The word America brings forth lots of images: Fat people, Hollywood, business suits, churches, Lady Gaga, televisions, hamburgers, soccer moms, cell phones, fake boobs, Google, Hummers, Facebook, shiny buildings, YouTube, Coco Chanel, football, American Idol, Obama…
We represent the good and the bad. But everything we represent, and everything we strive to be, revolves around the dollar bill (make that multiple). The one image that represents the concept of America is simple: Money.
Fat people pay too much money for too much food and often too much money for diet programs and pills that do too little. Hollywood is defined by money.
Business suits represent the man on a hunt for money, and shiny buildings are his expensive hunting grounds. Churches beg for money to use and give and whatever else they do.
Soccer moms want their kids to be the best so colleges will buy them off their mothers. Everything else is a business. I guess the president is the only one of us not in it for the money.
Money, the heart of our cultural spirit, has truly been our uniting factor. We’ve been bonded as Americans by the acknowledgment that you, I and everyone else are on a mission to take a larger portion of the finite amount of money. So goes for anyone working, at least, in the corporate world.
That’s why we’re here. We want to “make a living.” We want to make a presence. We want to earn our place in American society, and that place is as valuable as the number behind each of our salary’s dollar sign.
We should be happy to know that our culture, and the nation constituted by it, has gotten past all the frivolities of worrying about survival.
Whew.
Worrying about that stuff is a hassle. You can’t even enjoy life when you have to think about hunger or safety or religious persecution or whatever. We have achieved what Maslow calls our “basic needs.” We can now self-actualize.
So, American self-actualization amounts to nothing more than materialism. We all know it’s true. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What we have done with our materialistic mindset are some admirable things.
For example, according to the Giving USA Foundation, Americans gave more than $300 billion to charity in 2008, most of which came from private individuals — not corporations or foundations.
Why do Americans give?
Because they love to fix things. It’s in our blood to look at a problem and do what we can to solve it.
Our grand old founding fathers created this nation for that very purpose. The rest of our ancestors, or even parents, crossed seas and rivers because it was the solution to a problem. We don’t stand alongside injustice, and we do not tolerate oppression.
That is a value my country has instilled in me and in you, whether you are liberal or conservative, and whether you agree or disagree upon certain definitions of injustice or oppression.
We all have an underlying sense of morality — whether we admit it or not — that is a product of our American heritage and culture. We as a people value human rights, and we value human potential.
In our giving we perpetuate a tradition of constant progression. The magnitude of our giving represents our desire to plant hope for a better future in those who otherwise don’t have it.
Three hundred-billion dollars — $300,000,000,000 — is more money than we can fathom. It is a pretty representation of our priorities as Americans.
But it isn’t enough.
We can’t put a cap on how much we give because it looks like a great amount. It’s not enough. If we have this inherent drive to fix problems, why are millions in our own country still homeless?
Why are our student organizations buying free food and free drinks and free this and free that for people who do have enough?
Why, especially, are organizations that should be committed to providing for those in need buying — literally — buckets of food and drinks to dole out to people as a means of publicity, and maybe even as bribery? If people care, they’ll come. They don’t need food as an incentive, especially since no one here is starving.
The majority of us are not thinking every day about what we’re going to eat, or if there will be anything to eat at all.
Most of us don’t have to worry about the dirt floor of our home during the rainy season or about a lack of medical care afforded to our sick and dying children. Most of us aren’t scared to sleep at night.
The majority of our children are well-fed and robust little things. Most of us have nice beds to sleep in.
But don’t forget the rest of us.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
theotherone 2 years, 1 month ago
Since when is Coco Chanel American?
ston9794 2 years, 1 month ago
So how much of that $300,000,000 was given to a church by its attendees?
brandeis 2 years, 1 month ago
The president isn't in this for profit? Are you mentally ill?
The rest is just standard 'we have so much, everyone should have enough,' pansy nonsense. If you're looking for communism or socialism, just say you are, and be honest about what you want to happen to the wealth you're talking about.
I'm also baffled by your general hatred of people. Fat people feel bad enough about themselves, soccer moms are doing the best they can for their kids, and Churches strengthen communities and make people happy in ways you clearly don't understand. You are the exact type of pseudo-intellectual bourgeois jerk that you rail against. I pity anybody who ever makes the mistake of trying to exist in your sphere of holy intellectual and philosophical superiority. Grow up.
TheJR 2 years, 1 month ago
No offense, but your articles seem to contain no real content. It seems you just strive for controversy.
OUSooners 2 years, 1 month ago
The problem is there is a conflict of interest. To be "self-actualized" and despise oppression in a materialist-based economy today means you must inherently oppose materialism. Just because it goes on where we can't see it doesn't change the fact that many of the clothes we wear and products we buy are made by people and children who are in unsuitable conditions, worked to death, and often the victims of genocide. We are funding it.
leimapapa 2 years, 1 month ago
Ms. Myers, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent article were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Jaco99 2 years, 1 month ago
If we really do need to do more to escape our upper-middle class bubbles and be more attentive to the needs of the suffering of the world, perhaps you could take the lead by dropping out of college (right now) and joining the peace corps. Or perhaps you could start a true social democratic party that will redistribute wealth. But if you're merely content to continue to live in middle-class privilege while simultaneously flagellating yourself and others for living in said privilege, the only difference between you and the persons you decry is that you assuage your guilt with good old fashioned liberal, middle-class moral onanism.