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PETER (approaches): Too dark. I can’t make any thing out.

JOSH: Turn on the light.

(Peter obeys. The room fills with light. Joshua tips a page up.)

Can you make it out now?

PETER (studies): Sorry, I can’t understand your writing.

JOSH (sighs): I suppose so….It’s my business…I’m writing a philosophy tract…and toward the end I bump into contradictions. I need to take a different view.

PETER: How can I help? I’m just normal computer programmer. You want me to understand philosophy?

JOSH: You may be just the person I need. Describe “The American Dream”.

(Pause)

PETER: Ah…It does exist, but not exactly.. It’s sort of gut feeling that every body has.

JOSH: Good…. Now, what is the dream for you,…. Peter?

PETER: Why me?

JOSH: I’m just curious.

PETER: I want to be happy.

JOSH: Go on….more concretely?

PETER: I want friends, a family, some children, and a house in a good neighborhood.

JOSH: All the while you feel that you could possibly be a millionaire?

PETER: Earlier maybe, but now I see it will take a long time.

JOSH: Do you have a wife?

PETER: Girl friend…

JOSH: Why aren’t you married?

PETER: Because to be married you need a good income.

JOSH: So, your dream needs money! How do you plan to get money?

PETER: Save…work hard! I might have to take some risks in the future. I like my work. I haven’t had a vacation in five years. When I earn enough money to get married my dream will be half there. I probably will have to take some risks in the future if I want to fulfill my dream.

JOSH: You of course, know money can’t buy happiness?

PETER: Money can buy a house!

JOSH: All know that honest work doesn’t always result in prosperity. There are many poor people who strive and never will improve their fate.

PETER: Except for the lazy or impaired, honest work will improve their lot….somewhat… anyway. “A rising tide raises all ships”. But contacts, taking risks, and hard work are better rewarded.

JOSH: Don’t forget goals, luck, intelligence, education, fathers money…..

PETER: You sit alone in this dark corner and know America? Do you know what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence?

JOSH: Do you know his words?

PETER: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that are among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

JOSH: A plus!

PETER: Are you a teacher?

JOSH: History… in some way.

PETER: Then you know that in The French Constitution, written at about the same time, “Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood” side stepped the words “Pursuit of Happiness”.

JOSH: Why do you, Peter, need a family, for your happiness?

PETER: Well, Jefferson wrote that his family was the most beautiful happiness of his life.

JOSH: Why do you harp on “Jefferson”, “Jefferson”?…. his words, his thoughts on family.. Do you know Jefferson was a large plantation owner and a racist?

PETER: Of course he had slaves that was a different time. Over two hundred years so much has changed. You can’t look at his slave holdings with our modern eyes. Besides he changed opinions as he grew older.

JOSH: Yes somewhat, but he always thought the blacks inferior, that slavery should end but blacks and whites could not live together in the same society. He wrote against mixing blood of blacks and whites but he had one definite and maybe more children with his slave Sally Hemings

PETER: What about his wife?

JOSH: His wife died very young, after two children.

PETER: Maybe Sally is just hearsay.

JOSH: Recent DNA tests of descendants of Sally and Jefferson are statistically conclusive.

PETER: Oh!..was Sally pretty? Figure?.. Face? I suppose that Jefferson didn’t think about her blood lines during sex.

JOSH: We think she had straight black hair. She was only one quarter black so she was “brown”. Their son Madison Hemings was essentially “white” but, one eighth black so he still was treated as a slave. He never forgave Jefferson for this. He would ask his mother something like: “ Why did daddy treat his other children different from me?” She would reply “Quiet, quiet…. when we were in Paris he promised to free all my children. Patience, patience”

PETER: Jefferson did as he promised?

JOSH: No….and yes! Only after his death were they freed.

PETER: When did Sally’s and Jefferson’s relationship start? What about his wife?

JOSH: His wife died very young. In Paris when Sally was fourteen years old!

PETER: Fourteen! Yikes!

JOSH: Then young girls were considered women. Madison said later, “…Jefferson took his mother like a concubine”.

PETER: Why do you think that Madison’s statement is important?

JOSH: There is a difference, a concubine…