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THE AMERICAN QUESTION

A TWO-FACED COUNTRY

 

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s every human dream, the  so-called American dream is essentially oriented to the future, but why does this country value so much its past? This a sort of dilemma which  still fascinates in America where every one expects happy tomorrows.

When asked however about where they come from, ordinary Americans turn to the past. Revisiting it,  they mention family roots, town, school and job background.  The more sophisticated would add  elaborated details about  their forefathers’ achievements , whether in European remote battlefield or the nearby soccer field . Some, a little more committed to late loved ones, would make a kind of family pilgrimage to pay their respects, with  eyes misted and  moving memories. Past is past, but, how much  past can define present or highlight it is  something  a few can understand.

In a broader sense, this people which venerates the Mayflower pilgrims and ends up tracking their route, remains stuck to its holidays like a kind of  national identity aimed at boosting their feeling as  American citizens with their  beliefs and vocation. American past is a matter of identity recognition. Going that far, booming business rely on the way Americans are highlighting national memories and family ones. It is even said that past has shaped the American character.

But thanks God, this  past culture doesn’t wall them up in immobility. The famous worlds of the  late president Richard Nixon: “I don’t live in the past” seem to echo a nationwide psyche  that many associate with  a kind of resiliency, the sort that  even keeps America from falling where the rest of the world has placed  it. Nowadays, most Americans went back to the past just to get the best of it. Even failures would be lived as seeds of success and moral teachings.

This is because this country is more than any other one a country  aware of change, and believe or not, even the ones that  could shake  them the most . This need of change has  nothing to do with the future shock of Alvin Toffler, to be precise. For, even if we don’t mull over  the speed of  change in our every day life,  we invest essentially into the future. From this  perspective, the future is rather something near or far away we are dreaming of. Like the Roman God, Janus, we side up with the future when it happens to ponder what it  will be with respects to our lives and our tomorrows.

( frantz bataille)