There is a popular saying in America that offers succinct insight into our culture. I think it was coined by Gen-X, but I’m not sure. What I do know is that this cliché is unique, because the only way to understand it is by hearing the speaker’s tone.
The expression is a reply to the American greeting, “How’s it going?”, and, at face value, the response, “I’m living the dream,” sounds nice. However, as all native speakers know, this can imply that the person is elated, or absolutely miserable!
Which, full circle, is the best example I can think of to illustrate the impossibly inconsistent reality of “life in America.” For some, “life’s a dream,” but for others, it’s an endless, devastating slog of 40+hour work weeks with little to no time off.
I won’t bore you with statistics, but suffice it to say it’s common knowledge now that Americans, for decades, have been taking less vacations and paid-time off than other first-world countries, even the ones bosses love to stereotype as “worse than us.”
Why does this matter? It matters because Americans now use, “I’m too tired from work” as an excuse for everything, even giving up on ourselves and others, and it’s harming society. People are now “too tired” to be healthy, spend time with family, keep in touch with friends, and care about their community, and the result? Obesity, crime, suicide, and “low information” rates are skyrocketing “from sea to shining sea.”
I started writing about the conspicuous meanings for “I’m living the dream” because it’s a “binary term” that exposes our division, but I also think it’s important to study because it uses sarcasm, a relatively new, but now stable aspect of American culture.
Sarcasm is my favorite rhetorical device—FULL STOP. I’m deeply sarcastic, and it gets me in trouble all the time. For example, I often offend others with “wry jokes” about my son’s abduction, and I recently made a sarcastic joke about an item in a stranger’s grocery cart that 99% of us would get, but she didn’t, and I hurt her feelings.
However, the older I get, the more I see the disturbing reason for why and how people like me are so attracted to sarcasm. It’s because, sometimes, it’s a device we can use to deceive others when we’re emotionally broken and can’t handle our devastation.
Like, I obviously don’t find anything funny about what my ex-wife has done with our son and how it’s affected him, me, my family, and even my friends, all of whom abruptly lost access to a boy we love and had been investing our hearts into.
Ergo, it’s probably not funny when someone is asked, “How are you?” and their impulse is to employ a sarcastic comment about The American Dream to mask the fact that they’re emotionally broken from their participation in our “work culture.”
Which makes sense, since some jobs are degrading and others are meaningless, and in both cases, they embitter the person to the point where they feel like they aren’t valuable or valued, both of which create resentment. This is how “classism” works.
But there’s a third reason many Americans have a sarcastic opinion of our “work culture,” and this is why many of us feel like social order is breaking down.
The other reason our working-class has resentment against the system/culture is because many Americans have jobs that are not degrading and do have meaning, but they’re forced to do it so much that it bleeds into their “regular life” and this is why we now use the scariest term I’ve ever heard in my life: “work-life balance.”
If you really think about this term, it’s psychotic. It implies that we have a life, and then a “non-life” called work. That’s deranged, and it ‘promotes’ rage and apathy.
And before you call me “pink,” I know that “work” and capitalism aren’t the problem. People are resentful in socialist and communist countries too. What people resent is feeling like they’re not helping the team, or that the team is taking them for granted.
Here’s my advice (because you shouldn’t complain unless you offer a solution):
Few, if any of us, can stop corporations from “doing what corporations do,” but all of us can give compassion to people with degrading or meaningless jobs, and we can also show compassion to wealthy people who were bamboozled into trading free time for money. These people might have more than others think they need, but they also suffer as they age and realize that instead of “living,” they worked all the time.
The point I’m trying to make, and I think it’s consistent, is that with deep, philosophical inquiry, it’s possible to understand people who are not like us and whom we will never be like, and with this process comes great peace. No wise person ever said “love everyone,” let alone “like everyone.” What they say, over and over again, is “accept everything,” which includes “bad” systems and “bad” people.
I love the environment and so do you! After all, the environment gives us everything we love and need, from the oxygen we breathe, to the junk food we eat, standing over the trashcan at 11pm (Just me?). That’s why I think you should listen to my interview with David Auge, a prominent figure in the field of environmental management.
David is on a mission to transform the humanities' approach to looking at sustainability issues. He is a Certified Sustainable Development Professional, Energy Manager, Hazardous Material Manager, a registered Professional Engineer. He’s also really, really, like super-duper smart. Let’s hope osmosis works! Listen here.
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