Via Rod Dreher.
The Christian Science Monitor recently ran an interview with Adam Shepard, who after his 2006 graduation from Merrimack College
. . . intentionally left his parents' home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.
To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.
Shepard didn't need the full year: "Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000."
In the interview, Shepard said that not only did he not need his college education during his "quest," but that he thinks that he was "disadvantaged, because my thinking . . . was inside of a box." For him, the difference between making and not is "the attitude that I take in." This "attitude" is so powerful that it wouldn't have made a difference if he had had "child-care payments or been required to report to a probation officer."
Maybe. While I believe in and have benefited from the "American Dream," that dream has a dark side: we can convince ourselves that our success is the product of our hard work and perseverance, i.e., our virtues, and that other people's failure is the result of their vices or weaknesses.