I was browsing Scientific American magazine recently and came across an article with some interesting parallels to a few points I made in an opinion column earlier this year, “On the decline of American Idealism.”
The article brought attention to the notion of the American dream with respect to attaining genetic potential.
Based on the original definition of the term, the article regards having attained the most success possible given one’s genetic endowment as true achievement of the American dream.
To test the reality of the American dream using this definition, a 2015 study measured the effect of socioeconomic status on metrics predictive of success such as IQ.
This impact was then compared across countries, with the finding that in many countries besides the United States, people have similar IQs across socioeconomic strata.
This contrasts with the U.S., where socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of IQ. This means other countries represent the ideal of the American dream better than the U.S.
I was interested in how this related to my previous column because of the similar subject matter, namely the absence of the American dream and the decline of American idealism.
I thought perhaps these two topics are related in a meaningful way.
The first noticeable detail here is that the possibility we aren’t truly obtaining the American dream could feed into the decline of American idealism.
The second thing I found was that a particular point from my previous column is buoyed by the news about IQ differences across the population.
I mentioned the prophesied decline of American idealism might not be such a bad thing.
It would give us a chance to reinvent the image of what we want our country to be, as well as how we wish to achieve those ideals.
The kind of results published in this study are exactly why this would be so good.
There seems to be an incongruence between our framework and the ideals it purports to push us toward.
Taken with the first realization, this second point actually shows us the foundation of our country kind of works — we witness here a prime example of rule by the people, in extreme slow-motion.
The fact we’re not attaining the American dream showed up in the deterioration of our ideals, which will eventually allow us to open to the sort of reinvention I referenced above.
I admit this point of view requires a great deal of contrivance, but it’s refreshing to see an optimistic way in which a person can connect the dots, even if it is, at first, a bit naïve.
It’s entirely possible we allow our ideals to deteriorate and never go through the reshaping process, or that peoples’ attention gets gradually diverted over the years and we never even make it to the ideological plane from which we could consider any changes to our government.
That this feedback loop is even apparent to the casual observer means our country has institutionalized structures of governance that make it nearly impossible to attain our ideals.
Nonetheless, I think there is some sliver of tangible optimism to be taken away from this small bit of evidence that our country seems to be working.
jcworrel@indiana.edu
