RESHAPING THE AMERICAN DREAM

« mostly realized, while the dream of the sons bas not yet been successfully formulated.

In its traditional form, it included both our purpose as a nation, embodied in such propositions as "liberty and justice for ali", as weil as the personal goals that echo in the familiar phrase, the land of promise.

But dreams achieved become mondane (1).

The achievements bring new problems.

Not many Americans are so naïve as to think that money auto­ matically brings happiness.

People feel that the vast and impersonal technology that brings them their comforts and satisfies their needs bas somehow diminished them as indivi­ duals.

Most Americans are "better off" than they once were, but are less singular .for being so, and feel less individually attended to...

They cao be weil fed, weil clothed, and weil sheltered, but live in a pattern indistinguishable from their neighbours; they crowd the same highways, watch the same television shows, queue up at the same supermarkets checkout counters ..• The new dent (2) in the American dream of aflluence comes from the discovery that our resources are more finite than we thought.

This challenges tbat delicious American freedom, the right to be prodigal and uncaring.

Americans have always believed that ''tbere's plenty more where that came from"; you don't divide the wealth, you multiply it.

And tbus every man's ambitions-to make, to sell, to buy-somehow can be felt to serve the common good.

H rapid growth is no longer the easy answer to our problems, the alternatives to it are difficult for a nation with an economy so attuned to growth.

Adding this to many other matters they worry about, many Americans have lost confidence in what they once regarded as their natural ally, the future.

D'après FORTUNE, April 1975.

( 1) mundane = ward/y, of the world.

(2) dent: ex.

something is dented = damaged.

~;\~~~:~~.'~~,·.'' 1.

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