Essay about American Cultural Myths

American society today has been shaped by years past. After the Second World War, U.S. inhabitants dedicated their lives and time to shape and improve America’s culture to the way it is today. Through the decades of the 1950s and today, the society has changed through scientific and technological advances. On the other hand, aspects of the culture have not changed because its citizens have yet to advance in those areas.

The United States of America is a big, powerful and wealthy country in the world. The diversity of class, individuality, religion, and race are a few of the embellishments within the "melting pot" of our society. The blend of these numerous diversities is the crucial ingredient to our modern nation. America has been formed upon them, its inhabitants- the "average American"- have a single means in common; a single concept; a single goal; the American Dream. The Dream consists of a seemingly simple theory; success.

America still to this day holds on to the idea of the “American Dream”. This is rather surprising in today’s society and the ups and downs that the nation is facing. The dream in the past was more about freedom and equality. Moving through the decades, this dream has morphed into something quite different. Instead of what America means for all of its inhabitants, the nation has become more individualized. Society has moved to interpret the dream of what America can do for the one. Instead of the unified nation, America has been known for in the past, a shift has started creating an inconsistency in who can realize the dream. The myth of the “American Dream” has been hugely affected by increased materialism, the gap in economic status, and the fantasy of “rags to riches” idea.

Stephanie Coontz in “The Way We Weren’t: The Myth and Reality of the Traditional Family” emphasizes that the traditional and ideal nuclear family widespread in media and textbooks are false and far from reality. In fact, it is common to see more similarities to the traditional family consistent of “male breadwinner and nurturing mother” (1) today than in the past.

Over the course of the last sixty years, family values have consistently continued to change. With a heavier influx of women entering the work force and the social emphasis of individualism, the traditional family image has changed, and with

Regardless if we are aware of it or not, not many Americans live the supposed American Dream of having a nice car, big house, well paying job, and have a secure family. In the renowned novel The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler he captures those Americans who live invisible in America that work so hard to suffer from the psychological effects of poverty. Not only does Shipler do that but he also indirectly talks about the “American Myth” and the “American Anti Myth through the lives on these individuals.”

Everyone has a family of some kind. It may be the parents and siblings they were born with, or it could be the gang of six biologically unrelated elite drivers with an affinity for robbing banks at high speeds from Fast and the Furious. Ultimately, family is what people make of it, and it can be the ‘traditional’ two parents, one brother, one sister, and a dog named Spot, or it could be a woman and the kid she was left with. The term ‘traditional family' refers to the socially expected behaviors of each given role (for example, a mother taking her kid to the doctor,) in the family. Members of a traditional family in this case are either maritally or biologically related. Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees has many characters who would consider themselves, or be considered, part of different families. The Bean Trees addresses and deals with the fact that nontraditional families can be just as strong as what society has defined as a ‘traditional’ family.

“People Like Us” by David Brooks examines diversity in America and argues that even though society tends to idealize diversity in a way, most of us don’t really care too much about it as long as we are happy. In the first paragraph Brooks states “ what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves”. This is something that most of us notice on some scale, but what does it say about the need for diversity in America? Brooks explains “The United States might be a diverse nation when considered as a whole, but block by block and institution by institution it is a relatively homogenous nation” This is an irrefutable truth, we all know that cities like Laredo Texas and Lincoln Nebraska are predominantly white and in cities like Detroit Michigan and Jackson Mississippi the population is predominantly black. However, what we fail to realize is the extreme racial separation that is taking place naturally at a much smaller scale, not even city to city but neighborhood to neighborhood and house to house. Brooks backs up his claim with the following example, “In Manhattan the owner of a three million dollar SoHo loft would feel out of place moving into a three million dollar Fifth Avenue apartment”. Politics, religion, income, lifestyle and general outlook on life can change in a matter of blocks. This may all seem

In The More Factor, by Laurence Shames, it is explained that the wholly American views of unending frontier, opportunity, and more have always been a part of who we are as a people. Over time these ideals and their growth have shifted from that of the physical world to that of economic expansion. Eventually society was faced with the realization that this growth is not sustainable, and that we must face this truth in order to reevaluate and shift our values to a more realistic view. I feel that this change in cultural values is something that must be dealt with in order for our society to continue to be relevant in today’s world.

In today’s society, the variation of social, cultural, political, and economic life mirrors our Founding Fathers dreams. Since then, America has learned to adjust and accept every citizen's differences with the help of The Bill of Rights, US Constitution, Northwest Ordinance, and the Declaration of Independence. As these documents represent the development of America then, books like the Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore reflect the variations of social, cultural, political, and economic life today. Over time, the definition of being an American has evolved and molded with society to make what the United States citizens know now.

This journal is very similar to the previous one. Some of the information is printed verbatim in comparison to the other journal. He talks about the divide in the class system that was not as heavily present in the 1960’s as it is in the present day. Murray begins by talking about how even though there was always a wreath gap between the richest and the poorest people there always seemed to be a cultural equality. Americans always prided themselves on a superior way of life calling it ‘the American way of life’, but Murray believes that is no longer true. He hi lights what what include the American way of life, “a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.” The points he attributes to the American way of life are the same ones he talked about in the first journal. In the 1960’s these were virtues that all Americans agreed on. Over the past few decades these assumptions have changed which Murray attributes to an emerging upper class with better education that they were able to attain at elite schools. At the same time this upper class was emerging a new lower class was forming that was characterized by people withdrawing from the core cultural values that Americans previously held as central values. Murray then goes into using the same two fictional neighborhoods from the first journal using the same criteria to assign people to one neighborhood or the other. He examines the same values: marriage, industriousness, crime, and religiosity. In each of the categories he provides the same data as the first journal. He shows the changing landscape of America from two different groups of people. The result from both neighborhoods is that most people did away with the

Today, in a world of the “postmodern family” the traditional lines of family structure are blurred. Children may come from diverse types of homes, or a couple, married or not may choose to have no children and consider

Society is composed of many elements based on values, traditions, cultures, government’s policies etc.; and family is one of the main basic ingredients, forming the society. Therefore, as the society changes its element, family is also forced to change the flow of life. Yet, during the past 50 years, our society has undergone big social transformations which are seen as “dramatic and unparallel changes” or a “veritable revolution”. Thus, the two basic forms of family, the extended family and the

American culture refers to the traditions and practices of the people of the United States. Culture comprises of the nature of buildings, religion, music language and marriage. The population of the United States is more than 320 million people making it the most culturally diverse country in the globe. Books such as Crabgrass Frontier, Manifest Destination and Muscular Christianity are important sources of information about American culture. This paper is a reflection on the methods that these books use in providing information about the evolution of the US culture. The paper examines the relationship between these three sources and ways they challenge or inform an understanding of the American society during the late 19th and early 20th century. There is an analysis of the efficiency of the issues tackled by these books in influencing the contemporary discourse surrounding American culture. The major argument of this paper is that Crabgrass Frontier, Manifest Destination and Muscular Christianity provide reliable information about the evolution of the US culture and they supplement each other through the use of relevant examples.

The United States of America being the third largest country in the world with more than 315 million inhabitants, consists of multicultural societies with ethnically diverse population. Since there are a lot of foreigners, the US culture has evolved in such a way accepting and tolerating other foreign cultures. US is very much influenced by protestant work ethics according to which people believe in themselves and their efforts to attain the goal of self-actualization and success. The rich diversity in the culture brought by foreigners, prevailing values of protestant ethics, hard work etc. have helped US to emerge as a superpower in the past years. Nearly every religion had its impact on US culture in one way or the other. The