The American Dream

When awakening from a dream state, what do you have?*

Hollywood, Bollywood, and Nollywood are all places where dreams are dressed up to look real—where the down-trodden rise, and the common man believes in the impossible.

And dreams are exactly this. They may help stimulate a population, steer it toward a national goal, even serve as fuel for collective ambition. But they are still dreams, nonetheless.

We all love the cinema. We love stories, books, and theatre. That’s entertainment—the kind that adds colour to our days and lets us escape the dull.

But the American Dream was more than entertainment. It was a wholesale hypnotic marketing exercise designed to perpetuate the spirit of desire.

Desire drives consumerism, which in turn makes the economic machine gush with gratitude. Growth indexes climb. Debt—national and personal—rises tenfold. And all the while, the world stares on in wonderment at this seemingly idyllic nation.

And now we awaken.
And see the naked emperor in all his selfish glory.

Unfettered greed and unchecked self-interest always lead here.

Perhaps, when we look more closely, the dream-feeding machines in The Matrix weren’t so far off. Only, the machines aren’t mechanical. They are systems—systems of greed, distraction, and illusion.

So what is the new dream?

Is it merely to survive?
To hope that what we leave behind for our children and grandchildren can still be saved?
Can we imagine something more dignant—a world where dignity is not just possessed, but shown and acknowledged, especially when one life enters the space of another?

Or are we still crashing headlong into self-inflicted annihilation?

We like to believe there are others like us—on distant planets, in other dimensions—while we perfect new ways to export our own destruction in the name of progress.

But again:
Dreams are cheap.
Until they’re not.

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