Final Essay on Meaningful Life

How to live a good life is one of the most talked about and important philosophical subjects in the world. Everyday, people are searching for the way to achieve this good life goal. In the place we live in today, we get our ideas from outside sources. That is why: the corporate culture distorts our society into thinking that consumerism is the way to live a good life.
One of the most important questions people think about is what makes a meaningful life and what people feel to be a good and meaningful life? This question can be thought of in a few ways but the two main ways are: what does culture say about what a good and meaningful life should be and what do people consider to be a good and meaningful life? People see that a good and meaningful life consists of having a good job, a stable family, having power, being smart, finding your true self, and being happy.
People feel that a good and meaningful life is one that involves being smart, having a good job, being powerful which goes along with having a lot of money, and love. This idea is related to culture, which essentially tells us that these things listed above are what makes to be a good and meaningful life. Almost everyone has these ideas about a good and meaningful life. It was almost as if it was plugged into our brains. But it is a natural desire to have these ideas about a meaningful life because these are all very good things that everyone wants so its an instinct to want this. No one will be wishing to be sad, for instance because that makes for a meaningless life where you only focus on one thing. It also seems that people do not want to cause other people to have a bad life-it is almost a natural instinct to help someone who is in need. But I believe that that was not the case during Black Friday incident where a Walmart employee was trampled to death and nobody stopped to help him. They kept making a mad dash into the store just to get flat screen TVs and other material items and they completely disregarded another persons desire to live. That really shows what people's priorities are in this world.
I do believe that having a family, love, money and a stable job, having fun, and getting a good education makes for a good and meaningful life. This is because all of these things get you places in life. I believe that without an education, for example, I would not get a good job, I could not be powerful, and I would not get money. These ideas about a good life go hand-in-hand. I noticed that not many people put down having fun as one of their ideas on a good and meaningful life but I put that down because I think that you need to be able to be yourself and let loose at times. It just makes life more entertaining and fun which is important to me. This idea also goes along with love because you want to be able to have fun with someone you love.
I think that it is very hard to have a good and meaningful life. It does not just come to someone in the blink of an eye. People need to wait for it and be patient. People need to wait and work very hard in their job to become very powerful and make money and hopefully, they get the "dream job". It is the same thing to find your "one true love". There are some people who try very hard for this good and meaningful life and they sadly never get it. Some people wait their whole life for it. Speaking personally, I always try to live a good and meaningful life. I do this by trying to get a good education in order to prepare for college and jobs. I also try to have fun in life so that is one of my sources of entertainment besides technology.
Corporate culture is culture influenced by pop culture such as the media, TV, internet, magazines/books, and advertisements. Commodified culture is taking things that are not necessarily things you can sell but they are then turned into products you can sell and putting it in corporate culture. For example: people a long time ago when cars were first made that you should always look both left and right before you cross the street, and now that is commodified culture because it is put into ads and TV shows to show you this message. Corporate culture's message about a good life is ideas such as being happy, smart, finding your true self, and being unique among many more, but corporate culture also focuses a lot on asthetic aspects such as looking good and feeling good. But by culture telling us to be unique, we are not really being unique because we are following cultures' expectations of us. Everywhere you look, there is an advertisement for a new beauty product or a gym to help you look and feel better.
In class, we discussed and watched some movies that show different messages that corporate culture gives us about how to live a good and meaningful life. In Superbad, for instance, the message for living a good and meaningful life is to meet hot girls, get drunk, get stoned, have sex, have fun, and be very close with your buddies. This can be translated into a not very educational lifestyle where no one is really smart because fun is the only thing they do. In contrast, the movie Music of the Heart shows that in order to have a good and meaningful life, one must help others less fortunate than them, be selfless, and be smart. In the movie, the main character portrayed by Meryl Streep plays a Caucasian school teacher who teaches at a predominatly African-American school which is not good, and she teaches them how to behave and become good members in society.
Along with movies, music videos and songs show a lot about what culture believes to be a good and meaningful life. In Kanye West's song "Good Life," he states that in order to live a meaningful life, one needs to be famous, have a lot of beautiful women, be powerful, and have a lot of money. One way he describes being rich is by dropping names of expensive things for example: "I pop the hood, Ferrari". One lyric in the song says: "I'ma get on this TV mama." It shows that he is gonna become famous and be on the TV and live an amazing, luxurious life. In the music video, he is surrounded by pretty women, which shows when you are powerful, you can have all this money and all these women. All the messages from this song are connected to one another. A similar message of a good life is shown in Lil' Mama's song "Lip Gloss." The song describes that to have a good and meaningful life, you have to be popular, have all the boys on you and have girls jealous of you and you get that by having the perfect lip gloss. Lil' Mama says that "my lip gloss is popping/I'm standing at my locker/and all the boys keep stopping." She goes on to say that what people know about her is that she has fabulous lip gloss. Just like in the "Good Life" song, she also name drops lip gloss brands such as Mac and Loreal. The music video for this song also adds to this idea because at the beginning, she is insecure about going to a new school and her mom tells her that if she puts on lip gloss, she will be the envy of everybody and she will become popular. When she gets into school, she walks down the hall and no one can stop staring at her and even the teacher is liking her lip gloss. In contrast, The Beatles song "All You Need Is Love" shows a very different message for living a good and meaningful life. The songs' basic message is that all anybody should have is love and love basically is the fundamental for the world. They are also saying that the world really would not be good without love. One of the lyrics are "All you need is love...love is all you need." They go on to say that in love, "there's nothing you can do that can't be done." This means that love is everywhere and that you will be able to get love in some way or another. In the music video for this song, it shows The Beatles sitting around singing the song and a bunch of people are there so it is probably a party, which most likely represents unification with people and love.
On the opposite side of these arguments, there are marginal messages which are messages that are not considered to be that acceptable in society. For example, dropping out of school is a big marginal message in our culture. In the movie, Pump up the Volume, there are many marginal messages shown but the movie portrays those marginal messages to be the "correct" thing to do and anything else is bad. For instance, the dominant corporate culture tells us to lisen to authority and the marginal corporate message is that it is bad to go against the system whereas in this movie, itis bad to listen to authority and it is good to do your own thing and rebel against them. In the beginning of the movie, themain character, Mark, says about America: "Eat your cereal with a fork, do your homework in the dark." This is a marginal message because in this world, it is frowned upon and not accepted if you do these things. He asks: "Do you ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?" He goes on to say that in America, "poor stay poor, rich get rich. Everywhere I look, everything is sold out." This is saying how the American society functions and this is not the patriotic approach to how America really is and this is different. Stated simply, Mark is saying that living a good life means having your own thoughts and being different while a bad life is becoming brainwashed by what the corporate culture is telling us and going along with it. This is also shown in the media in 2008 where people are telling you to "fight against the Man." The movie Foxfire also shows rebelling against "the Man" but in this movie they are rebelling against a teacher who tried to rape a female student. In both these films, the adults are the bad guys.
The next type of message are the folk messages. Those are the messages that are learned from parents and the things they taught you about how to live a good and meaningful life. As a personal example, my parents taught me that to have a good and meaningful life, I have to do very well in school, go to a good college, care a lot about family and friends, work hard then have fun, don't be a follower, and when I'm older, start a family. These messages stick with you for the rest of your life and you will most likely pass them down to future generations. I do think that folk messages derive from the dominant corporate culture messages because our parents probably do believe these things are what makes a good life, but their parents probably got the idea from corporate culture.
We also learned about how food can make for a good and meaningful life. Obviously, we can't live without food and I learned that it is important to know what food we eat and if we care what ingridients we put into our body. Considering that America is the fattest country, I think that most people wouldn't care what goes into their body and that is why many people are overweight from eating fast food a lot. I would think that because you only have 1 life, people would think it is important to know what goes into their food but that is not the case. According to Omnivores Dilemma, Michael Pollan argues that everything we eat comes from corn. For example, high fructose corn syrup which is in all junk food.
In general, throughout this course, i learned about a lot of different ways as shown for how to live a good and meaningful life. There was a lot more but i think that these were the most important ones. I really enjoyed this class and i learned a lot from it. I think i took away a lot of good information on what it means to live a good and meaningful life.