Christina Yoon
Ap Language and
composition
Blenkanship
5/22/2012
Lonely America
Exchange the nation’s victory with one’s loving son’s
life. Exchange the friendship with a breathless competition. At the end, walk
in to the cold and darkness with no one to hold nor to be with. The nation
seems strong but the individuals can hear the cries of distress which
suffocates one’s throat. The nation seems united but every individual are still
standing alone in the darkness. The nation celebrates the victory but the
generation cries at the memorial. Americans endlessly march to the death with
emptiness in the heart. Waiting for somebody to reach a hand that will shine
the darkest out in the night. Companions, friends, families, romantic partner
sounds so sweet and attractive but in reality, they are just an untouchable
dreams which makes people feel more secluded in America.
Although
American culture emphasizes individualism to live in an independent lifestyle,
historical evidence shows that when Americans are in a hard circumstance like in
the World War, American people united together to work and to support each
other. The American Red Cross was one of the accommodating organizations in
America which provided useful services to the U.S military. The American Red Cross emphasized that
American people are not alone because Americans still received and share the
love and care through the community during the most hard times to unite the
country strongly together. When the hopelessness lonely soldiers were struggling
to survive from the harsh conditions, almost 50,000 volunteers and 10,000
American communities supported the devastated soldiers by providing camp
service, home service, nursing service to provide food, shelter, supplement
supplies, cloth and many other comfort items. The American people show the
strong bond between each other to support the nation.
While
some people believe that American people
unite together to build more relationships and companionships with other
individuals in America, in reality, American people fail to maintain a stable
relationship because of the strong American cultural idea of individualism
which leads people to be isolated, and lonely.
Edward
Hopper is one of the most famous 20th century American artist who painted with the inspiration of emptiness and
loneliness in the America. His painting expresses the individualism in America because often
times, people are by themselves in the picture without having
companions. Edward Hopper expresses the resistance, the
grit of the city, and the Great Depression in his painting in America. He also depicted human
disenchantment and loneness in his painting by painting only one or two people with depressing face
expressions and posture. The people in the painting almost look like they are longing for something or someone and are desperately waiting for something that will never come.
This shows how Americans were waiting for their friends and
families to comeback from the war during
the historical era.
American society went through economic
distress which leads the American people to lose fate and hope. Because people are overly confident rather
than logical, they waste lots of money which caused the Great Depression in
1920s in the American history. When people are overly confident, they
lose the control and tend to go with their guts and make mistakes. People
are confident when they are economically stable but after all, they end up
losing the money by making stupid mistakes. When
people are overly confident, they don't really know how to make a good
decisions since they think they are smarter than whom they are and trust too
much in themselves. However because they trust themselvs too much but always
tend to doubt others, and neglect others, this is why American people are more lonely.
Relationship without the trust and the respect will eventually fail.
Because lonely people expect more serious
relationship and want something real, they tend to be more picky and suspicious
of others. Lonely people make themselves lonelier by choosing not to trust
their peers. Because lonely people cannot trust people, they fail to maintain a
good relationship.
Some professions argue
that the increasing rate of narcissism and American people's loneliness
relates. The feeling of superiority and the narcissism can be one of
the reasons why people in America feel lonely. Throughout the history, social Darwinism and
nationalism supported the idea of American people
being superior to the others. Because
American people tend to be more arrogant and distance
themselves from their peers, Americans lack
interaction and this is why people are lonelier. People themselves are making themselves lonely by
not trusting others and developing more and more of the detachment. According
to ASR, American people are “unrelated individuals" and the percentage of
people living by themselves are increasing from 6 to 16 percent in America.
The world
war made the people to lose the meaning of life by taking away the security and
the stabilized life. The suicidal rates per 100,000 people
of suicide among active-duty personnel in the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force
show an increase in suicide rates since 2001. There were 197 Army
suicides in 2008, according to the Army's numbers. The total includes active-
and non-active-duty soldiers. Because American people were living in the
anxious life, the war made people's mental health destroyed and gave a psychic distress. Also as people become more isolated,
people get more anxious. The soldiers in the battle become extremely lonely as
they see other soldiers die and feel emotionally exhausted while they struggle
to survive.
Parents in America
are protective and they strongly support their children since America is the
land of opportunity, and the American parents think
that the more support you give it to your child, they will succeed more in later life. However
this is not helpful to children in the other hand because physiologist found out that those children eventually become self centered, so they want others to understand them fully like their
parents do. These children has higher chance of becoming
a narcissist and have more hard time finding friends because they expects their
peers to understand and support them like their parents did it for them.
U.S powerful
political leaders are not an exception of the lonely people. “In his isolation, his sovereign madness, his
stupidity, he is leading a nation to a place where our citizenry is unable to
move forward unable to go back, unable to reenter history, unable to do
anything other than lash out at those who would have us begin the process of
sloughing off our loss.” The author of the book Loneliness As A Way of Life, Thomas Dumm criticized the presidents George W. Bush as a person
who is dishonest, but who does not truly appreciates the country’s
hero and refuse to even attend to the people who died from the enemies.
He is living in his own isolated blocked grief. Because the president is
governing the United States with his own fed up feelings of madness which comes
from the embarrassment of the personal grief, and the authority, the country is
not able to neither move forward nor go back to the history. Dumm's
final claim was that the governments in the United States failed to think
themselves as with true clear thoughts because they live in their
lonely, isolated, and selfish world.
America is known as the powerful
and influential country. However, American people lack power to achieve a more
contented life because they have hard time controlling their emotional feelings.
Unfortunately majority of Americans experienced the stage of loneliness.
Americans should realize that it is not the people who are making each other
lonely, but a nation itself. The American cultural idea of individualism
separates people from each other and the idea of superiority makes people to be
a competitor rather than friends. . Loneliness is a poison which will hamper
the American society because it has the power to blind people’s strength but
takes away the one’s potential to success.
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