The American dream is why America is a sick society

The "American Dream" is part of the mythos and civil religion present in the United States, it is ingrained into our heads as soon as we start consuming media, and is exactly the reason why the United States is doomed to figurative sickness. In general, the American Dream is known to most people as "the goal of owning a house in the suburbs, with an SUV and family - that everyone has a shot to achieve through free and fair competition". This definition can be reduced down to "accumulate and hoard wealth", but there is a caveat: you are expected to obey culturally accepted norms and methods to achieve this. In America, you are evaluated based on individual achievement above all else.

Of the many institutions in America, none is more powerful than the Free Market, the military, academia, civil service, and many other institutions bend the knee to the free market, and because of this capitulation we do not have proper healthcare, social services, recreation, etc. This dominance influences the personal actions of many people, even if they do not realize that they are being influenced. You have probably noticed that schools serve the economy, and higher education is particularly only valued as a means to joining the workforce with "skilled labor"; the economy devalues education as anything other than a jobs training program. For me, this appeared as being educated in particular on SalesForce, ArcGIS, SAP, and Adobe at my midwestern polytechnic university, with the sole objective at getting a job right out of college (which didn't happen anyways). Obviously, politics are also subservient to the economy in America, with almost any mention of social spending being immediately countered by "what about the economy" or "think about the budget" - politics is no longer a means of setting policy for national development, but is actually a means of securing monetary reward for a select few.

In America, crime is always being discussed as a major issue, but without any reflection about why this is a persistent issue in America. The answer is simple: the American Dream is criminogenic. When a culture sets a goal of wealth accumulation, but fails to make that goal accessible for large portions of the population, strain is created - which often leads to crime. A society that is suffering from strain cannot retain any sense of moral authority relating to normative controls - that is a society in a state of anomie. The sociologist Robert Merton wrote in 1938:

only when a system of cultural values extols, virtually above all else, certain common symbols of success for the population at large while its social structure rigorously restricts or completely eliminates access to approved modes of acquiring these symbols for a considerable part of the same population, that anti-social behavior ensues on a considerable scale

Individuals are socialized to believe that the ultimate goal is personal wealth and upward mobility, but they are largely unable to obtain the means to reach that goal, they are forced to cope in a variety of ways. Merton's 5 categories of coping are listed below:

1. Conformity. The conformist accepts the goals of society and the legitimate means of acquiring them.

2. Innovation. Innovators accept the goals but significantly reject or alter the means of acquiring the goals; put simply, they cheat. This is shown by the person who embraces drug trafficking as a career instead of socially acceptable options.

3. Ritualism. The third type of adaptation to structural strain is ritualism. Ritualists reject the societal goals but accept the means. These people recognize that they will never achieve the goals due to personal inability or other factors. Ritualism is demonstrated by the student who keeps going to classes, but has no intention of graduating.

4. Retreatism. This is an adaptation whereby the individual rejects both the goals of society and the legitimate means to attain them. This mode of adaptation is most likely to be chosen when the socially approved means are perceived as being unlikely to result in success and the conventional goals are seen as unattainable. This often results in substance abuse and self-destructive thought.

5. Rebellion. The final mode of adaptation is rebellion. Rebels not only reject the goals and means but replace them with new ones.

A society that forces people into a strained existence cannot be a healthy society, and instead of confronting the fact that American is founded on an idea that creates unhealthy society, we continue to throw people into jail for nonconformity which only serves to create more criminals. Until a critical mass of people confront capitalism and the American dream as a problem, American society will be plagued by a social illness that fosters apathy, antisocial behavior, and despair.

deviant behavior is a normal response to abnormal conditions