Recovering from the American Dream
Gene Lyons
"Sickly talking about fixing healthcare"
18-June-2006
Obama is positive. So he does not see politics as open war. He wants change to come with everyone's participation and cooperation. He claims he is willing to give up a little of what he wants. This way, more conservative senators will vote for his health reform bill. That is more important to him than getting everything he wants with exclusively liberal support.
Republicans argue that government provided health-care will turn the
Hence
[Compromising the plans might have political consequences as
Perhaps the fear of socialism is based on someone reasoning this way: “if we socialize medicine, that will constrain our economic prosperity. If our economy struggles, it will be more difficult for people to get rich. I'm not-rich and I want to be, so I cannot support socialized medicine.”
This line of reasoning seems also to be based on the 'American Dream' which from the perspective of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman might be more accurately described as the "American Delusion" or the "American Psychosis." American children are taught that we all can get rich if we work hard enough for it. Some in fact accomplish this, and they are celebrated for confirming this ideology and for inspiring others to try for the same. But looking at the probabilities of an average person getting rich by their own means, one would seem to be better under a socialist economic system and playing the lottery each day. At least that way they have their basic necessities well-provided-for while they try to get rich against overwhelming odds.
I think a root problem is greed: both the greed of those denying every citizen health care, as well as the greed of average citizens who reject a socialized system because it frustrates their greedy delusions about their own financial future.
Many artists also have dreams. And these make their financial hardships meaningful or irrelevant in the larger picture of their lives. But the artist’s dreams are not based on the plan to sacrifice financial well-being now so that they may one day be over-abundant with it. In a way, they follow an even more profitable 'economics' than that. They do not trade their well-being now for a lottery ticket. Each moment of dedication now to their arts, even at the expense of their financial well-being, produces the immediate return of creation. Yet, the delusional American financial dreamer invests now for something that most likely will never pay-back, and if it does, not until many years later after much sacrifice in the mean time. But the artist gets pay-back from moment one. Artists will develop talents, abilities, and a oeuvre of works. And although their creations may be priced for sale, really artworks challenge our sense of material values. Something about a creative work speaks a value to us that we cannot reduce to bare economic goods.
Other Americans might reject the American dream in favor of religious ideals. This seems to translate into something productive only when these ideals induce one to perform community service. However, one does not need religious ideas to be committed to serving the public.
The artist is a giver. Often we see the sacrifices young artists make to get started. And we see their dreams and visions. They give without getting much in return from society. While financial American dreams are based on the desire to get high returns of payback from society, artist-dreams seem more about maximizing how they can give firstly to humanity. Morally speaking their efforts might not be more honorable than anyone else's. They could be driven by the selfishness of their egos.
But my observation is not a moral one. It should be obvious already that providing health care to all citizens, whether that cripples the economy or not, is the moral decision. What I suggest with the artist example is a different sense of economics. If we are driven by the desire to contribute to humanity without financial returns, then we get in exchange things like artistic works and the knowledge that our existence made a positive impact in the world. In a sense, the value of these things 'transcends' whatever value we might attribute to material things. A person who feels good about the contribution they have made to society would not need luxury objects to cover-over the emotional depravations in their lives. Also, the feeling of creating something new is already immensely rewarding. Not to mention the fact that whatever artwork they create itself alone gives rewarding feelings. We know this by listening to a Beethoven symphony, seeing a Cézanne painting, watching Shakespeare, reading Dostoyevsky, and so on. However, those who devote their lives to making money will need large sums of it to distract them from the pointlessness of their material values.
I think beginning socialized medicine will be an initial step to healing many Americans of their financial psychosis. With medical bills taken care-of, they will not need to equate wealth with personal survival. Then also, they can see as viable alternate ways to devote their energies.
A society merely of artists might not last, unless there are enough people who make an art out of providing the society with the basic necessities of life. Fortunately, artistic talent is rare. I am not suggesting that we all become artists. Rather, I suggest we learn about economics from artists, how they get immediate returns of things that transcend our normal sense of material value. Suppose everyone devotes their work, no matter the job, to contributing to society. Then in that case, receiving a gift from someone is not to be greedy, because they were giving it freely to begin with. But taking from other people would be greedy. If everyone is contributing with the spirit of giving, then no one is profiting off of other people. Likewise, people would suffer fewer emotional gaps that could be filled by money.]
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/18/lyons/
