Madoff, AIG and the American "Gospel of Success"

New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote about the American gospel of success, which encourages "middle-class people to strive, risk and make money." The economic downturn has caused a brief lull in the relentless American success drive, writes Brooks, "But if there is one thing we can be sure of, this pause will not last. The cultural DNA of the past 400 years will not be erased. The pendulum will swing hard. The gospel of success will recapture the imagination."

Maybe. But it is also worth considering that the American people may have learned a sobering, valuable lesson: that the overpowering drive for money and success that has been a driving force in American culture (at least for the past 200 years since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution) may have been sorely tempered by the excesses of the past three decades. Unrestrained striving for money and success may have made sense in a world of unlimited resources and opportunities, but on an increasingly crowded, polluted and interdependent planet, the human race may not be able to indulge the "cultural DNA" of a society that has Darwinian opportunism as a credo.

Does this mean we have to throw in the towel? Admit that the future looks bleak with no hope for improvement? Hardly. Throughout our history, Americans have been both proud of and admired for an even more important cultural trait -- our unbridled optimism. What brought the Puritans to America was not the drive for money or success, but a hope for a better life for themselves and their children. Wave after wave of immigrants that have come to America are not lured by the "gospel of success" but the opportunity for greater freedom, equality and hope. Certainly, material comforts are an important part of a happy life, but most Americans also count community, family and security as equally key components of the American dream.

Somewhere along the line, our optimism and enthusiasm became confused with ambition and even greed. Our dreams for a better life were translated into "Dream and grow rich." In his column, Brooks quotes the late nineteenth century Baptist minister Russell Cowell, who traveled the country preaching the gospel of wealth: "I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich ... Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought, because you can do more good with it than you could without it." Can we really say, after the Madoff scandal, the AIG bonuses and all the excesses of the past decades that we can do more good with wealth than without it? Experience suggests that the opposite is the case -- that men do more evil with wealth than good.

Even before the financial meltdown, Americans had begun to turn away from the blind "gospel of success." Barack Obama's message of hope was tempered by a heavy dose of reality. "Yes, we can" did not mean "Yes, we can become rich and powerful" or "Yes, we can dictate our values and way of life to the rest of humanity." Obama's message was that we can restore the core American values of common sense, community, pride and, yes, a sense of energetic optimism. In the fields of health care, education, environmental protection and other critical issues, Obama was not saying that we want to be "the greatest on earth," but rather that we ought to have health care and educational systems that reinforce our core values of equality and opportunity. In foreign affairs, he has adopted the view of partnering with the rest of the world, rather than striving to impose our values or our superior power on other nations.

While conservatives may argue that greed and self-interest will ultimately be restored and that the social Darwinism of the free market will triumph, most Americans are more optimistic. Call us cockeyed optimists, but those of us who embraced the message of hope over the past year believe in a more temperate future for America. We believe in a free market, but also in a level playing field. We believe in capitalism, but with a referee. And we believe that the core American values of equality, opportunity and fairness will always trump greed, ambition and self-interest.

Comments

[dennis181]

Great post. I agree with another who's commented: a belief in an unbridled free market is just another kind of fundamentalism. Also, I like the idea that the American dream is about hope and an optimism born out of hard work, not merely that one should amass wealth. As a therapist, I see every day in my practice the sobering reality that wealth and success, in themselves, have very little to do with lasting contentment.

[cobobs]

A good question to ask:

Is the purpose of the market to serve the people or is the purpose of people to serve the market.?

Market as religion is as creepy as any other fundamentalism.

[reasonshouldrule]

Mr. Hilsman makes an excellent point here that I wish could be seen in a wider venue. Americans who have bought into the philosophy that "free market" and "traditional" American values mean making more and more money and having more material things are missing the larger picture. Our widening gap between rich and poor is a danger to our freedoms and our entire way of life. Societies that have tried to maintain an elite class supported by a majority that lack basic needs have not survived too long.

[EminemsRevenge]

I'm sure this is the same sentiment people had after Neil Bush and the S & L failures as well as the Enron fiasco...t­here's this real putzy looking kid doing infomercials about how NOW is the time to buy foreclosure homes [and you don't need money down or a college education to do so]---all America needs now is another get-rich-quick scheme!

[feliznavidad]

The American character has a dark side, which you have alluded to here. It is time to reclaim our committment to our common weal which our fthe best and brightest if our culture embrace.

[caphillprof]

One of our problems has been that we continue to chase an elusive wealth. How many homes does one need to own? How many clothes? How many automobiles? It is the publc wealth that has diminished. One can make huge increases in the happiness of the community as a whole by helping raise the bottom. A clean environment, trash cleanup, landscaping, public health, public education, public television. There's a lot to be done with great personal rewards.