Christian Living

Revisiting the American Dream

by Tom Harvey 
11/13/15
Not For Sale
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        Culture and society shift faster than dreams form or fade. Many people today struggle and drive themselves into financial hardship, simply because they have not understood ‘the dream.’ In this series of articles, we are looking at three areas where the American Dream is actually preventing people from prospering. Last time we looked at “The College Experience.” Today we are going to look at “A Home.” When some think of “The American Dream,” they picture a house in the suburbs, large enough, and perhaps with a white picket fence, and a nicely kept lawn. In 1963, my father bought such a house for $14,000 and then in 1998, he sold that same house for $435,000. That is most likely not going to be my generation’s experience.
         So let us think about it. Despite its lack of investment power, most people today still want that house, in that suburb. Though it doesn’t hold the investment value that a house in the suburbs once delivered, it still holds in our collective culture, that feeling of responsible living and spending. The security such a house offers our minds, makes us feel successful when we purchase one, and yet so many file for bankruptcy after they cannot maintain them. The television shows and movies of the past two generations made certain that we should include that house in our American Dream. Is this part of the dream realistic today? Will gaining that house achieve for us what is best for us? Are there options? Maybe it is time to step out of the box, and give this ‘dream’ a second thought.
        As an example of how the dream lingers longer than culture, I’ll use my own house as an example. Building with wood is expensive, painting the wood is costly, and the more modern building material used for the façade of the home today, is vinyl. My house is vinyl-sided. Vinyl or Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) is a resin that was invented in 1920, in order to produce common products, that would be cheaper, more durable, and easier to use than existing products made from other materials. Vinyl today, from piping to siding, is found throughout buildings. Vinyl has become the culturally accepted building material of America today and yet of the thousands of forms one might think of to shape that vinyl for our shelters, our nation’s builders shape the vinyl to look like ordinary planks of wood. Our material is the future. Our dreams are still colonial.
        My house, though vinyl in material, is the closest thing to Beaver Cleaver’s wooden house that we could afford at the time of closing. The shows I watched as a kid, had families living in either farmhouses, or colonial style houses, made of wooden boards. If you had told me back then, that I could live in anything, and that you had a material that you could shape into anything I wanted, I probably would be living in a replica of the "Jupiter 2" spacecraft today! My brother would probably today be living in a vinyl duplicate of "The Batcave." Think of the possibilities! What would you shape your dwelling to be like, if free to choose? But most of us don’t have this choice to make. The American Dream, and most HOAs, dictate that our dream homes have wood-like plank shaped sidings, and windows with vinyl shutters.
        My shutters are fake. If I tried to close them, I would damage my siding. They serve no function as my windows are shatterproof and withhold much more than the glass panes of long ago. Yet without thinking the dream through, these fake shutters make me feel ‘right’ about my house. If suddenly my fake purposeless shutters were gone, my house would look odd, not right. The needs of society have changed, but our culture lasts and lingers. Vinyl wood-like planks and fake shutters are part of the assumed American dream; which I too have assumed. Knowing this though, helps me not to take myself (or my HOA), quite so seriously.
        Suppose we step outside of our culture for a moment and consider what investments today, may deliver in the future, what my father’s generation found in home ownership.  --- (end sample here).