The flip side of American “success” – stress

Near the end of a column about Ted Kennedy, and his successes as an “incrementalist,” David Brooks talks about success in the American economy — and its downsides —

The American economy is flexible and productive. America’s G.D.P. per capita is nearly 50 percent higher than France’s. But the American system is also unforgiving. It produces its share of insecurity and misery. …

We Americans work longer hours than any other people on earth. We switch jobs much more frequently than Western Europeans or the Japanese. We have high marriage rates and high divorce rates. We move more, volunteer more and murder each other more.

Yet, the hypercompetitiveness of American society — including a self-defined competition with “old Europe” on only the first two sentences I quote from Brooks, bolstered by either Social Darwinism (if not explicitly defined as such) or a conservative Christian “success theology” or “prosperity gospel,” ignores the third sentence and the next paragraph.

The third sentence is, rather, seen as a mark of inferiority, or sinfulness/lack of faith, depending on whether Social Darwinism or prosperity gospel is involved. And, the second paragraph, with the exception of volunteerism, is simply accepted as a “price one pays.”

When it doesn’t have to be.
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