Why Are So Many People Angry About America?

I’m an advocate of living intentionally and living with less.  My own journey with paying off debt is what brought about this mindset.  Getting serious about spending less money so I could quickly pay off debt meant that I learned to live without new things:  clothes, cars, furniture, watches, computers, smartphones, gadgets, etc.  Before beginning my debt free journey in 2007, these were all things that I very much coveted.  I thought having them would give me a deeper sense of pride, enjoyment, and respect from others.  After going without for the 3 years it took to get out of debt, I didn’t care about those things anymore.  I realized that there were much more important things in life that gave me much more meaning:  Relationships, Pursuing a Healthy Lifestyle, Learning, Conceptualizing A Career/Business I was passionate about.  I get much more meaning out of these things and the by-product of pursuing them is the sense of pride, enjoyment, and respect from others that I once thought came with having nice stuff. 

But there’s a reality that I’ve never lost sight of since the day I started advocating that people become more intentional about money:  The fact that people spend money is what creates the opportunities for other people to make money.  What would happen to our economy if everybody suddenly stopped using credit or taking on loans of any kind?  Whatever would happen, I’m positive that some of it will have a negative impact on some people.  Jobs will be lost.  I don’t tend to worry about this happening, because the other reality is that there will never come a time where everyone shifts away from debt and making unnecessary purchases, at the same time.

Having nice things and being willing to take on debt to get them, is baked into the American Psyche.

Why Are So Many People Negative About America?

So many people have become negative about America:  

• America’s racist.  
• America’s going to hell in a handbasket.  
• This country is nothing like what it used to be.

I couldn’t disagree more with all of these statements.  The negativity comes from both liberal and conservative voices.  In my opinion, the underlying frustration is an unfulfilled American Dream for many people.  Growing up, media, broader culture, and my family environment led me to believe  that the hallmark of a good life had much to do with the amount of material possessions you had collected.  

How much money do you earn?  What kind of house do you have?  What kind of car do you drive?  What kind of clothes do you wear?  Do you own a nice watch?  What about your shoes?  Where did you go on vacation last? Where are you going to college?  

It was the 90’s and television dominated much of my time.  I can’t tell you how many car commercials I watched around Christmas-Time and dreamed of the day when I would have my own luxury suv to drive my family around to go see the Christmas lights decorating the mansions in the fancy neighborhood that we lived in.  Today, not only do I not want these things, but if you gave me a million dollar house and a new Mercedes SUV I wouldn’t want them.  I’d try to immediately sell them because the upkeep is too time consuming and the freedom of time that the cash represents is much more valuable to me.

The by-product of paying off debt was going through detox to break my addiction to stuff.  Most people have never had such a public financial failure like I had.  I suspect that there are many people who live check-to-check for years and don’t have a major reckoning with their financial health.  This means they never get challenged to think hard about the validity of their material desires.  Their stories about material gain and the value of things doesn’t get completely broken down the way mine did.  

Houses seem to cost more and more relative to people’s income.  Inflation over the last 5 years has caused the cost of new cars to reach that of small houses in some cases.  It makes that picture of the American Dream that so many people have, become harder and harder to attain or maintain.  Unfulfilled desire can be a massive source of suffering and mental/emotional pain.  I believe this is why so many people are disgruntled with America right now.  

But who promised any of us this American Dream?  If there was a promise, what specifics does that promise guarantee?

Who Lied to You?

Who promised us that we would each own a house?

Who promised us that we would each own a new car?

Who promised us that we would each find love in this life or, if we found love, that it would last until the day we died?

Who promised us that if we worked hard for these things they were guaranteed to happen?

Who defines what hard work is?

Sometimes we believe a lie and no one has lied to us.  

There are many versions of reality that don’t involve the typical version of success that so many of us have been taught to aspire to:  A nice house, a late model car, marriage, 2 kids, a secure job with a good retirement package, and healthcare benefits.

I have to think hard of maybe 1-2 examples of this that I know personally.  If a person really wants this version of life then by all means go for it. However, it’s also okay if we decide that certain aspects of this vision aren’t for us.

 But who taught us these things?  In my case, college was what my parents and teachers believed was the best way to a good secure job with benefits.  Just after I graduated college, I had several friends buying houses and it seemed like the wise adult thing to do.  I got a car loan after college because everybody with money seemed to do it.  ‘Seemed’ does not mean the behavior in question is based on any sort of facts.  There are lots of assumptions that I had to make when I adopted these ideas as facts.  

• College is the only way to success (But what is success to me?)
• Having a house means being mature and building wealth (Again, what is maturity and what is wealth?)
• Taking on debt for a car is the right thing to do when you have money (But what is the opportunity cost of taking on debt for a depreciating asset?)

I think what I did and what many people do, is we look at the messages and models in our environment and assume that they are right for us.  We tend to move with the herd because there seems to be safety in numbers.  What we don’t often ask is what’s the full cost of the behaviors we’re observing to the people behaving in said manner?  And, Do those behaviors map to the life that I truly want to live?  And, Do I even know what the life is that I truly want to live?

Define Success for Yourself and Respect It!

The journey of writing and being a content creator started for me back in 2013.  I’ve become better with time but often the desire to have more money sneaks into my head.  I look at people with financially lucrative careers or financially viable businesses and I want what they have.  I have always found a way to quiet that voice of envy but in recent times I have really begun to think about why that voice keeps coming up.  I think it has much to do with the need to justify what I’m doing to other people.  Also, I’ve become aware that I want the respect from others that I once had when I was an Engineer and when I was a Green Beret.  Ironically, I’ve never had anyone indicate thinking any less of me because I don’t have some fancy job title.  If anything, people respect me more because I’ve been willing to pursue writing, being my own boss, and putting my vulnerabilities on display.  Also, people seem to envy how easy I have it as a Security Guard (I see it on people’s faces when I describe it).  Pursuing the life that I want to live and the definition of success that I have inherently means deviating from others and perhaps deviating from many cultural narratives about success.  So why do I still struggle with wanting to be respected?  I think it’s because I don’t fully respect myself.  I still battle with the image of self-worth that came from having a prestigious degree and having a financially lucrative career.

This comes back to the second principle from my book:  Understand Your Story.  Our beliefs about how the world works come from our stories about life.  As kids we adopt stories from family and the world around us.  Those narratives imprint deeply but it’s up to us to be adult enough to discern what is factual and then reason from there.  I know that my basic needs are taken care of.  I know that I would be unhappy if I put writing down to go back to engineering.  It’s up to me to make the choice to respect what I want in life and be grateful that I have it in many ways.  I have to let go of the expectations that came with the narrative I grew up with.  I have to accept who and where I am.

I think Thomas Jefferson got it really right when he wrote:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The last part is what I’m specifically referencing.  We in modern America are guaranteed by birth, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  I think this is what we are promised.  Happiness is an individual responsibility.  If one chooses to focus on that which they don’t have, then misery will always be just around the corner.  But if we practice a real gratitude for what we have and can even contemplate cheer in the worst of situations, then maybe we can guarantee our own happiness.  

We as individuals have to make sure that we define success for ourselves.  We have to remain vigilant that we aren’t allowing an outside narrative to tell us what we should be or have.  Once we have defined success for ourselves, we have to make sure that we respect that definition and we have to stop looking for validation from other people. 

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