3/18 - Breathing Dreams Like Air

I think the "American Dream" is changing every day. Like Mrs. Genesky stated, the original dream involved immigrants coming to this country for a better life, one with rights and freedoms and equality. I see that form of the dream present still in my mom, who immigrated from South Korea, and in my grandparents and great-grandparents, Jewish immigrants from Russia and Spain. However, I think it's important to note the "American Dream" that nowadays comes from right within our own nation. Pictured above is a shot from The Social Network, one of my favorite movies and the film I analyzed for my Oral Presentation in film. When doing research for the assignment, I read lots of reviews and articles that pointed to the fact that the film's theme and point of appeal for many audience members was the American Dream. The Social Network tells the scandalous and dramatic beginnings of the social media site Facebook, revolving around its main creator, Mark Zuckerberg. In my opinion, this film shows an accurate portrayal of the new American Dream. It is one in which entrepreneurship is glorified, and young people are more determined than ever to step away from convention and make it big during this terrible economy and these overcrowded and cruelly competitive education systems and workforces. Whether baby boomers acknowledge it or not, millennials and Generation Z face vastly different and arguably more difficult obstacles. 

My definition of wealth will unfortunately not be quite as demure or altruistic as others' will be. In my opinion, wealth is ultimately and largely to do with money itself. If I ever consider myself wealthy, I will have so much money that I won't ever have to worry about paying for anything I want or need, and I would still have a considerable amount left over after donating or taking care of other people in my life. Still, though, to have ultimate wealth in my eyes means you are also rich in genuinely wonderful people and fulfilling careers and worthwhile causes.

I think there is still quite a stigma in America about being poor. One could see this stigma as surviving from the times of Gatsby, the "Roaring 20s", in which everyone wanted to be seen as rich in this age of new money and great importance of social status. Today, I think people still try to hide their financial struggles, because it's still seen as an embarrassing thing in society. I've had a couple friends who constantly make excuses as to why they can't go out or attend an event because they have been too mortified to tell their friends that they can't afford it, that they can't keep up with their wealthier friends. 

Also in America, I think there's a certain unfair expectation of poor people from middle and upper classes of those people to get themselves out of poverty and debt. When you have never really had to struggle financially, it's quite easy to look around at our "great", "opportunistic" nation and think it must be easy to find success and pull yourself out of a bad situation. But this is simply not reality. 

My attitude towards wealth and poverty may seem a bit hippie-ish when you've read the whole thing, but I do love kombucha and I drive a Subaru so who's to say that I'm not a hippie. I personally strive to achieve a lot of monetary wealth. I want to be comfortable, I want to be able to fly across the world if I feel like it, and I want to to pay back my parents for all the hard work and sacrifices they've made to give me the best possible set up for my life. However, I am all for the redistribution of wealth to accommodate the lower classes. It really is only fair that big corporations (and wealthier individuals) pay higher taxes than the poor. I think America has lost some of its humanity in dealing with these situations. How can one complain about getting taxed a little extra if it will give a single mom of five good food for her family? We need to stop weighting inconveniences the same amount as needs. How I see things, there's nothing wrong with being selfish in the regard that you want a lot of personal wealth because you can still be selfless by keeping a perspective that acknowledges we are all just humans and so, all humans must be taken care of by one another.