Beyond the boundary, an American Dream...

I think it is good to understand the true meaning of the American Dream because it is often plainly not understood, believed to be something else or just not known at all. Understanding it will help understand firstly what the USA (and, to a degree, Canada) is truly about, as well as the root of so much conflict in the American spirit, indeed the whole Western world today.

It all starts with this one famed man who set out one day, in his mind never to return, as you do. He bore the name of Christopher Columbus.
Nowadays, we know he was not the first explorer to perceive, even to walk upon the unknown lands beyond the frontier of knowledge. Some more European minded people will tell you it was another, of the Vikingr, Leif Erikson... A Viking, they went out to the seas with their striped-sails Drakkars, some navigating all the way to the dark mountains and forests of Markland, lands rumoured to be inhabited by strange beings, in order to bring back wood. I know, as if in Skandinavia they didn't have any.

Now, either of them are named when the random street idiot is asked who discovered America.
But here's just one question: How can one discover a land already inhabited? How is that supposed to work? If that's possible, one can then wonder, who discovered Asia, who discovered Africa, who discovered Europe?
If the hardest one to answer is the last one, that's because there's a reason for it. And this reason is why Marco Polo is not forgotten.

He was part of a grander process, a move, because it was, at the time, Europe starting to reach out into the Unknown. The maps had a center. In some parts they were blank. The world was an unexplored place, and one could could very well be the first to go somewhere. At the time, any street in Hamburg you were walking in, you could reasonably know what there was behind its corner. And any road this street would lead you to you could somewhat easily know where it would take you, Southeast out of the city. And that you could keep walking and still find yourself on this charted territory, within the Light of civilization, within this world you know. But the map had an edge. The circle had a boundary. And if you just kept walking you would find yourself falling into the unknown, where there could be anything, and anything could await you.
This is what that street corner meant back then. You could truly not know what was behind it.
Does it sound scary? How about this: You are a peasant. Worse than that, you do not recognize the authority of the Church! You live in a system which regards you as scum.
Your options in life are: either become rich, and the only people that are rich are nobles. And becoming a noble is basically impossible. Or, you could be a laborer for the rest of your short miserable life of rending poverty. You'll be a farmer, or a fisherman. You have your own beliefs, which makes you some sort of deviant, and you'll find yourself lucky if not lynched outright for being in cahoots with the devil. You're already like an outsider, living a drowning, predetermined life. Instructed. repressed, persecuted for your simple beliefs.
And that's your safe, explored, civilized world. That's your visible, open corner of your map. This entirety that you know.

But in the back of your mind, there's always this distant little promise... that there may be something beyond the curtain, something past this boundary, something which could be anything... Out there, somewhere. Beyond is a plane where they'll never get you.
It's a little hope that's just there. You keep working the skin off your bones away, starved, grim. Living like less than a person. One day you have enough.

And you look out. Everything you know is behind you. Everything you are familiar with, everywhere you can expect things. The streets and corners of these cities, and of yours. Your shoddy, poor little home. And a whole lot of pain.
In front of you is... something... you have no way of knowing what. You just know it. There must be something, beyond those Horizonts, behind this boundary, past these waves. And you leave everything behind. You have, at your side, most of the people dearest to you... you grieve, as some of them stayed behind... some strangers, too, and everyone as desperate as you. And in a solemn opening of an epoch, you just... go...

And wherever those lands you arrive at... when you see their shore you breathe in again. And as you arrive on its sands, and as your people gather real food to cook, you stand over a Beginning, and you know you are free... and everything is behind you, and yes, they'll never get you here!


So, what am I telling you? Most people, especially Americans, do not understand the true nature of the American dream. At some point it became something about wealth and money, perhaps intentionally so. What I'm trying to tell you is that the American Dream is dying.

I mean by this something that should be obvious to all by now. The USA stands against the American Dream.
This USA, through a mostly natural progression of things, has become the old foe, the America of today is the Britain of back then, which Columbus among so many others sought to break free from. Gradually it became a part of the boundary. The Circle. That is because when the settlers were walking out on the edge, and when they pushed the boundary forwards, they were pulling the frontier behind them.

The implications are far-reaching, so meditate on it. This is what some mean when they speak of their hatred of (and their opposition to) globalism. This is something that I worry about every day. because the continuation of the american death is complete dystopia. Hardly escapable.


Pay attention now. I think the Frontier is essential to the American Dream. I did say the American Dream is dying, simply because behind the settlers there came in civilization. Out there, there was the Wild, there was the True American Spirit; behind them they were building the same misery they were trying to escape. Behind them carriages, wagons and employers, and opinions, opinions and obligations, society, authority, taxes, norms and regulations, expected thinking, religions, crimes and collectives, systems and prisons, and all of this which comes together in this one nauseating ball of suffocating nonsense, and which, logically, gets worse and worse over time, less and less simple freedom, suffocating and droning like a classroom full of stupid people, and all the way until present day, which is once again a tiresome, nonsensical drowning life for the atypical American who by now wants out, and it's only getting worse, but...

Did you pay attention? If the American Spirit is dying, it is not yet dead; If it is not yet dead then the Frontier is not yet gone.

Yes, I am telling you the Frontier still exists. Yes it was fucked by the new cities they built and all the lands they horribly cleared up on their maps. And all this mass of people that moved in... But it simply retreated.
It still exists, somewhere out there, deep beyond some distant hills and over some hidden ridges. Vague hints can be encountered sometimes, and are almost always missed and ignored. The Unknown Country.

So find the way.
People like us, they leave behind everything, because there's nothing left for us back there.


Okay, maybe it wasn't clear enough. But we can play with metaphors.
Imagine, you live in a totalitarian life. You are told, day in and day out, what to think, even how to think, and how to behave. You are repeatedly taught the same things in school, and at this point you know it is just to drill it in your head. You have no hope for a better future. No matter how dedicated you may be or how hard you might want to work. Your life is already determined. You shrink in front of authority, the way your subconscious was taught. The educators review your behavior, the way you write sentences, and check your facial expressions to monitor any sign of deviancy. Everything is expected. Everything is open and known.
This is your dreary little hell.
You know you're not alone. But it means nothing. There's no way of escaping this. It is always in your thoughts, and you fear you will die without ever breathing in.

And one day... in your dark family shed out back, because yes you have a shed, you find a hole.
It's not a very big hole, it was hidden behind some planks all this time. The idea of just climbing in sounds just a bit scary, but you're exited! You somehow squeeze your way in, and your head disappears below earth. You spend a decent amount of time just trying to move around awkwardly but eventually you come out the other end. You're in a dark forest. In the distance there are black mountains; the sky is white, and there is a breeze.
How is this even possible?
You make it back, climb back through the hole and come out from that dark corner behind the blanks... Out of the shed, you step out and look around, at your house, and the city you live in, and you go on not telling anyone.

You go on, live your live, keep taking those repressive classes and following your authoritarian schedule. You know some others who are drowning too, and talk to them away from everyone. And you know of a single hope... and as you continue your days, you are eventually left with no want to continue with this world. The Other world lives in your thoughts, you dream of it, and at some point you are done with this.
You bring with you all those who wanted to come, they just like you leaving behind everything, but somehow the police knows! They chase you! You rush into the field, all make it into the shed and you slam the door shut. They have now put all their hopes on you: what if you lied? What if you dreamed it up, what if it's gone, what if the hole is filled?
You find it! You tear the planks out of the way and practically dive in, wriggle and fight your way through the dark earthen tunnel, humid, it smells like dirt, and you begin seeing light, and burst out the other end! This forest with a sky now gray and windy, you fall to your knees and see the next person struggling her way out, you grab her and fall backwards, looking up you see the dark clouds, you hear the heavy wind and think of rain. Wouldn't that be something, if it rained on the day of your escape!
By now all have made it out, and when the pursuers break into the shed, rush over to the fallen planks, and look down into the hole... they see a hole... the tunnel caved in forever, the link does not exist anymore. You laugh. It's raining, and you don't care.

You know at this point that you are free for the rest of your life. Free. You lot might even survive, who knows? You know how to make a fire, how to cook stuff, how to build.
And many other things; and as the fire starts going and you have over your head a crappy little roof of saplin branches, and you're chilly and hungry, you all laugh again, and you are happy, and you are free.
From this day onward whatever you build will be your call. You will go on to create an entire nation, with your own two hands, just you lot as the beginning. An actual country. With all sorts of commodities. With all those who want this fresh breath. And with your own biggest, perpetual worry etched in its national essence; that through some sinister process, some hideous plot, the lands you found become once again ruled by a suffocating regime, not because the police of the old world managed to find a way through, but because the country lost its way, and forgot the reason for its very existence.


That's what I meant. That's the Dream. I can't even truly explain it. It's not even American anymore. It's just there. Somewhere in the back of our minds, and we've yet to find the door. I think it is closed. But bear in mind, for every door that closes a window must be opened. The door is closed, the window is open. I like to think you can just climb in...