How Public Memory Affects the American Dream
There is something very powerful about public memory when it comes to creating an internalized image of a nation. For America, many people "remember" a place where there is bountiful opportunity and freedom for people to be themselves and to live their best lives. However, this collective memory is wrong, and very apparently so, but yet the public interpretation of America has a great nation lives on. Why is that?
There is an article in Scientific America that discusses this idea of collective memory and how people remember well known events that have occurred in American History. It helps to explain how the different telling of a story come together to make one collective perspective, and how this perspective then creates a false sense of reality for American people.