A New Dream of America
“…art is not mere entertainment or decoration, it has meaning, and we both want and need to fathom that meaning — not fear, dismiss, or construct superficial responses told to us by authorities.” — Toni Morrison
I didn’t intend to write a piece about Toni Morrison from the jump. Neither did I,after I learned of her passing. There are many writers who can and have done so with much greater eloquence than me and who are much more familiar with her work than I am.
But what I have been interested in doing is probing the concept of the American Dream; asking whose entitled to it,seeing what it’s done to possibility, wondering whose entitled to uphold it, and what a new vision of it might look like. It could just be that time of my life where the idea of independence, home, and what I’m doing to procure it are more important. A few of my friends are buying homes and getting engaged, while some of them still live at home and live free. Obviously, it varies.
But what doesn’t vary is the ideal of the American Dream in them and the fundamental ethic of hard work, even if the definition of it varies from person to person. James Truslow Adams coined the term in his 1931 book entitled Epic of America and defined it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement”. Regardless of occupation, all of my friends assert a level of ability that should translate to achievement through opportunity, yet many of them live paycheck to paycheck and still lack the stability that’s needed to develop wealth.
Although some of us might have the ability to reach the things we imagined out of the rhetoric of the American Dream, a great number of us still suffer under the brutality of inaccessibility. Of being unable to access the life both better and richer for them and their family. We’ve know for awhile now that the idea of the American Dream that is a fallacy that’s been sophisticated into becoming a system. A destination or a goal that intends to trap people in the persistence of it’s pursuit. For the vast majority of us that system is all that we’ll ever know.
So I spent time considering it and considering the life that I want to live. What must be done to get that, and how to do it in a way that doesn’t inevitably trap me in a system that only profits the rich. I realized I couldn’t take the approached handed to me and had to probe the possibilities in a more creative way. I had to not only deal with these ideals, but reorient and radicalize them. From artist past and present I understood that It’s no longer about the American Dream, but about how we dream a new America, and more importantly who we allow to dream a new America for us. What inevitably worked it’s way into this experience was the brilliant insight and force of Toni Morrison’s wisdom. “The destiny of the 21st century will be shaped by the possibility or the collapse of a shareable world”, She asserts in one of her essays and goes on to say “Isn’t it reasonable to assume that projecting earthly human life into the future may not be the disaster movie we are constantly invited to enjoy, but a reconfiguration of what we are here for?” Why work to understand and live through the ideas of the American Dream, when it has brought us to such an impoverished stated today. No, Mrs. Morrison asks us to look at new possibilities and re-configure a more radical understanding, and through this new understanding I learned The American Dream isn’t just about a home. It is about is about our Ideals. The politics of space, and place, and inevitably possibility.
The New Dream of America then, will direct and guide us into the accessibility and entitlement of those ideas. But more, It provides us with the responsibility of mapping those ideas to something physical and quantifiable, and not leaving them empty rhetoric. Not just for those who have the privilege to stand outside the system, but for all, since through crafting and realizing this new dream, the old system will no longer exist.
Toni Morrison has one of the most acute understandings of the process that takes Ideas into substance and reality. She taught me the path doesn’t flow only in one direction, but that the glory or terrors of reality can also feed back into the ideas that prompted them. What we must learn to transfer back to ideas from reality is a truth, honesty, and authenticity about the effects and failings of our ideas. Where they’ve been taken and what that’s done. Although truth and honesty have never been valued ideas for the American Conscious, It is the most valuable currency that the artist produces and exchanges.
The New Dream of America finds it’s ideals through the language of the artist, and it’s no coincidence that arts accessibility and it’s contemporary flourishing has been celebrated and supported almost into ubiquity. It’s also no coincidence that many arts programs today are geared more towards serving the community and destabilizing the common relationship of artist and audience. This is literally the act of giving the community the voice to recreate America. Toni knew more than anyone this is the often overlooked necessity of art and the artist. Breaking the barriers that once stood in it’s place to create something new.
Nothing stands in the way of technological advancement and our supposed superior determination of intellect. In this sense, we have progressed quiet well. We’ve “progressed” through the numerous wars we’ve enacted and we’ve “progressed” through the numerous atrocities that we suffer. Toni Morrison realized this when she says “It is possible to wonder if we have progressed psychologically, intellectually, emotionally, no further than 1942, when Spain cleaned itself of Jews, to 2004, when Sudan blocks food and medicine and remains content to watch the slow starvation of it’s people”. She goes on to list many other atrocities on a global scale that we’ve “progressed” through yet, obviously we haven’t progressed in the very necessary realm of human development, both emotional and psychological.
The American Dream, if upheld and pursued how it is now, will continue this process of “progress”. But through the language of the artist, a new dream of america can be realized where we can redefine progress in a way that doesn’t capitalize off the errors of others. I realized a new Dream of America is the only way I can continue to live fully in collective power with the community around me. A way to consider not just my own perspective, but a way to respect the perspective of those who are often overlooked. This new dream demands an effort, like all art does, to invigorate the possibilities of space and place in life. But now, once it’s invigorated it has the added responsibility of being made real and tangible. Bearing the responsibility of an actualized dream.
In short, the only answer I have in how to pursue my new dream of America, stems from these poignant words from Toni Morrison herself that both articulate what’s been done and map the possibility of what’s to come with this new way of thinking.
“Danger of losing our humanity must be met with humanity.”
I’d wager we can find ample evidence to indicate our humanity has already been lost, but also thanks to her, I’d wager we now have a way of meeting all our crises with the humanity they deserve.
