American Mania:
When More Is Not Enough

By Peter Whybrow
W. W. Norton & Company 2005
All right reserved.
ISBN 0393059944

Chapter One: Adam Smith’s American Dream: Desire and Debt

A spacious hive well stock’t with bees
That liv’d in luxury and ease
Millions endeavoring to supply
Each other’s lust and vanity...

Every part was full of vice
Yet the whole mass a paradise
Envy itself and vanity,
Were ministers of industry.

-- Bernard de Mandeville:
The Fable of the Bees, 1723

An old moon retreats before a December dawn. My taxi lurches forward, across the eight lanes of Wilshire Boulevard, and heads west. We pass the picture windows of LA Fitness and the rows of glistening bodies that run in place, preparing for the mental treadmill of the day ahead. The taxi driver, my instant friend from Odessa, lapses into animated Russian as his dispatcher calls. Cradling the phone at his ear, he speeds through two amber lights. Swiftly we are up the ramp and onto the freeway, nosing south into the glare of the rising sun. Ahead is a changing river of blinking color, as vehicles brake and weave. Without a moment’s hesitation we join the flow. The traffic is heavy, even in this pre-dawn, which comes as no surprise. America is the global nation and night and day Los Angeles is on the move. The flatness of the passing city is broken as a billboard looms into view and a smiling Santa offers an invitation. "Visit Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.” Today that’s not for me. This taxi to the airport, plus an early morning flight to New York, will be my only rides.

My 'plane east is delayed in its arrival from Tokyo. It’s just days before Christmas and the wave of seasonal travel is cresting. After running the gauntlet of security, I take refuge in the executive lounge and dose fitfully amidst the jingle and buzz of cell phones. Men and women in little cubicles are bent over the luminous screens of laptops. Coffee is in great demand. Through the lounge window I can see the bustle of the runway, choreographed in deceptive silence. It’s 6:30 a.m. and the sky has been repainted Californian blue.

Across from me sits an executive who has put aside her business chores for the moment and is speaking on a cell-phone with her young daughter. It’s a wake-up call. I’m struck, not for the first time, with how at ease we have become in airing private thoughts in public places. With technology running ahead of public decorum I’m now a confidant to the intimate details of this stranger’s family life. The daughter is unhappy. She doesn’t want to go to school. The mother’s voice is firm and reassuring, although from my privileged seat the furrowed brow and trembling lip that signal her discomfort are readily apparent. It is the promise of special gifts and a magical holiday that finally proves convincing and, finishing the call, the mother sighs to herself and turns to reading. Presumably to better scrutinize some detail she holds up her magazine to the sunlight that is now flooding through the window. An advertisement on the back cover catches my attention. It's for a luxury car and the photographs highlight the vehicle’s interior, a rich brown leather interior. "Think of it as chocolate, as another sweet spot in your life," is the drift of the spin-doctor's advice. Another sweet spot? I'm still only half-awake. Which magazine is this that blends appetites so freely? Intrigued, I shift my position to better decipher the lettering above the elegant Yuletide wreath that adorns the title page. It is a magazine of the good life — Martha Stewart Living — a special edition to bring delight at the holiday season. I’m prompted to ponder my neighbor’s life beyond the business suit; her dreams, her personal passions, the waiting family, and how she fits them all together in the world of turbo-capitalism. How does she balance the competing priorities, I wonder. But my musing is interrupted as a flight is called and the magazine disappears, along with the phone and the laptop, into a black attaché case. For the moment the executive is back, as a harried mother heads home to bestow seasonal joy.

*          *          *

In America the central message is that each of us is free to write our own story. A polyglot nation of prodigious energy, we are held together by dreams of material progress. Seventy-eight percent of Americans still believe that anybody in America can become rich and live the good life. All it takes is desire, hard work, a little luck, and the right timing. The fable of wealth for the 1990s was telecommunication and the “new economy” of the Internet. But throughout the nation’s history there have been similar stories of riches won and lost — in the westward migration of the nineteenth century; in the excesses of the Gilded Age that closed it; in the champagne bubble of the 1920s before the Great Depression, and during the deficit spending spree of the 1980s — stories that reflect the hopeful striving of a daring people. It is because of this bounding optimism that America is an amazing and seductive place to live, something that continues to be affirmed each day by the battalions of migrants that scramble ashore in the risky pursuit of happiness. Thus the dream endures.

But now, for millions of Americans, the magic of the dream is tarnished. Something is not right and an alien sense of discomfort grips the dreamer. Despite the excitement and promise that heralded globalization, American business seems frenzied and fickle. Many Fortune 500 companies, once considered havens of lifetime employment, have transformed themselves into profit-driven workaholic cults. The scramble for “the dream” demands a lengthened workday, diminished sleep, continuous learning, unusual energy, and a high tolerance for financial insecurity. To be “successful” is to be a multi-tasking dynamo. We rise early and we burn the lights late. We exercise to CNN at breakfast and telephone while driving, for there’s not a moment to lose. At dinner we graze on snacks and fast food, but with a laptop computer as the preferred companion. In the culture of global commerce, which is etched most visibly on the face of America but increasingly apparent in Europe and other industrialized nations, the quest for economic prosperity has become a competitive high-speed game. For some the pursuit is seductive — as when I rise at dawn in Los Angeles to dine at dusk in New York — and it offers a mask of accomplishment and purpose. But for those snarled in traffic jams and crowded airport lounges, and for the lonely children who do not understand, America’s accelerated life-style is increasingly a source of anxiety and frustration.

Thus the young executive-mother whom I encountered at the LA Airport is not alone. From general conversation with colleagues and patients, and with relatives and friends, I know her discomfort to be mirrored in the lives of many Americans, and in their families, for in the lexicon of America’s Fast New World the word technology has replaced that of tranquility. For some it is an experience that they must struggle to define: a vague but pervasive sense of unease, despite affluence and opportunity. For others it is an uncomfortable irritability, and a ready anger when juggling the daily demands of family and workplace. But for the majority it is the distinct awareness of a declining satisfaction with life, of being perpetually off balance with too many demands to meet and with too little time in which to meet them. Indeed, it is my experience that even those most upbeat and successful acknowledge that life is moving too fast, as do I in those moments when honesty prevails. Despite our nation’s extraordinary achievements and our technological wizardry — at the Millennium the average hour of American effort was approximately twenty-five times more productive than it had been in 1850 — numerous surveys make it clear that Americans are working longer hours, giving less time to their families, and plowing ever deeper into debt.

So what went wrong?