USA: Societal Foundational Myths
To maintain national cohesion, every nation-state needs a set of collective beliefs which everyone within the nation and great society believes to be correct and which everybody, or the very least the majority of its people, excepts to be factual.
Due to almost everybody leaving these foundational myths, the social myths act as a unifying force within society.
The United States is one of the most significant nations in the world and the world’s largest liberal democracy, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Foundational myths are necessary for the continued survival of the American Republic.
Foundational myths of America are that it is a city on the hill, that it is trying to build a better republic, and that its founding members were its founding fathers and the embodiment of what it means to be an American.
Also, its first President, George Washington, is seen as a superb military general, though in reality, he lost most of his battles engaged in, but what is actual achievement was maintaining the cohesion of the Continental Army using the army that was highly prone to desertion.
George Washington should be respected for what he did, an outstanding achievement in keeping the army together and overcoming circumstances against a superiorly equipped and professional army in the form of the British regulars and German mercenaries.
The Undiscovered Country
For present-day Americans, one of the significant social issues affecting America is that society no longer agrees on the nation’s foundational myths, partly due to some of these myths not being based on factual or inaccurate information.
Even the 1619 project that dates America’s founding back to enslaved Africans entering the North American continent is breaking down America’s foundational myths partly due to America’s historical attitude to race relations.
For instance, it was until 1967 that interracial couples were allowed to marry in all the states of America due to its race segregation laws, which were not overturned until that point.
The American constitution describes all men as created equal, but repeatedly throughout America’s long history, which is long concerning its written constitution from 1789 when the constitution came into effect until the present day, the US has fallen short of its ideals.
However, the American ideals and the American dream will not happen within our lifetime; the American dream is the golden city on the hill and the never-ending strive to become something greater than what they are.
The American’s foundational myth is the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns. That’s what America is: the pursuit of ideals that humanity may never reach, but it is the destination.
The journey was so vital to America’s foundational myths that its people now forgetting, particularly Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2010.
