# Do non-Americans have "dreams?"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [July 6, 2018, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383 "2018-07-06T13:26:30Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2018, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/41 "2018-07-08T23:45:49Z")
In the past decade I have become close internet friends with other men from all over the globe. Of course they all have dreams. Just based on the limited number of individuals I have contact with I do notice a slight difference in the way they tend to chase their dreams. Particularly with the Eastern European men. I seem to relate to them more as they are tireless in their pursuit and extremely detail oriented. I would sometimes catch them fudging on their test results in very minor ways and initially I didn’t like it. After a while I realized it was simply a thing that happens when we are trying to eliminate hard to control data input and we tend to do so overly optimistically. One of those things that just goes with being very passionate about something. The Asians tend to be extremely methodical and will challenge me on every detail, I love working with them. We all dream!
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### Author:  [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/42 "2018-07-09T00:02:02Z")
The Australian dream would be win the lottery, buy a house with absolute harbour frontage and associate with colourful racing identities.
Much the same as the US dream, just without the hard work bit.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/43 "2018-07-09T00:40:03Z")
Everyone outside of America, but especially Canadians, are mindless zombies wandering around looking for BRAAIINNNNS to eat. This why our President is trying to keep them out of our country.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/44 "2018-07-09T03:09:55Z")
> [@2Bits](#):
>
> So sorry about your head!
>
> I do understand how marketing works. For over the 50+ years I’ve been immersed in what we get in the United Sates. The specific focus on non-specific dreams/aspirations seems a recent phenomenon. I was wondering how widespread it was.
It has always focused on dreams/aspirations. They may be using the words themselves more, but the whole thing is about aspirations and already was so when it tried to sell soap to Pompeiian housewives. If you do not understand that, you do not understand the psychology of selling at all.
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### Author:  [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/45 "2018-07-09T04:12:29Z")
[The European Dream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwTDL25N4xg)
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### Author:  [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/46 "2018-07-09T05:53:13Z")
> [@2Bits](#):
>
> So sorry about your head!
>
> For over the 50+ years I’ve been immersed in what we get in the United **Sates**.
It seems to have reached your subconscious.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/47 "2018-07-09T13:58:01Z")
wikipedia:
"James Adams coined the term “American Dream” in his 1931 book The Epic of America.[11] His American Dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”[12]
He was born rich, by the way. His notions seem both self-contradictory and different from the current notion of the American Dream.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2018, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/48 "2018-07-09T21:39:40Z")
I was reading the OP as meaning “dreams” as meaning individual ones, and not necessarily even financial ones.
What I was wondering about when I read the OP was whether or not the pursuit of one’s dreams, even if moderately quixotic, has the same degree of respect/toleration that it does here in the US.
We regularly hear about people who tossed high paying jobs aside to become artisans of one type or another, for a fraction of the money. Or people whose pursuit of making a jetpack (substitute some other impractical, cool and expensive thing) becomes their focus. They’re usually thought of as a little off-kilter, but there’s always a certain degree of respect for their courage and resolve.
Do other countries have this same feeling toward people who pursue their dreams, especially if they’re NOT teenagers/young adults starting off in the world?
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### Author:  [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2018, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/49 "2018-07-10T05:07:58Z")
No, because all non-Americans are soulless automatons who cast aberrant units from the uniform glory of the group hive to perish cold and alone in the Dreaming Pits.
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### Author:  [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2018, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/50 "2018-07-10T06:22:12Z")
In fact, this is why foreigners can only produce movies like Britain’s [He Likes Stuff And That’s Wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Elliot), while Japan can only offer [Foolish Worker, Return To Your Office](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_We_Dance%3F_(1996_film)), and New Zealand’s dismal celebration of bucolic passivity is [I Only Wish To Grow Turnips For The Collective.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Fastest_Indian) Seriously, a moment’s thought about the art, film and literature of other countries ought to tell you what a stupid question “do foreigners want to do stuff?” is. Or, as the great American playwright Christopher Marlowe had it:
> [@](#):
>
> Nature, that framed us of four elements
> Warring within our breasts for regiment
> Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
> Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
> The wondrous architecture of the world
> And measure every wandering planet’s course,
> Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
> And always moving as the restless spheres,
> Wills us to wear ourselves and never rest,
> Until we reach that ripest fruit of all,
> That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
> The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.
Tamburlaine, Part One, Act Two Scene Seven, ll. 18-29
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### Author:  [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2018, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/51 "2018-07-10T07:34:43Z")
> [@Penfeather](#):
>
> Tamburlaine, Part One, Act Two Scene Seven, ll. 18-29
OK, so two things.
one, That’s beautiful and ends the thread.
two, perfect name/post combo.
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### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [July 10, 2018, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/52 "2018-07-10T23:42:35Z")
As a German, a German engineer in fact, I don’t have dreams (I heard about the concept of dreams outside of sleep, but never really comprehended. Is it like the last minutes before passing out on mighty amounts of beer?), I only have plans that must be executed. My ambitions (another word whose meaning I don’t quite grasp) never go beyond keeping the status quo, as long as I have enough to eat and good wifi. And a fulfilled plan.
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### Author:  [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2018, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/53 "2018-07-11T05:53:20Z")
Do non-Americans have souls? We know that Americans were gifted that divine spark by the Creator that gives them their can-do spirit, that bold, pioneering drive to excel and surpass, but I’m curious if He sought to bestow His grace upon lesser peoples, or do they just wallow dull-eyed and listless in the muck and wait for their government to give them potatoes?
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### Author:  [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)
#### Post date: [July 11, 2018, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/54 "2018-07-11T07:25:49Z")
Oi, my dear old mucker.
You’ve already been credited with a beautiful post to win the thread.
One is fine, adding a second is an indulgence and reeks of skiting.
Please.
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2018, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/55 "2018-07-12T04:49:31Z")
> [@Penfeather](#):
>
> Do non-Americans have souls? We know that Americans were gifted that divine spark by the Creator that gives them their can-do spirit, that bold, pioneering drive to excel and surpass, but I’m curious if He sought to bestow His grace upon lesser peoples, or do they just wallow dull-eyed and listless in the muck and wait for their government to give them potatoes?
I thought we patented souls? 😕
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2018, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/56 "2018-07-12T14:47:45Z")
> [@Penfeather](#):
>
> I’m curious if He sought to bestow His grace upon lesser peoples, or do they just wallow dull-eyed and listless in the muck and wait for their government to give them potatoes?
Here, it’s rice.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2018, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/57 "2018-07-12T14:53:09Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> What I was wondering about when I read the OP was whether or not the pursuit of one’s dreams, even if moderately quixotic, has the same degree of respect/toleration that it does here in the US. ?
Size mine. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: yours.
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### Author:  [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)
#### Post date: [July 12, 2018, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-non-americans-have-dreams/817383/58 "2018-07-12T20:34:27Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> Size mine. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack: yours.
> [@bump](#):
>
> Or people whose pursuit of making a jetpack (substitute some other impractical, cool and expensive thing) becomes their focus.
[He picks the oddest examples of American _per ardua ad astra_ can-do.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWqm_is95s&t=75s)
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