The idea for the dream and the pursuit of happiness comes from frontier life in the 18th century, when people started to move from the east coast to the west in hopes of finding a better life and to become wealthy. The characteristic for those people were determination, because life was hard and even dangerous, thus stunting most efforts to “make it”. The pursuit of happiness itself also gave the hope, that greatness can and will be achieved through hard work. Later on to the century “The American Dream” was better formulated and more people throughout America set out to achieve it.
19th century and “The American Dream”
“The American Dream” is and has been a fundamental part in forming the culture and social structure of the Americas, mostly …show more content…
A simple explanation into “The American Dream” would be – to emigrate to America, settle down and become wealthy by working, and definitely not by being born into a rich family/nobility, this is achieved through equality of opportunity for it creates equal access to education and the job market, thus every individual has the same chance of success. To this underlying understanding of the dream, individuals add their own means to success, weather to gain wealth year-by-year or to become rich instantaneously. For example, the Californian gold rush of 1849 brought a hundred thousand men to America with the intention of getting rich, having “The American Dream”, but not by working hard but my mere chance. Also, for a lot of people “The American Dream” is connected with becoming rich, but for others, the dream is not so materialistic, for these people, “The American Dream” means the chance of living a simple, happy, free and most importantly, a fulfilling life. The previous is the reason why the term “American Dream” has yet to be given a universally accepted definition, which in turn gave people the freedom to form and chance the understanding of the dream through-out the …show more content…
This upheld “The American Dream” because there were still many people who emigrated to America following their dream, and not only from Europe but now from almost all around the world, people from all nationalities and religions. This changed further the social structure of America and coined the term “Melting Pot” – all people from around the world will form a more heterogeneous society and will have a unified culture, with the intention of removing all prejudices and preserving “The American Dream”. Although the dream was mostly upheld, later in the century, during the world wars, many people actually emigrated to America not in search of “The American Dream” but a country without actual war. This, in turn, suppressed the pursuit of happiness for some decades and had an impact on people, whether “The American Dream” is still worthy of pursuit. This recession was also greatly influenced by the Great Depression in the 1930s, an economic crash, which on one hand made the dream more influential, but on the other, more unreachable and because of this, people lived more miserable lives than they had before. The focus of “The American Dream” leaned from materialism to the
19th century and “The American Dream”
“The American Dream” is and has been a fundamental part in forming the culture and social structure of the Americas, mostly …show more content…
A simple explanation into “The American Dream” would be – to emigrate to America, settle down and become wealthy by working, and definitely not by being born into a rich family/nobility, this is achieved through equality of opportunity for it creates equal access to education and the job market, thus every individual has the same chance of success. To this underlying understanding of the dream, individuals add their own means to success, weather to gain wealth year-by-year or to become rich instantaneously. For example, the Californian gold rush of 1849 brought a hundred thousand men to America with the intention of getting rich, having “The American Dream”, but not by working hard but my mere chance. Also, for a lot of people “The American Dream” is connected with becoming rich, but for others, the dream is not so materialistic, for these people, “The American Dream” means the chance of living a simple, happy, free and most importantly, a fulfilling life. The previous is the reason why the term “American Dream” has yet to be given a universally accepted definition, which in turn gave people the freedom to form and chance the understanding of the dream through-out the …show more content…
This upheld “The American Dream” because there were still many people who emigrated to America following their dream, and not only from Europe but now from almost all around the world, people from all nationalities and religions. This changed further the social structure of America and coined the term “Melting Pot” – all people from around the world will form a more heterogeneous society and will have a unified culture, with the intention of removing all prejudices and preserving “The American Dream”. Although the dream was mostly upheld, later in the century, during the world wars, many people actually emigrated to America not in search of “The American Dream” but a country without actual war. This, in turn, suppressed the pursuit of happiness for some decades and had an impact on people, whether “The American Dream” is still worthy of pursuit. This recession was also greatly influenced by the Great Depression in the 1930s, an economic crash, which on one hand made the dream more influential, but on the other, more unreachable and because of this, people lived more miserable lives than they had before. The focus of “The American Dream” leaned from materialism to the