If everyone only did work that they “loved and believed in” civilization would collapse in a week. — an-salad

Deservedly, if 'civilization' depends on most of its members dragging through life, unhappy and frustrated. There are people in turnip fields who would enjoy working with the machines and people doing paperwork who would be happy to plant turnips and people sweating over machines who dream of a white collar and air-conditioned office. For every necessary task, there are people suited to and satisfied by that kind of work.
As for the unnecessary tasks, they are assigned by those people who are themselves unnecessary.

What everyone needs is air, water, food, shelter, companionship and the opportunity to make themselves useful and earn respect. What nobody needs is an elite who take much and contribute little, while exercising the power to inflict damage on other. Unfortunately, while many humans recognize this, we can't seem to muster a collective good sense.

How do you wake from the American dream? As for me, usually in a cold sweat at 3:30 am.

I believe in clean dishes, but I am sceptical about me washing up.

I believe the "American Dream" is more along the lines of starting life with little and making a financial success and/or gaining recognition later on. I have been privileged to know someone who started out almost penniless in his early twenties (I once went with him searching for stovepipe in trash dumps) , and became a billionaire, and was on an advisory panel with Bill Clinton in the 1990s. And I knew another of that generation who started from poverty and eventually created a clothing line and was worth hundreds of millions of dollars when he passed a few years ago.

Are there other nations where this kind of Dream is possible?

Horatio Alger personified and wrote of this in the 1800s.

Don’t they have a contraption for that?

That's the American Dream.

Are there other nations where this kind of Dream is possible — jgill

Sure, but they all have a large number of dreaming poor who will stay poor - or maybe get deported and/or imprisoned. This isn't so much anAmerican dream as the basic stuff of fairy tales going back to the earliest societies that established economies of vast disparity. The very few lucky and talented traders, administrators, inventors and gladiators who make their mark and prosper in such a society are held up as beacons of hope to keep the toiling masses toiling without complaint.