# american dream (upward-reach)

*Ordinarily means:* the ideal that anyone in the United States can prosper through their own effort

A collective self's story that each member, from any window it starts in, can enter a wider one by its own action.

- Computed level: L19 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: published  ·  Domain: agency

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [collective self](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-collective-self.shared), [story](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-story.narrative), [narrative](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-narrative.self-story), [member](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-member.social), [window](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-window.range), [start](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-start.action), [enter](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-enter.spatial), [reach](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-reach.action), [wide](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-wide.spatial), [action](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-action.deed), [hope](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-hope.emotional), [possibility](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-possibility.potential)

**Through:** The collective narrative is spent on its members' reach rather than on its own: it reads every member's walls as movable by that member, which keeps members acting toward wider windows and reads the group's worth by how many do.

**Novel properties:**
- a group story about each member's reach
- the group's walls read as open from below
- a promise whose test is individual lives

## Examples
- The historian James Truslow Adams popularised the phrase 'the American dream' in his 1931 book The Epic of America. *(history)*

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-american-dream.upward-reach*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-american-dream.upward-reach.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*