American Nightmare

Adrian Peck
English 111 01H
20 September 2012
American Nightmare

Aldous Huxley predicted the future. Although we may not live in the World State or prey to Ford, the man was on to something. Huxley, the author of Brave New World, believed the government would control you psychologically by surrounding you with infinite pleasures and a system that requires you to work to get them. His novel detailed the consumption of soma, the government supplied drug, and complete conformity with peers. The people of his “World State” were told what to buy, what to eat and even what to like. Eighty-one years after it was published, the resemblance is uncanny. We live in a world where convenience stores have specific smells to make people buy more, and cigarette companies target twelve year olds by product placement in movies. Alcohol, an addicting substance and judgment inhibitor is the drink of choice for most people age eighteen and older. Above all, America is the conformity Mecca.
But how does someone have an identity at all in this type of society? Is it even possible? How can we know who we truly are when we are told who to be? We are becoming slaves to our own desires and there’s nothing we can do to slow the momentum. The American dream just became a nightmare and we can’t wake up.

One of the issues that is ever-present in our society is the educational system. We have had the same exact structure throughout the history of education. Its structure is based off of the mass production model (Robinson). It teaches every student the same exact material without any regard for the individual student. At an early age, conformity is forced on to people. During the most impressionable years of our lives, we are taught what “normal” is. Any person who doesn’t fit the mold of “normal” is an outcast from the very beginning. They are quietly segregated from “normal” society and mocked. They are subjected to social deprivation and labeled “different”. They are punished for trying to have their own identity because it doesn’t have exactly the same ideals that the conforming identity does. The school system segregates them and has been getting away with it since the first school. We need to adopt an educational system that promotes building an identity and focuses on the individual needs of a student. Sir Ken Robinson says “Learning happens in the minds and souls, not in the databases of multiple-choice tests”. If people were to be able to find what they were best at doing instead of being told what to learn and what to choose as a career, they would be able to find their identities. Instead, countless people will go their entire lives without finding a trace of their true self.

Christopher McCandless was a man who stood up to society. He was the subject of the movie Into the Wild. He was a brilliant student with rich a rich upbringing who realized that he didn’t know his true identity. He set out to abandon society as a transcendentalist and quit basing his decisions off of popular media. He embarked on an adventure to see who he really was without being told who he was supposed to be. What he did was escape the controls that the world had on him, but not very many people have that kind of courage. People are afraid to escape conformity because they do not know what it is like to not be conformed. After years in schools where students were disciplined for thinking outside the box, adults find that it is a characteristic also found in everyday life. People try so hard to hide their identities that they forget who they truly are. As the years keep trickling by, it will become harder and harder to break free of the qualities that we make up for ourselves.

With technology increasing exponentially, humans keep getting more attached to the virtual world. From essentially anywhere on the face of the planet, a person can access the internet. There is no longer a need for people to see each other face to face because they are kept in constant contact with each other. Even in 1921, Albert Einstein said, "It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” If he took one step into our world today, he wouldn’t be able to comprehend just how much technology influences our every day lives. The friends we choose are a critical part of our identity. The technology that we use for communication changes the significance that friends have on our lives. Before social media came to be, a person would have a small number of very close friends who they could communicate with very comfortably. Now, a person can have thousands of “friends” who they know nothing about and probably wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation with them. Somewhere along the line, quantity of friends became more important than the quality of friends.
Of course, all of this technology might not seem bad, and in a sense it isn’t. We have the power of infinite knowledge on any subject in the world in the bottom of our pocket. We even have the power to communicate with people no matter where we are. But with all this knowledge comes passivity and egotism. We don’t have to go out and discover information for ourselves anymore. Instead of learning, we just know. No one can question our brains if the internet tells us so.

Why do we live such trivial lives? We focus so much of our time, energy and earnings on purchasing items to show off to people we don’t know. There isn’t any pride in work anymore because it’s only seen as a vehicle to our material addiction. An employed person today will spend nearly half their paycheck on items that aren’t necessary (US Dept of Labor). This addiction stems from America telling its people to spend their money in any way possible, even if they do not have it. One of the causes of the Great Depression was installment plans that allowed users to buy expensive items, such as cars, for little money up front with the promise of paying monthly installments. This permitted people with low incomes to buy cars they could not afford. By the time the banks and dealerships realized this though, they were already out of money. With businesses closing rapidly, America was settled with the biggest depression of all time. Our addiction isn’t only a Twenty-First Century issue; it’s been around as long as popular media and consumerism.

Identity today is the name that they put on a credit card. That little piece of plastic seemingly holds everything that could matter to a person. The card itself has every piece of information on a person and it holds money that the person doesn’t even necessarily have. To “curb” our addiction to spending our own money, the government lets us buy with plastic cards that can hold as much money as you wish. These cards though, steal the souls of their owners. Without losing a cent from their bank account, they can buy anything and promise that they’ll pay back while the banks sit there and watch as people can’t figure out why their homes are being foreclosed and their cars towed. It’s like a heroin addict trying to get help with his disease by going to his dealer. The dealer tells the user that he should use even more heroin and watches as his body slowly deteriorates into nothing. After all, the more money we spend, the better we are, right?

Is there a way to escape this fate, though? The clock keeps ticking and no one is moving in the right direction. America needs to have a cultural revolution. We need to realize that the only thing we have in our lives is our self. No person should ever feel pressured to make a decision based on what the government or another person thinks is best for them. We grew up believing in complete freedom, but are still stuck in the paradox. The government will give you as much freedom as you want, as long as you abide by its rules and follow all of the guidelines imposed on you. The American people need to wake up and comprehend that even though our lives may seem free, we are becoming puppets in the hands of our governments. We need to collectively turn off our TV’s, go outside, and find ourselves. It won’t work unless we all do it. One person who breaks conformity is “crazy”, but if millions break it, it becomes a cultural change.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first”. America needs to take its first step towards distinguishing its masters. The power needs to be given back to the people like it was intended to be. Our mindset needs to be more focused on fulfilling our needs than fulfilling our supposed leaders. We have the freedom to learn what we want and need to learn and not what the government tells us to learn. As human beings, we all have the power to stand up to this ultimate control and change society to a modern, organic culture, but until that happens, we’ll just keep taking the soma.