Terms for American Dream Unit Protestant Work Ethic (Made

Terms for American Dream Unit Protestant Work Ethic (Made popular by Max Weber) - This idea is also seen as the basic philosophical principle driving capitalism and the growth of the free market. Generally it refers to some of the following attitudes and behavior: (1) believing that work gives meaning to life; (2) having a strong sense of duty to one’s work; (3) believing in the necessity of hard work and of giving work (even before the family) the best of one’s time; (4) believing that work contributes to the moral worth of the individual and to the health of the social order; (5) viewing wealth as a major goal in life; (6) viewing leisure as earned by work and as preparation for work; (7) viewing success in work as resulting primarily from the amount of personal effort; (8) viewing wealth that accrues from work as a sign of God’s favor. Social Mobility - movement of individuals, families, or groups through a system of social hierarchy or stratification. If such mobility involves a change in position, especially in occupation, but no change in social class , it is called "horizontal mobility." An example would be a person who moves from a managerial position in one company to a similar position in another. If, however, the move involves a change in social class, it is called "vertical mobility" and involves either "upward mobility" or "downward mobility." An industrial worker who becomes a wealthy businessman moves upward in the class system; a landed aristocrat who loses everything in a revolution moves downward in the system James Truslow Adam’s definition of the American Dream- "The American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." Alexis de Tocqueville on American’s views of equality- “Equality suggests to the human mind several ideas that would not have originated from any other source, and it modifies almost all those previously entertained. I take as an example the idea of human perfectibility, because it is one of the principal notions that the intellect can conceive and because it constitutes of itself a great philosophical theory, which is everywhere to be traced by its consequences in the conduct of human affairs.” “Although man has many points of resemblance with the brutes, one trait is peculiar to himself: he improves; they are incapable of improvement. Mankind could not fail to discover this difference from the beginning. The idea of perfectibility is therefore as old as the world; equality did not give birth to it, but has imparted to it a new character.” “When the citizens of a community are classed according to rank, profession, or birth and when all men are forced to follow the career which chance has opened before them, everyone thinks that the utmost limits of human power are to be discerned in proximity to himself, and no one seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of his destiny. Not, indeed, that an aristocratic people absolutely deny man's faculty of self-improvement, but they do not hold it to be indefinite; they can conceive amelioration, but not change: they imagine that the future condition of society may be better, but not essentially different; and, while they admit that humanity has made progress and may still have some to make, they assign to it beforehand certain impassable limits.” .

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