"Brook Farm" was created with the notion that the individual, not God or nature, had the power to create a better world through spiritual and mental development. "Modern Times" was an experiment in communal anarchy.
America has seen the dark side of Utopian idealism as well: autocratic rule doomed Oneida as it has all personality cults from Jonestown to Jeffrey Lundgren's.
Americans as a whole have generally dismissed these efforts as impractical, but most Americans secretly harbor the notion that America itself is one large Utopian society. We suffer in the face of a reality that fails to meet our ideals. This utopian ideal is the reason that we have made America the "land of opportunity" - the land where failure is never viewed as permanent.
In America, bankruptcy is no particular shame, many entrepreneurs boast of it as a great turning point in their lives - the only failure is giving up. The whole structure is set up so that one doesn't give up. (This is the insidious danger of a permanent underclass. The career welfare recipients have given up, thereby short-circuiting the entire system. America has created a society where everyone desires the same material ends; but a significant portion of that society (the permanent underclass) doesn't have access to the ends through societally approved methods. This has led to an epidemic of acquisitional methods not approved of by society at large, like crime.)
In the introduction to his great rock 'n' roll book Mystery Train, Greil Marcus addressed America's promise: "To be American is to feel the promise as a birth right, and to feel alone and haunted when the promise fails. No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes."
Bruce Springsteen addresses this promise in the aptly titled "The Promised Land," from Darkness of the Edge of Town:
"...Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing
But lost and broken hearted"
The Promise is what we make of it. The Promise is not a guarantee, it is the structure of opportunity. To survive its rigors is tantamount to surviving a storm. Don't be deceived by false promises, promises of material wealth are not the point. The point is the struggle itself. America offers an environment where the impediments to an honest struggle have been minimized.
Article comments
1 - Emily
Great post, Eric! FYI, California has recently granted permission to mark the childhood home of the Wilsons in Hawthorne, CA an official state landmark, even though the home was dozed over a decade ago to make way for the 105 freeway.
2 - Eric Olsen
thanks Emily, I really appreciate the kind words and that's great news about the Hawthorne home and its famous garage, which no longer exist
3 - Eric Olsen
Update - a mini-film about the making of Smile is now available above, check it out.
4 - riley moriarty
There was talk that a recording of the smiLE concert from carnegie hall 10/12 or 13 may be available through NonSuch Records. Do you have any information on that?
5 - Eric Olsen
Riley, I don't see anything about it yet on Brian's site