, great things will happen to you. I think that everybody has their own interpretation of the American Dream, but all within a similar context. At one point or another, every single citizen of the United States of America is given the opportunity to achieve their American Dream. However, people become very confused and mistake the fact that our opportunity is *not* a guarantee. Only you, as an individual, can achieve your dream. But nowhere does it say that *everyone* can live it. anon25375: Despite your rosy outlook on attaining the American Dream, I think that many can and continue to make their dreams come true. While the dream may have evolved over the decades, the bottom line is that the *opportunity* is still there. I know immigrants who came here with nothing, who worked, and scrimped and saved and established successful businesses, provided comfortable homes for their children, and are giving them the opportunity to accomplish their own goals. Did they accomplish the "American Dream?" Maybe, maybe not. While there may be a stereotype of what that dream is, it's different for everyone. The ability to do whatever you want is the aspect of the American Dream that we as North Americans have to wake up from. It should be re-written to read. "You can do whatever you want so long as you can afford it and with that we will give you no help." If read that way the "Dream becomes far more reflecting of reality. Minimum $40,000 debt for University, A minimum wage job which doesn't make ends meet. No pension plan, On average some of the worst health care in the developed world (Canada, and low level American Hospitals 18 and 37 Overall Distribution (1997) Respectively). What about that is a Dream to me it is a Nightmare. No society can have one hundred percent of liberty, equality, fairness, happiness etc available to all its citizens at all time. But United States, thanks to our wise founding fathers comes pretty close to it.
Perfection is just not humanly possible. Since we all have failings, we will undoubtedly do imperfect things. The task for all of us is to strive to be better,
篇二:《American dream》
American dream
The American dream has always been global. In 1931, when the historian James Truslow Adams first introduced the concept, he credited the dream with having “lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores.” Yet in
recent years, a troubling gap has developed between this original dream and a new one that speaks far less eloquently to the rest of the world.
The original dream has three strands. The first is about prosperity: the classic saga of penniless strivers working hard to lift their families into the middle class. An integral part of this saga is continuity between
generations—with parents sacrificing so their children can succeed, and successful children never forgetting “where they came from.” Needless to say, this dream of hard work and intergenerational mobility is shared by the 95 percent of humanity who are not American. But it is called the American dream because the United States was the first nation in history where it actually came true for large numbers of people.
The United States is also the nation where the deliberate exclusion of any individual or group from the dream came to be condemned. This points to the second and third strands: democracy and freedom. For the dream to function properly, the basic rights of individuals must be respected. On this point Adams is clear: “It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable.”
It’s important to note that Adams was writing during the Great Depression, and that these inspiring passages are accompanied by a long list of economic and social ills, and recommendations for reform. At the same time, he warned, the greatest danger was that Americans would not make the necessary effort to save the dream, because “too many of us … have grown weary and mistrustful of it.”
A recent poll commissioned by The Atlantic found that, while Americans are feeling quite optimistic about their own lives, that optimism does not extend to the American dream. Indeed, the poll found that a large majority is losing faith in it. This, too, is dangerous, because if these Americans now feel weary and mistrustful of the dream, they will not make the necessary effort to share it with others.
During the Cold War, the U.S. government invested substantial resources in “public diplomacy,” a term that covered a host of overseas activities—from libraries to lecture tours, art exhibits to world’s-fair-style expositions, international visitor programs to radio and TV broadcasts meant to
undermine Soviet censorship. As conducted by the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the State Department’s Division of
Cultural Relations, these activities sought to convey what President Harry Truman called “a full and fair picture” of American history, culture, society, and political institutions—including the American dream as experienced by generations of immigrants.{american,dream作文}.
Today, this form of diplomacy is sometimes dismissed as propaganda. But that is unfair. Having witnessed the extreme propaganda emanating from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the men and women who crafted America’s Cold War public diplomacy generally knew the difference between outright lies and truthful attempts at persuasion.
But then, amid the triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War, public diplomacy was judged obsolete. Between 1993 and 2001, funding for the U.S. government’s cultural and educational exchange programs was cut by more than a third, from $349 million to $232 million (adjusted for
inflation). Overseas, this meant the closing of libraries and cultural centers that had long served as meeting places and free-speech zones. In 1999, the USIA was dismantled and its activities scattered throughout the State Department.
With hindsight these cuts seem unwise because, contrary to certain
predictions made in the 1990s, the whole world did not rush to embrace the American dream. Indeed, during this same period, a new breed of
authoritarian leaders—exemplified by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Deng Xiaoping in China, and (later) Vladimir Putin in Russia—were busy
separating the strand of prosperity, which they wanted, from the strands of democracy and freedom, which they most assuredly did not want. Today, almost all of these regimes are increasingly corrupt and repressive. But at the turn of the 21st century, the new authoritarian model was looking pretty good.{american,dream作文}.
Then came the 9/11 attacks and America’s disastrous, costly attempts to impose democracy by force on Afghanistan and Iraq. These military efforts were accompanied by numerous studies calling for a new public diplomacy fitted to the challenges of the new century. But these calls have not been satisfactorily answered. So far, the U.S. government’s main innovation has been to deploy social media—something America’s enemies do just as well, or better, than the U.S. government. This in a world flooded with
sophisticated Chinese, Russian, and violent jihadist propaganda, where it is more important than ever to reaffirm all three strands of the American dream.
Here we encounter a challenge rarely acknowledged in the debate over public diplomacy. The post-Cold War spending cuts left a vacuum, which was quickly filled by America’s most successful export: commercial entertainment. Everywhere in the world, people view the United States
through some kind of screen, whether a big one in a movie theater or a small one in a television or computer. And what appears on those screens has the power to shape foreign opinion of the American dream and what it stands for.
This does not bother most Americans because, after all, jazz, rock and roll, and Hollywood films played a positive role in the Cold War “battle for
hearts and minds.” Plus, the export of popular culture imposes no burden on the taxpayer—indeed, it makes a hefty profit. Ever since World War I, when President Woodrow Wilson described film as “a universal language [that] lends itself importantly to the presentation of America’s plans and
purposes,” the export of popular culture has been considered both good business and good public diplomacy.
篇三:《American Dream》
American Dream
Dream, started from the unconscious construction, but also began to consciously invisible. Since the beginning of the dream, people's pursuit of good things; for it since the beginning of the world to get rid of the suffering.
The American dream was the first time a historian named Adams in 1931 was officially put forward in his epic book, the American epic.. He gives the definition is: "the American dream is the dream of such a piece of land, in that everyone can live better, richer, more complete, and enjoys a suitable for the ability and achievement opportunities..." The American dream is a belief that one can gain a better life in the United States if one has to work hard.. In fact, as early as in Adams proposed "the American Dream" for more than 300 years ago, when immigrants from England by the "May Flower", across the Atlantic to Maryland, looking for living a Puritan "pure land", the "American Dream" has been quietly sprouting, America has given the opportunity to every person around the world, as long as you work hard can realize their dreams. In fact, the American dream is divided into broad sense and narrow sense, refers to the general American equality, freedom and democracy; in a narrow sense is a believe that as long as in the United States after unremitting efforts will be able to obtain the ideal of a better life, i.e., people must be through their own hard work, courage, creativity and determination to move towards prosperity, rather than relying on a particular social class and other assistance.
Obama published in 2006, the fearless hope: reaffirm the American dream a book, tells the story of his struggle. In September 2012,