by Enceno Macy
Editor’s Note: In March, we began posting the work of Enceno Macy, an inmate in a US prison. Enceno’s articles are sent handwritten, then typed and edited by a trusted editor. Comments typed into the response area will be sent directly to Enceno. Thanks for reading and for the warm response he’s received each time. –efc
In the old story, one night before the American Revolutionary War was even dreamed of, an amiable drunk named Rip Van Winkle passes out after boozing it up on a mountain. Old Rip sleeps for 20 years. When he wakes up, his faithful dog is gone, his hunting gun replaced by a rusty wreck. Thinking he’s only been asleep for one night, he goes home to find his wife long dead, his children grown and gone. King George is a dim memory, a new nation celebrates itself, and the population is in the throes of election frenzy. No one in the village remembers him. Poor Rip thinks he’s gone crazy, no longer sure who the hell he is.
A person who’s done a lot of time is in a similar situation when he gets out. If he was young when he went in, the changes on the outside can be beyond comprehension, even if he’s had access to television and movies. For example, a 15-year-old kid sentenced in 1995 to 20 years, say, will get out in 2015. At age 35, he will never have used a cell phone or the internet. He won’t have a clue how to use a GPS, iphone, Blackberry or other device. He will never have had a driver’s license. He will never have voted. He will never have had a bank account or credit card, will never have bought a car or rented a home. None of his former friends will remember him. His dog and all of his grandparents will have died, as well as a number of other family members.
Our modern Rip Van Winkle walks out the gates into a totally alien Brave New World with no preparation or training other than card-sharking, con games, gambling and fighting that ensure survival in prison. Not only does he not know how to operate the machinery and devices of modern life, he doesn’t have the most basic experience in taking care of himself, like cooking, shopping, paying bills, doing laundry, fixing a drain, building a table. The only way to avoid going back to prison is to play a very fast catch-up game in pursuit of the American Dream, his sole chance of redemption and security. Not many of us make it, for obvious reasons. Maybe it’s sour grapes, but I look at the stats and start wondering about that American Dream.
What exactly is the American Dream? Jeremy Rifkin defines it as “every person has the right and opportunity to pursue his or her own individual material self interests.” The idea is “that market forces, if left unhindered by government, would guarantee every person the opportunity to improve his or her station in life.”
That sounds good, except reality turns out to be very different. It is the very nature of human beings, Rifkin says, to be “materialistic, self-interested, and driven by the biological urge to be propertied, autonomous, independent and self-sufficient, and sovereign over their own domain.” Indulging those urges, people — individually and collectively — lose or abandon self-control and become dangerously irresponsible.
The American Dream promised limitless wealth and limitless resources available to a limitless population. It was never more than it called itself — a dream. As George Carlin said, “It’s called the American Dream ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.” Yet somehow this slogan became the operating principle of our entire society, economy and political system. Huge financial empires grew on the principle that they could go on growing forever.