Seth Trent explains how the suburban fantasy is moving aside to allow for a different definition of success.
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Before I ventured out and into the glamorous world of apartment dwelling, I grew up in a variety of homes: a trailer in a trailer park, a trailer all-alone on four acres of grass-land and trees, an antique farm house with no neghbors, to a home with a few neighbors, and eventually a home in suburban America with too many neighbors.
For many American’s getting to the suburbs is the end all be all American Dream still. Craving the providence and convenience of highly socialized cities and towns, as evolution has taught us to do. It’s held true since before the massive birthing of model-homes that grew out of Post WWII America.
Let’s wind the clock back twenty, fifty, a thousand years.
Historically, man’s successes have been measured by what he could claim as his own. Caveman A has big shiny rock, and is now more important than Caveman B who has no rock. Nobleman A has a farm and a silver mine, who is a better suitor than Nobleman B, who has neither. Man A is more successful than Man B because he has a big house in the suburbs and two American made automobiles parked in his drive-way and a 401k.
The trend still continues today, some men are still obsessed with their own success and the subjective factors that just don’t matter: have the best phone, the sharpest clothes, the coolest car, the biggest house. There are some things evolution just can’t weed out, but sit a depression era man in the same room as a millennial and the differences in the cultural perceptions on what makes a successfully man are palpable.
The Great Recession put a lot of overly ambitious people in check. Many people who had taken out loans on houses they couldn’t afford to begin with lost them, and as usual the middle and lower classes suffered direly. American’s began to see the dangers of wanting more than we actually needed. We started paying attention to our food, our buying habits, our commodities, our way of life, and how wrong we may have been to want a life that we were always taught to believe was “successful”.
I have three college degrees, my dog, and this laptop to my name and not much else. Apart from some impressive student loan debt. I’m happy that everyday new articles, and documentaries are being written and made about the shifting cultural values of what measures a successful man. A successful man can be the simple organic farmer. It can be the man living in a 200sqft house on the back of a trailer he built himself. It can the he man saving money by livingly cheaply instead of spending it on things he didn’t need anyway.
Man is quickly discovering that he needs to be living smarter, not larger.
The American dream is no longer a game of quantity, but of quality and sustainability, and for the contemporary man that distinction will make all the difference in terms of his success.
So stop working your ass off for the life you really don’t want anyway, and start living for the life you really need.
The old American Dream of suburbia is dead, you’re free.
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Photo: Flickr/JD Hancock
Is this sour grapes? I’m all for living simply and not living beyond my means, but with this economy, is the writer making lemonade out of the lemons he’s been given? It’s one thing to choose a simple lifestyle; it’s another to have it thrust on you. Finally, can I find one more fruits themed reference for this post?
The American Dream was killed by CEOs who laid off workers and outsourced jobs for profit. And by politicians who helped them do it.
It’s funny Wes, seems that you and I are attracted by the same articles. As they say “great minds ….” You hit the nail on the head! … I’ve had the misfortune of having to talk to a “service representative” for my cable provider, need I say any more? Forbes “Almost two thirds of GM’s jobs are in other countries.” …this is after we, the public bailed them out. But some companies stay, like Boeing. “$2 billion Boeing invested in a South Carolina plant, which created 3,800 new jobs. It turns out that Boeing’s $2 billion investment went to a… Read more »