When I asked people about what the American Dream is to them the most profound answer I received was, “I don’t know, I’d have to think about it.” This answer struck me because it was mine as well. After sitting down and pondering over it for the past several weeks I’ve decided that the American Dream, in its essence, is really just thinking the way you want to and expecting everyone else to agree.

Now… not everyone in America thinks the same way. They exude this essence of Americana in their own way. When America first began the revolutionaries decided we want to do things this way and frankly if you don’t like it you can take your tea and stick it where? Since then all Americans have been the same way. Every major movement in America has been centered on rebellion. In just the 19th century there are many examples. Americans invented the union when they decided we want to make this much money and if you don’t like it we won’t work. The civil rights movement in the 60’s was sparked because Americans got tired of not being treated like Americans.

When the Framers said, “In God We Trust,” that God was the dream. It is what truly drives America. In order to avoid the pitfall of not quite realizing your dream one must have faith. Just like any other god the American Dream needs believers to fuel it on. Like Christianity, the dream has many sublets and apartments but all are essentially the same. The Dream lives in us.

But the American Dream has gotten obscured over time. Very many Americans don’t realize the dream. They see their lives as failures when they lose their paychecks to the keno machine, or when their car gets repossessed because they bounced too many checks. When immigrants moved over here from Ireland during the potato famine they were taking a gamble except their chips were fried not stamped. They were living the American dream and so are the teenagers of the world, rubber checking accounts and all. To them it all works out in the long run.

People spend their whole lives trying to realize what they see everyday. A new yoga therapy massage studio is open on Third St. now. Six men were apprehended for smuggling cocaine. Twelve eagle scouts graduate from the same high school in Mayville, ND. The news articles shown everyday are evidence enough. Everyone is fulfilling what he or she sees as right. No wonder Joseph Smith decided this blessed ground should be his Chosen Land for the coming of Christ and yada yada yada. Religion has been a common excuse for people to flock to the states. The puritans made their colonies, burned their witches, and tamed their britches all in the graceful name of the Dream.

America has plagued the entire world with its paradigm. If you don’t live in America or your society doesn’t resemble America in some way you most likely want to move to America. Whenever cultures have sprung up as anti-America groups we’ve been quick to use them as an anvil, because, of course, we must make the world safe for Democracy. Every single war America has been involved in is because of the Dream.

In a way the Dream has desensitized America. We’ve been so keen on rebellion that we’ve failed to stop and take a look at what we’re rebelling against. Our commercials become more scandalous, our music more loud, our children join cults, all in the name of free will. But we’ve lost a sense of culture for the most part. We have no ethos because every new generation plots out a new plan for how they should live their life. There are so many different ways you can choose to be an American today.

America has set itself up on a dangerous precipice. With the coming of new technologies such as cloning and genetic engineering we have no regiment of rules to guide us through the troubled times ahead. How should we then live if we can’t decide if making people smarter is unethical or beneficial to the human race? Most people don’t know, more people don’t care, and the rest of them believe if everyone else thought the way they did then we’d all understand the whole situation. The dream has gotten us to this point but will it take us further?

The only thing that can save America is it’s past. Our education system attempts to force a little history on all of us, but what Jay Leno is quick to point out with his Jay Walking skit is that many of us don’t know where we came from or why we’re here. That grasp for meaning is a driving force of the American Dream; it’s what everyone wants along with their nice cars and stereos. Wake up and open your eyes America; you want the dream, you’re living it.

Like any good virus or religion the dream has remade itself over and over again to tackle new hosts. It’s evolved and carried us through our age and then moved on to the next generation. The Dream will live on with or without us, but will we survive to see it pass?