Wealth

The American society has placed its sole grounds of existence on the value of the green paper money that this country runs on today. “The American faith in money easily surpasses the degree of intensity achieved by other societies in other times and places.” [Lapham] Lapham’s ideas are nothing more than the very truth. Today, this country evaluates one’s success by their income, property, and lifestyle. This causes many other countries to “look upon the American devotion as sterile cupidity.” But how did this money embraced society in American come to be?
The average American is not thought of as successful because of his ability to work or comprehend. The wise are not acknowledged of their gift until their steps create dollar signs all over the floor they just passed. Society has created a need to become one of the upper class. It pressures those that were not as “successful” to find their way to the very top. This pressure violates the American Dream by transforming this longing of happiness and opportunity into nothing more than the desire for money and riches that come along with it. This notion thus infects the minds of the American citizens by creating this ideal image of success as nothing more than the pursuit of money.
“As often as not it isn’t the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul.” [Lapham] An American citizen is not satisfied with just obtaining their wealth until they are “clothed in the raiment of property.” They go on buying designer clothes, luxury cars, and big beautiful houses. All of this in hopes that society will recognize their success. This is a way of almost proving themselves to the rest of society that they have in fact accomplished their dream and reached the top of the social pyramid. This leaves the rest of society to look up to these people in hopes of one day being one of them.
Leaving others at the bottom, the people of the lower class still longing for the dream, go out of their way to gain a piece of that same vision. They do so by buying brand clothes and treating themselves to the newest gadgets. At times they would rather have all these valuable belongings, than investing that money on needed materials such as groceries. These attitudes only emphasize the idea that Americans have in fact placed a concentrated faith in money and are eager to show what little they have attained to the rest of the world. Unlike other countries, we as Americans cannot “balance the desire for wealth against the other claims of the human spirit.” [Lapham] That is that we focus our money more so on our wants than we do on our needs.
Overall, it has been proven that the faith that Americans have placed on that paper currency has in fact “surpassed the degree of intensity achieved by other societies in other times and places.” [Lapham] We fail to see the true meaning behind it all; due to the blindness of citizens from the green that engulfs this American society. It has become nothing more than an absurdity that “…In the United States a rich man is perceived as being necessarily both good and wise…” [Lapham] The entire nation as a whole has to put an end to such nonsense beliefs and cleanse the once so dear and true American Dream from the evils of greed.