Waking Up from the American Dream

The American Paradox: Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty

David G. Myers, Ph.D. (Yale University Press)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times .... " So
begins Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and so begins David G.
Myers' important book, The American Paradox.

What is the paradox? Simply put, it is this: As Americans have
grown richer, they have grown less content with their lives. No society
in the history of the world has ever enjoyed the standard of living
Americans know today: Incomes are up, prices are stable, unemployment is
down, life expectancy is rising; we enjoy more freedom and opportunity
than ever before. Even America's poor live well by world standards and by
the standards of history. Yet since 1960, the divorce rate has doubled,
teen suicide has tripled, violent crime has quadrupled, the prison
population has quintupled, and some estimates put the incidence of
depression in the year 2000 at ten times what it was in the year 1900.
Americans are less happy today than they were 40 years ago, despite the
fact that they make 2.5 times as much money. Myers' book documents this
paradox in eloquent and stunning detail.

How did we get into this mess? Myers pins the blame principally on
rampant individualism, fed by a commercial culture that encourages
materialism and a national media circus that makes the worst of human
behavior look normal. (His chapter on the media is a relentless and
savage critique of an industry he says has abandoned any shred of social
responsibility in its pursuit of profit while hiding behind the First
Amendment.) To undo the damage, Myers argues for a return to "moral
education" (he dispenses with the myth of value-free education), and a
rekindling of religious faith and practice. What de Tocqueville asserted
after he toured the United States almost 200 years ago, Myers supports
with facts: Religion is good for us.

It is hard not to be persuaded both by Myers' description of the
problems we face and by his recommendations for solutions. I know that I
am. Yet I think Myers neglects the most important piece of the puzzle: He
attacks materialism, but doesn't ask why people are materialistic. Could
it be because Americans have learned that they can't count on anyone but
themselves to provide things like health care and education for their
families? Myers appeals to the media to do the right thing, and asks
companies to adopt "family-friendly" policies. But why would they do so
when their only responsibility is to improve the profits of their
stockholders? It seems to me that there is a causal relationship between
the policies that have made us affluent and our growing unhappiness. In
our pursuit of wealth, we have removed constraints on businesses and
allowed the social safety net to erode. The ideology of the free market
is one of individualism, materialism and freedom from constraint, and
this ideology infects everything it touches.

We must acknowledge the many ways in which the free market erodes
much of what is good about our social life. The price we pay for
unmitigated freedom in the market is the neglect and decay of almost all
the social virtues that make life worth living. The free market may make
us richer, but it costs us the intimacy, commitment, caring, fairness and
loyalty that make us happy. It fills our bellies, but leaves us
spiritually hungry.

Conservative social critics such as William Bennett and George Will
condemn our culture for its loss of moral substance while at the same
time celebrating a political system that gives a free hand to the market.
The truth is that economic liberalism and cultural conservatism are
inherently incompatible and self-defeating. For the sake of our future
well-being and the well-being of coming generations, we can't let them
get away with this nonsense any longer. Americans would do well to read
Myers' book and use his evidence as a weapon against virtue's deadliest
enemy--the free market.

Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin R Cartwright Professor of Social
Theory and Social Action in the Psychology Department at Swarthmore
College.