stars2man: Wreck Havoc on the World: "As an entertainer, Kaufman submerged his identity beneath a multiplicity of personas, enacting the American belief that the self can and should be endlessly remade for the sake of happiness and success. He did this so rigorously and consistently that he exposed the internal contradictions of America’s ideology of self-invention."
I found this very interesting, as early as I can remember every year that I started a new semester in school I would feel all inspired to create a new persona for myself. I remember the excitement and fun I had each time knowing I could fit in with a new collection of people with ease, just playing a new role. My mom would always take my three siblings and I out to buy new school cloths and school supplies so it was a family thing that we all would get excited about. Course I would always feel so weird about it, as I was never prone to exploit my upper-middle class parents as much as my spoiled siblings. However, this 'training' I got comes through even now as I always get this feeling of the calm before the storm during the days before school started again....
It follows in this article with how James Truslow Adams first writes the phrase “the American Dream” in the 1931 book The Epic of America which also spoke about the resulting lies:
"how size and statistics of material development came to be more important in our eyes than quality and spiritual values; how in the ever-shifting advance of the frontier we came to lose sight of the past in hopes for the future; how we forgot to live, in the struggle to ‘make a living’; how our education tended to become utilitarian or aimless; and how other unfortunate traits only too notable today were developed."
Course what saddens me is how this sick perversion of materialism in the American Dream is now being forced on the world with endless TV programming and movies supporting some materialistic fantasy that the whole world hungers to achieve now. As children we were all convinced to get the newest crap sold on TV, and would be greedy and even compete with each other and our neighbors just to have more. Wanting everything the "Jones" had of course, with little regard for how sick and destructive it is. Most American Sheeple are trapped in the resulting debt, slaves to a pay check destined to bring poisonous foods and endless pharmaceuticals to mask the disease programmed into their brains . . . .
This article mentioned the futility of challenging this endless dream which began with the European invasion that decimated millions of indigenous people at an extermination rate 95 to 99 percent by 1900 before the industrial revolution dramatically accelerated the environmental extraction "assault in the 19th century and the petrochemical revolution began poisoning the world more intensively in the 20th." But then proposed new ideas to diffuse the American Dream:
"around the idea that “peace is patriotic” . . . Perhaps I can take some solace in knowing that ... my argument was right. But it’s not enough just to be right, of course -- we want to be effective. Is an argument irrelevant if it can’t be communicated widely in the mainstream? Is that the fate of an assault on the idea of an American Dream? . . . Whatever is coming, we need sharper analysis, stronger vehicles for action, and more resilient connections among people. In short, this is a cadre-building moment."
