What makes a good and meaningful life? (Paper)

Welcome to the good life. We have pie and punch.

Intrigued? Well the good life, or rather, the concept of the good life is essentially that simple. As Americans, we are bombarded from all sides by images of what the good life entails, and thus everyone has built a perspective of "the good life". I propose that the good life is a life of awareness - most people are not aware that they are being controlled and impacted by pop culture and living what they think is their idea of a good life, an idea supplanted into each of their minds. Many people have their own take on the good life, some people I interviewed, some people who broadcast their ideas through music and others who sell it to us by other means. Perhaps the good life doesn't exist, and it is only a concept created by corporations to help sell their products. Perhaps it does exist and it is easier to attain than one would think. Based on many perspectives, we can work towards debunking the concept of a "good life".

Perhaps the best way to start unraveling the theory of a good and meaningful life is to start with my own belief system. I hold it true that a good life is something people must strive for, not something that you can be born into, such as may be the case with material wealth. No, I find that a truly good life is a life where you operate in full awareness of the factors guiding your life, factors trying to mold you into their image. Becoming aware in the sense that you can see the puppet strings that try to attach themselves o you is not an easy task, one that I am not versed in too deeply. It is the case for many people to subconsciously adopt the motto "ignorance is bliss" wherein what you don't know cannot hurt you. In this case it can be inferred that if you are ignorant of an assailant creeping up behind you, you will be perfectly fine, but if you are aware of his presence, then you are in some serious danger. What good can it do you to be unaware of the puppeteer that is controlling your every action and controlling every thought you think is your own? The way I see it (or perhaps I have been conditioned to see it this way, it is certainly a possibility) someone should try to be as aware of both themselves and everything impacting them as they can.

I am well aware that my ideas are not my own. I doubt that any of my ideas concerning my life and attitude have anything to do with me. I am a product of my environment. I can tell you, its a very uncomfortable position to be in; you don't know exactly what your beliefs are, you second-guess everything because you know that it came from one source or another. That's why I beleive I find the most meaning in writing. True, most plot devices and in general, plots, have been created before. but the truth remains that when you put pen to paper or words to a screen, it is an original burst of thought from yourself. even for those not gifted in writing can create something original and meaningful. The quality of the work doesn't have to be good, but it is meaningful in that it was created from the author's originality. Creating a fictional story, a poem, really any form of creative writing has meaning because it defies corporate media. If it's original, it's unaffected by anything but imagination. perhaps it is cliché to say this, but imagination ultimately boils down to the best tool to defy social norms.

I talked to several people to determine what they felt made a good and meaningful life. Talking to these people made it evident that some people have not given a whole lot of thought to their live's meaning, and much less to the concept of meaning in general. Person A said "Meaning, well that's the stuff that has importance to you, like, the stuff you like." similar to this was Person B who said that meaning "isn't something that can be easily tossed away, more like the stuff that's precious to you." From these two, we're left to wonder exactly what importance is - what makes something a necessity to someone? I think people have been greatly encouraged to not think critically about "abstract" things like the meaning of life and what makes a good life.

One medium that essentially serves up corporate messages to teens on a silver platter is the ever-expanding world of video gaming. With 3 current-gen gaming consoles, the attraction to video gaming ranges between age groups of 8 to 20s and
30s. Most every video game has a plot in which you must defeat a foe of some kind. In most of these you play the story's hero. You are the cream of your village's crop, there's something special about you, you have a predetermined destiny for greatness. This serves as a drag for many teens, albeit subconsciously. They need the affirmation that they can be better than what they are now, they can do more. Other than that, gaming is like a new sport between teens, a new form of competition where you can truly outshine your peers and earn your bragging rights without ever actually accomplishing much. It is a form of grandstanding, with every game becoming worse and worse, making you capable of doing more and more to humiliate your friends. not to mention that the games' level of violence is another huge draw; it gives teens the ability to commit deviant crimes without suffering punishment. It allows teens to battle against armies of "evil" creatures, without doing much to reflect on the eveil of killing said creature. For social deevoltuion we can all count video games as a mjor player, no pun intended.

Assignment 4 pt. 2

I think you had some good insight when you said that she started the video wearing all black clothes and really wouldn't stand out among a crowd, and with her lip gloss on, her outfit suddenly changed to the eye catching purple and white outfit with her jewelry sparkling. It really casts a new light on the subtleties of the video's superficiality. (Posted to Henry)

I think that your analysis of the video is dead-on. However I would try to analyze another possibility - Lil Mama says "what you know 'bout me" and so perhaps she is saying how we're all so caught up in being "cool" that we never know the person under the cool, all we know is that they're the cool kid for a reason.
I think the best thing you pointed out was "So even the authority figures are conspiring to support the extraordinariness of the teen. This extraordinariness, then, can't be a rebellion against the established authority figures, but it can be a dance party in the lunch room" I didnt put real thought into that part at first, but thinking about it now, doesn't it make your extraordinariness a hollow position? WIth no one to contest it, you havent really accomplished all that much. (Posted to Andy)

Assignment 4

1. What is the song basically saying about how to live a good life? Paraphrase the main idea.

The song "Good Life" by Kanye West and T-Pain says basically that living a good life is based on being rich and successful, having nice cars and things that catch women's eyes. Specifically good looking or "sexy" women. Generally they mean to say the living a good life is making money and living life with luxury, though to get there you have to be different than others, you need to stand out in some way.

2. What lyrics particularly speak to that perspective? Use quotes as evidence.

Specifically, lyrics that depict the image of the good life being a life where you live luxuriously are in the lines "And if they hate let em' hate and watch the money pile up, the good life." He says "watch the money pile up, the good life" - this tells us that having money leads to having Kanye's version of the "good life", wherein a man lives comfortably with his riches. Preceding the first quote he says "50 told me go 'head switch the style up" meaning that in the industry, for someone to make their riches, they have to stand out in a crowd, a reflection on the modern music industry where music all generally follow similar themes.
Something else worth mentioning is that Kanye West references several American cities in the song. These cities include Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Chicago. The major similarity between all of these areas is that they are urban environments where "street" culture is the dominant subculture. He says "The good life, it feel like Atlanta, It feel like L.A., it feel Like Miami, It feel like N.Y., feel like summertime Chi, ahh" so he's saying that the people who live the good life live in these areas, and the one thing they have in common is their "street cred" and their urbanity.

3. How do the video images support, re-orient, or challenge the dominant theme of the lyrics? Analyze.

The video both correlates with the lyrics and disagrees with the underlying message of the song. In the video we see T-Pain and Kanye West singing the song alongside images that match with the lyrics, i.e. a ferrari, good looking women, and the various cities that he mentions represent the "good life." Ergo, we associate the urban lifestyles prominent in the cities as a good life. However, contradictory to the message of originality he intends to send when he says "50 told me go 'head switch the style up...watch the money pile up", the song focuses on a good life derived from getting women, money and power.

4. What else do you notice that's interesting? Look for internal contradictions, aspects of the message that resonate with other messages from the pop culture, points that connect to your own perspective, etc. Analyze squared.

As I have said before, the message is contradictory in that Kanye tries to say that he is original among the music industry today, thus leading to his general success, even though this song is just another song that depicts men living a good life because of they women they sleep with, the money they acquire, and the things they own. The concept of a good life being a hedonistic existence is prevalent in most of modern culture, get the girl, live life hassle-free, live a pleasurable life. Connecting this to my own perspective, I understand how true meaning is derived from whatever brings happiness to someone's life, that if you find it most meaningful to own a ferrari and be rich and live life luxuriously, then you are entitled to it and though some may not find it so, that is a meaningful life, at least to you.

Assignment 3

Meaning seems to be a very subjective phrase. It would appear to be that everybody has a take on what meaning even if they haven't put much thought into their own lives' meaning. For instance, 2 of my six interviews were similar in that these people had clearly never given more than an ounce of thought into what their meaning is. Person A said "Meaning, well that's the stuff that has importance to you, like, the stuff you like." similar to this was Person B who said that meaning "isn't something that can be easily tossed away, more like the stuff that's precious to you." From these two, we're left to wonder exactly what importance is - what makes something a necessity to someone? Why is it that what one person finds important is a simple trifle to another? For this we can examine another person's idea, where she stated that "life is what's important, whether you are rich or poor, what you do with [your life] is what is carried with us as important." When asked to elaborate, she replied that "if your life benefits someone else's life in some way or another, you have brought meaning into both your life and theirs, however small it may have been." This is clearly a more specific interpretation of importance. Changing tracks for a minute, we can see how psychoanalyst Victor E. Frankl, the founder of logotherapy, describes importance in his book Man's Search for Meaning. Paraphrasing, Frankl describes meaning from the perspective of an Auschwitz prisoner during World War II, where he states that a man's meaning, his importance, especially in times of suffering, is supported wit ha goal that the man is striving for. Specifically, Frankl says that a man who is the camp might live on only for the chance of ever seeing his family alive again on the outside. Frankl sums this up when he says that "Such furtive hopes gave these men their courage even amidst all the suffering in which they presently found themselves."



There was another rift in people’s responses to the question of what they could do to make their lives more meaningful. On the one hand, I found that maybe 60% of people answered that they could start a family and settle down. Elaborating, Person C said that She would like to find herself a steady husband and have two kids with him. She went on to say that she would like to move out of the city when she finishes school, and eventually raise her family in a quiet suburb. She finished by saying “Life isn’t confined to a schedule, which means we have the freedom to make what we want of it. If I make my life into what I really want it to be, then my life would be the most meaningful, because I made it so.” A man from uptown Manhattan had some ideas that conflicted with Person C’s meaningful life. He said that his life meaning was not up to him to determine; his life and his fate determine his meaning, both of which are out of his own hands. “The most control I have over my fate is going to church every Sunday.” He said that closeness to god is closeness to meaning, because “God put us all here on earth, and it isn’t our place to question his meaning.” I asked him whether God has given us parameters for determining meaning, to which he said only that God’s “divine plan encompasses all human emotion and all of the people in the world, so our meaning is predetermined, even if we think we have determined our ‘meaning’, all we’ve done is found what God wanted us to.”
Ultimately, what I’ve gathered from the interviews I conducted is that meaning is a very personal thing for most people. Personal in the fact that you cannot put a blanket description to what meaning really is, meaning is different for everybody. Everybody I interviewed had their own take on meaning, and while some certainly had similarities, they were all different, unique. It seems as though meaning is like a fingerprint or a snowflake - no two are the same. Some people draw their own meanings, and some others draw meaning from something like religion. One might argue that taking meaning from religion or something of the sort means that your meaning is not unique; you’re only a sheep. In theory, this might be true, but in practice, everybody adopts their own system of belief from their respective religion, making them still unique.