I do not think that the “American Dream” has changed much over the last several decades, maybe even farther than that. Most people came to America from Europe to start a new life; to get at chance to make a name for themselves in a new frontier. The same could be said about recent times. Many people want to invent something new, and now with the new frontier that modern technology brings us, it opens up many opportunities for people to make money and a legacy. At the root of most people’s dreams for their futures, no matter how grand and seemingly unobtainable they appear to be, there is always a want to find a spouse, have kids, be able to provide for their family, and to leave something behind that they want to be remembered by. This is evident in the kind of people that are celebrities in America today. Most of them are not great scientific or philosophic minds. Instead, most of them are wealthy people, well, there is also the kind of celebrity that does ridiculous stunts to get the attention on them, but that is a totally different topic for another blog.
One good example as to why this is what the “American Dream” is, is the way that somebody becomes a celebrity. Even though Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were both great inventors, they were not very well known until they started their companies and started to acquire their large amount of wealth. Most people that go to college aspire to use what they study in the future to change the world for the better.
The only difference between the American dream of today’s society and one of a few generations ago, there is a different standard of being “Successful”. In today’s world, with the more and more of the wealth being controlled by a certain few, and therefore creating wealthy people even wealthier, to focus has seemed to shift more off of getting a job so one’s able to provide for their family to being getting as much money as one can in their life, which is not always the best thing, because “Money can’t buy you happiness.”
