The dream was defined by having the "best of the best." In the 1950s, more people had access to the “better” things, and the traditional American Dream was at risk and the new American Dream had begun to emerge. Packard said that because of the collapse of the American Dream, people have rushed to find new ways to draw lines between the elected and the unelected. Society has always had the desire to associate people of different categories, be they race or religion, and has gone so far as to redefine what the American dream truly was and how to separate those who lived it and those who did not. However, defining the Dream became difficult when society realized that it was no longer possible to separate people based on material things. Packard recognized this and stated that in terms of a person's productive role in society versus their consuming role, class lines had become rigid, forcing a person to advocate for themselves instead of purchasing things that automatically gave them a social boost. The risk of the American dream increased and became ominously out of reach, leaving people in a constant state of what felt personal