Being An American

Being an American

Jason Fabian

As an American it is our duty to live up to the ego set by the past settlers to be better at everything. In all of our history we have been the country to work for what we want and if necessary fight for it.

In the way that we as Americans live in the world now and the world before this generation we have never been content with what we have. Tocqueville says in his paper on American behavior, “In the Unites States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it, and he sells it before the roof is on.” Tocqueville says that the drive of a man to get what he wants is unmatchable by any other man. The one thing that separates the United States from other nations is that once we achieve a possession that we have worked for so long, It looses value and we move on to something else that is bigger and better.

Going farther back in time to when the country was founded the future Americans were not satisfied with the life that they were living in and wanted more then they had. Crevecoeur wrote, “here he sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new matter.” Here he is saying that with the same type of people they are conquering a new nation. They want a new place to live and a new place to call home. Crevecoeur demonstrates the reason that people wanted to break away from the mother country that they lived in and go on a journey of their own. “We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself.” In the old government the people did not work for themselves. They worked for the king and nothing was given to them. Being the bold Americans that we are we rebelled against the way of the old and went for the new. It turns out that whatever we are doing we have to be the best.

“He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach it, to grasp it, and enjoy it.” Tocqueville says that Americans will race to beat anyone at anything. That is true, but it is not always bed as Tocqueville says. When the Russians launched the satellite the United States put everything they had into launching one to compete. Nothing bad came out of that example although when we discovered the atomic bomb we destroyed millions of people when it was not necessarily needed. In everything that we do as Americans we are always in a hurry to go faster, and to get there quicker with less people interaction. In the world of tomorrow we will never have to talk to another human because we will be doing everything over the computers, and we will loose the qualities of being human at all.