laughingdog said:

DividedQuantum said:

No, I think it's true. .... I think the personal narrative most people have, at least Americans, is so out of touch with anything reasonable that things like the American Dream become sacrosanct, when in fact such ideas are quite hollow and destructive.....

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Indeed. In early tribal society it was obvious to everyone that they "sink or swim" together.
This tempered excessive ego. There was no place for an individual assuming excessive importance. With minimal possessions there was no wealth inequality, and no striving to get "to the top of the heap". Meditation was not necessary to temper ego. It was obvious to all that they were only a part of the world, and family.

Capitalism and Communism (as practiced in dictatorships) produce great wealth & power inequality. (Communism in Israeli Kibbutzim is another matter).

Between the hunter gatherer stage and civilization, there were settlements with chieftans where we see the beginnings of inequality, division of labor, and power accumulation.

With American consumer, corporate, capitalism, we have reached an extreme as you point out. Now there is an infatuation with "winning". Individual "winning".

All the great metaphors for life, from long ago, from wise mean are meant to temper this folly, and help us decrease the impulse to take everything personally & so seriously:
Life is a dream
All the worlds a stage
Life is a game
You can't take it with you
Life is a joke
Its all Maya

To any hunter gatherer all the social media, and texting would of course be a joke.
That people are now addicted to these things points to the hollowness you speak of,
and paradoxically both over population and at the same time a fear of intimacy & the knowledge of how to create it.

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