... [C]onceptions of the good life [these are central to and found within collective worldviews and individual lifeworlds derived from these] can be open as well as closed, and perhaps, among the vast majority of people, these conceptions are not really as divergent as we have been led to believe [this appears to be the view held as well by the Dalai Lama]. [....] Just possibly, the American Dream might be replaced by one that can he shared by all peoples, holding their humanity in common. — Henry Rosemont, Jr.
Henry Rosemont, Jr. was a distinguished philosopher and Sinologist, as well as an activist on the Left. He wrote the following in his Foreword to Michael Luntley’s somewhat neglected and important book, The Meaning of Socialism (Open Court, 1989):
“To believe that increased productivity will end poverty is a naïve dream; to believe that ownership and consumption of that productivity can bring human happiness and contentment is a barren dream; and to believe that in the cause of productivity our purple mountains and plains can continue to be despoiled without losing their majesty and fruit, is an impossible dream.”
Insofar as the “American Dream” includes the assumption or firm belief that the elimination of poverty and the related overcoming of pernicious effects on individual autonomy caused by absolute as well as relative inequalities that impede or arbitrarily circumscribe the extent of the equal exercise of our liberties and capabilities (which are part and parcel of the essential conditions of a legitimate or justified participatory, deliberative, and representative democratic polity) is only or best achieved by increased economic productivity (i.e., increasing the size of the economic pie), that dream is far more than a benign illusion or fantasy. It is, rather, an ideological delusion, and the obdurate nature of this dangerous form of wishful thinking is in large measure explained by the fact this increased productivity (subject to the manias, crashes and panics endemic to capitalist economic cycles) makes for conspicuous consumption in affluent societies, that irrational mode of consumption behavior which has proved intrinsically harmful and destructive of ecological systems and process and the environment more widely (the former a necessary condition of the latter).
We are here, with Rosemont, only pointing out facets of the American Dream, those facets that prevents us—ideologically, psychologically, and behaviorally—from coming to a basic comprehension of the anti-democratic, illiberal, and environmentally harmful components and consequences of capitalist democracy. We go about our daily lives refusing to acknowledge the motivated ignorance, self-deception, and denial that have long served to propagate and perpetuate those facets of this dream that have become living nightmares, portents of apocalyptic or apocalyptic-like scenarios and probabilities that will play out in the all-too-near future.
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