What makes a Meaningful and Good life? (Exhibition style 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. Instead, people focus on the more concrete concepts of "things". People put significance into objects, like their new phone, their clothes, their cars. it seems that people hoid things important, and the better the thing makes you look in person, the better and more important it becomes to you. Things in themselves hold little actual value, however. Sometimes people use these things to stimulate other ideas. A person may find a photo album important, as it documents what they see as important events in their lives or the lives of loved ones.

In America we are greatly exposed and more or less run our lives by Popular culture. Within Pop culture lie three different but not necessarily separate categories; Corporate, Folk Culture, and Big Subcultures. For this unit we have delved deeply into personifying Corporate Culture. Within this subcategory of Pop culture lie more subcategories that classify the messages broadcasted by corporate culture. These categories are Dominant, Marginal/Fringe, and Prohibited/Unacceptable. Dominant messages are those that are the basis of the music videos, movies, and books that we all consume. They typically involve "good" values of misogyny, heroism, and going with the flow. Marginal or fringe messages are those like "You can smoke pot and be a drug addict while you're young and single, as long as you clean yourself up and get settled with a nice wife and 2.5 kids.". They start off "bad" and end up "good". In prohibited messages, however, you will only see the direct opposition to the Dominant culture, and this is why you hardly ever see these kinds of messages being tossed around casually. The instances where these are shown are often found alongside the marginal messages, as the two are related. A prohibited message might encourage you to take to the streets and start the revolution, destroying every piece of corporate anything you find.

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.

Looking at corporate messages

The first corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the music video for the song Pork & Beans by Weezer. The video is essentially a compilation of internet trends that have recieved huge appraisal by viewers around the world. The lyrics of the song are about how the singer, as a representaion of normal people, is defiant of the typical messages broadcasted to us by society. "Imma do the things that I want to do, I aint got a thing to prove to you" is a clip of lyrics from the song, clearly stating how this person is independent and doesn't need to live life based on how the owrld says he/she should. To emphasize the concept, the video shows clips of people like Chris Crocker, famous for his internet rant "Leave Britney alone", the afro ninja, and the bassist imitating a video of a man who sets out to conquer the world record for most shirts worn at a single time. These images coincide with the mesage of doing what you want to do regardless of other people's opinions on things. Also, the song reflects on the sheep mentality of people today, saying "everyone likes to dance to a happy song, with a catchy chorus and beat so they can sing along". The message in those words being fairly clear, the video uses a clip of people performing the Soulja Boy, a trendy dance from 2006-2007. I would say that this is a marginal to mainstream message of doing whatever you feel, marginal because it ridicules people for being sheep but mainstream because every musician says to be different.

The second corporate message I looked at for this assignment was the movie Jackass 2.5. In it, a group of young white men perform "stunts" that involve publicly humiliating themselves, hurting themselves in some way, or stirring up disturbances in public areas. The people involved are personified as stupid and reckless, and for the most part they try to fufill that personification. This movie is a compilation of unused clips from the 2006 film "Jackass number 2" and the ones excluded. An example of some of the stunts in the movie are painting and dressing up one of the actors as king kong and standing him up on top of a port-a-potty to "defend" the damsel in distress, who was another actor, a dwarf dressed as a woman. The other actors were made to fly hand-controlled RC planes into the two standing atop the port-a-potty so as to reenact the final scene in King Kong. This kind of stunt serves the purpose of dissuading people to do something like this, and serves the purpose of being a mainstream message; don't be a fool. Don't try this stuff in front of your friends or anybody. At the same time it also says that it is reallt cool to hang around with your friends and do whatever you find to be really fun. by not saying that explicitly, they get the message across indirectly, making this a spokesperson for the mainstream message of don't be stupid on the outside, and the marginal message of do it because it's fun and you'll make people laugh.

The last bit of corporate culture I examined was an Ad for the Wii game "Wii Music". The ad features many different kinds of people using the Wii controller to make various notes using various instuments to contribute to the general Super Mario theme. The ad featured people like an elderly couple, many teens, and several young adults, aged 20-26 or so. There seemed to be a lack of emphasis on the child audience for once, showing that Nintendo is trying to make its product more relatable to more people of different age groups. It had many teenagers performing music with "cool" instruments like drums and electric guitars, and it had the nice-looking sensibly dressed people playing instruments like the fulte or the piano. It profiled all these age groups into musical preference, and had everyone beaming ecstatically, as though they were enraptured by the game, as though it were something never witnessed before, when in actuality it is just Nintendo trying to tap into an already successful francise of musical video gaming. The message was wordless, and was very mainstream- buy this product so you can be happy and have fun! You want to be like all these smiling people because they are all just like you!

Election Reflection

The votes have been cast, the campaigning is finally finished with, the ballots are final. Barack Obama stands today as our new President-elect, now a piece of this country's history, America's first black president. The iconic "Yes We Can" campaign has proved superior to McCain's mud-slinging style of promotion. Barack Obama is very much the best president the country has had in a very long time, if not the best of all, period. So why don't I feel as hopelessly ecstatic as everyone else? I mean I did in the rush of the nation's first black man for president and also the Palin bullet being successfully dodged, but now that I have time to reflect, I can see that there is very much work to be done. With the economy in the toilet and with the US fighting the good ol' fight and losing on both fronts, the future of America seems grim. Granted, Obama is the morale boost that many needed and will put the good foot forward in making something out of this mess, but it is key that he delivers some sort of appeasment in his early months in office, if only to keep people satisfied in their new president.

Something that actually makes me nervous is the fact that ballots still have to be counted, states to be ACTUALLY won, and ultimately what scares me most (however unfounded the fear may be) that Obama being declared the winner is a projection. When it comes down to it, McCain may still hold more votes than Obama. Scary thought and I admit I may be misguided in my thoughts, but I won't feel safe in Obama's presidency until he actually sits behind the desk in the oval office.