The Modern American Dream
Been listening to a lot of fellow Millenials and Gen Z for quite some time....this is the new modern American dream:
Age 18 - 22: Go to college. Join a frat. Get your body count up and screw between 10 to 20 girls. Grind to get that internship and launch your career. Take up a few random causes: save the whales, recycling plastic straws, LGBT+ rights. Be very vocal. Make sure to work out and eat healthy - very important.
Age 23 - 30: Focus on career. Increase body count. Hit Tinder hard and make sure to reach 30 under 30 on the body count if not more. Buy a beamer or an Audi. Live in a luxury apartment. Take up more random causes with bumper stickers and online posts: street urchins in Bangladesh, animal rights, Ukraine whatever. Do nothing to actually help those causes. Make sure to exercise and eat organic food. Remember the first five modern commandments:
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Staying Healthy
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Virtue Signaling
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Career
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Travel
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Country or Favorite political party or health guru or God if you are a weirdo or loser
Age 30 - 37: Early 30s get that body count up a little higher. Marry someone with a body count miraculous under 3 who is not too career driven but wants to take care of the kids. Have a kid at 35 to 37. Teach important lessons to your kids that the other generation didn't teach like sharing, equality, avoiding discrimination, etc. Continue doing nothing to help anyone, but continue being a "good person" because you haven't robbed or killed anyone and say "hi" to people walking down the street. You even give friends a ride to the airport occassionally.
Age 38 - 43: Move to fancier neighbor, Buy fanicer car. Intensify exercise. Your body is slipping away from you now. Do not step outside of the house unless wearing at least $500 of exercise clothers. Begin planning every step of child's life.
Age 43 - 60: Do everything in your power to give your kids an unfair advantage. Best private schools. Best SAT tutors. Use every connection in the book to get college admissions and internships for them. Continue being vocal about injustice and inequality. Make sure that your kids understand those principles. Buy a bigger house.
Age 60 - 90: Thankfully it's a wide range. Having worshiped healthy eating you can make it to the top. Sell your house which has magically quadrupled in value. Leave behind all the social problems of your current city. Move to Florida. Wonder why you don't have grandkids and yours never visit. Die. Go to some nebulous heaven-like place of a non-specified religion. Remember you were a "good person". Float around in pure bliss in the aether.
Although mistaken frequently, a 'beamer' is a BMW motorcycle. A 'bimmer' is a BMW car.
"“bimmer” won out as the preferred nickname for BMW cars (as opposed to “beamer” or “beemer” for motorcycles). The name has now been embraced by car fans around the world, even in Germany."
https://www.bmw.com/en/automotive-life/bimmer-beamer-nickname-origin.ht…
Well said. +SB. It's been "bimmer" for a while now, like 20+years, always surprises me when someone fucks it up.
Oh so you just think shitting on religion is cool?
Only religion?
Think you missed what I'm trying to say. Actually making fun of secular materialism which is so pervasive today.
Prosperity gospel has entered the chat
Yes
I mean yeah, people generally want to stay healthy, have careers they perceive as fulfilling, and set their kids up for a life they perceive as good. Thanks for the biting social commentary, Bret Easton Ellis.
True but what else is missing from this equation which might be good for someone? A world where we all only care about our kids, our appearance, and our careers is a lonely place to live.
Furthermore, what I think has changed in recent decades, is that some of these things have been pushed to the extreme. For example, being healthy is a good thing to do. For a lot of people, it has become an idol and almost the meaning of their lives. Same with kids. Always good to help your kids out but there is an extreme where you only care about getting your kids into Harvard and don't teach them any values as your god has become careers, bigger houses, and material self fulfillment. Furthermore, there is a recent change to believing that until the age of 35 what you should be doing is just screwing around and living a hedonistic lifestyle. Then magically at 35, you snap your fingers and are a perfect family man. That's basically what I'm getting at with this post.
So then what do you think the American dream should be? If people shouldn't want to stay healthy, have good careers, and help out their kids, then what should they do? What do you think are the 'great sources of deeper meaning'?
How long do you think this has been around? People I know in their 60s are like this. Seems to be a post-1960s phenomenon.
Great job at understanding the surface level shit. Now look between the lines.
It is a critique of the nihilistic, hedonistic, materialistic, and mechanistic culture we live in where we care too much about what others think of us. Man is meant for more.
Why is health mentioned so much? People are fat as fuck nowadays
I mention it because I think this is a new phenomenon in our generation. Let me first say that being healthy is a good thing.
However, I have noticed more and more almost a worship of healthiness. People strive for a materialistic career and then workout like crazy. They look at their life and say, "Wow, I'm in great shape and have a great career. I'm doing awesome and have great balance."
No, you don't have great balance. You're simply pouring all of your energy into two seperate vacuous materialistic goals, wealth and health/appearnce. By worshipping health as an ultimate end and almost a meaning to one's life, you feed an illusion that your vain desires are actually some sort of deeper spiritual balance but they are not. You are healthier and in the better to shape but to what ultimate end does that serve?
People have always exercised, but I see a lot of kids these days who literally define their life by it, basically giving it meaning. Rock climbing or biking is not a good cornerstone to build your whole life around. Great hobbies yes but not great sources of deeper meaning.
Helps to pump up that body count, ya know?
Agreed. It's awful Western culture to focus on vacuous superficial things like the one you mentioned and letting it define you. The body count point is unfortunately sad to see as well - we live in a hyper sexualised society which is poisoning genuine connection and romance.
Hey bro, look at my username
that's what I thought. I'm barely seeing anybody above 30 at the gym. vast majority of people 30 yo+ don't exercise even occasionally. But OP thinks 38-43 yos "intensify exercise".
I think it must be just the demographics of your gym. For example, I don't see people in their early 20s at my gym, but I know that they're out there.
People in their late 30s are pretty intense about exercise these days. Back in my parent's generation, I don't think a tenth had a gym membership. Nearly all parents had the worst mom and dad bods. I can't tell you how many people I see now who are perfectly toned and/or ripped pushing baby strollers in their late 30s these days. That was literally unheard of ~25 years ago.
My question for the OP is, why do you have issues with:
Hooking up with women
Staying healthy
Being vocal about injustice
LGBT
Animal rights
eating organic
recycling
bumper stickers
hiring SAT tutors
For virtue signaling, I know you do not mean right to life. This must be some kind left wing virtue signaling
Left wing ideology will be the reason for the fall of the West, if it falls. And it has nothing to do with environmental responsibility like recycling, it has to do with the lack of basic principles such as the left’s leaders failing to disavow violence or intimidation to advance a political cause. The leaders on the left are all self serving and the crowd of lunatics they lead lack any understanding or wanting of understanding for the ramifications of their delinquent and often times violent, erratic, behavior. You cannot reason with violence or with people that try to destroy your character by labeling you as a monster, racist, with no proof thereof. The left lacks any defining principle in their organization. They followers of the left will say or do whatever they have to, to get their way. Their “leaders” will promote or say whatever they have to for more power. The crowd most violent or erratic in their behavior tends to become more violent and erratic. The leftist ideology and movement will be the fall of us if our leaders don’t grow the fuck up and start clamping down on their violence for political cause. Tell me I’m wrong
Jan 6?
Your POTUS, a republican, supported a violent occupation of the Capitol for the purpose of stopping a transfer of power. I have to break the news to you: almost ALL politicians are self serving.
I'm for any good cause where you are actively spending time and resources. I think that's great! However, if you are living an entirely self-centered life and virtue signal with no action in order to build the illusion that you are a good person, then I think that is messed up.
On the hooking up, it is really our generation that has a problem. I've noticed two desires of most millenial/gen Z age men. Hook up with a million people on Tinder and then around 35 find this amazing somewhat traditional spouse that has not hooked up with a million people. These two ideas cannot successfully coexist in the same universe and I'm pointing out that absurdity. Furthermore, I don't believe that other people should be used as disposable objects as is the case in hook up culture.
I touched on the healthy part on another reply here in case you want to discuss that seperately.
I read something like this before, in the book of Job chapter 21 “
Why then do the wicked live, are they advanced, and strengthened with riches? Their houses are secure and peaceable, and the rod of God is not upon them. 10 Their cattle have conceived, and failed not: their cow has calved, and is not deprived of her fruit.
11 Their little ones go out like a flock, and their children dance and play. 12 They take the timbrel, and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. 13 They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment they go down to hell.”
The “in a moment” part is a prophecy about the way we are able to die on a morphine drip.
Yes exactly. And an earlier commentor pointed out that everyone wants to take care of their kids and essentially whats wrong with that.
Well, yeah but even Saddam Hussein cared for his kids. And of course, you should take care of your kids versus not taking care of them. But as a parent, I think you can trick yourself into thinking that you're a great guy because you take care of your family. Even some of the worst people in history took care of their families, it didn't make them good people.
So I should get fat af, not give af about my kids, and bankrupt social security. Essentially be some homeless fuck. Got it.
damn if your kids never visit and you don't have grandkids, what's the point? why not just be rich and have free time?
Sounds like heaven to me.
“Do not step outside the house without wearing $500 worth of exercise clothes” - this line is actually so true if you walk around any wealthy neighbourhood
I remember 20 or 30 years ago that workout clothes were an old tshirt and shorts.....not sure where this all they came??
Are you just complaining or are you going to live differently? If so, how? What are you going to do?
regardless of whether or not the above is true for most, some, or hardly anybody, this is why it's important to not be afraid to be an eccentric contrarian. be true to yourself, that's the path to happiness
Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.
Average WASP living in blue state inner city
Forgot the failed content creator phase between age 19-25.
This is actually one of the realest posts on this website and no one is understanding it. That speaks volumes.
Sanest WSO user
Why are you Americans so obsessed with politics, they make it so obvious that they are in it for the money and don't care.
I think part of the obession is what I'm talking about above. Politics lets you feel virtuous without putting in any of the work. It's a lot easier to say that you voted for universal healthcare than to give a couple of thousand to St. Jude's hospital or visit some elderly at the nursing home.
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