Final Paper - What makes life meaningful? And what goes into a good and meaningful life?

Throughout the year, we have talked about what goes into living a good and meaningful life, and what a good and meaningful life is. Even now that the school year is over I don’t think that there is an universal definition of a good and meaningful life. If you were to ask me what a good and meaningful life consists of, or what it is, I would not be able to give you an universal definition because I do not believe that there is one. I have my own definition of a good and meaningful life, but it might not apply to everyone. Everyone has his or her own opinions on how a life should be lived. I don’t think you can judge someone’s life on your own definition, because even if you think they don’t have a meaningful life, they may think they do. Some people are fine with judging if other people’s lives are meaningful, and some are not. I am not one of those people who are fine with judging someone’s life because I do not believe their lives are for me to judge. To me, one of the definitions of a good and meaningful life is a life where you are happy and enjoying your life. You don’t need to have materialistic possessions and you don’t need to be rich, as long as you are happy that is all that matters. I also think that in order to live a good and meaningful life people should get what they deserve. By this I mean people who work hard for a living should be rewarded for it. If they do what they can to succeed in school, and try hard in their work place, they should be rewarded for it. Whether it is with praise or with a promotion, there should be some gift at the end. People who don’t work hard and just coast on by should not be able to take advantage of all the things that people who work hard deserve. People who work hard in school should get awards and praise, while people who barely try in school should not be praised for doing work. Although it might sound unfair, it’s reality. In order to have a good and meaningful life, people need to try hard to succeed, and in the end they will be rewarded for it.

I think that in order to live a good and meaningful life you need to be able to enjoy your life and everything that it has in store for you. Enjoying life can mean living it one moment at a time, or planning ahead for your future. It also means surrounding yourself with people who care about you and want to see you succeed. These people might be your friends and families, or they might be teachers or bosses. It doesn’t matter who they are, but as long as they are there it makes it easier to enjoy your life because you know they are there for you every step of the way.

People have different opinions on living a good and meaningful life. Some people’s views on what a good and meaningful life revolves around the media’s viewpoints and some revolve around what they personally think. Instead of trusting their own hearts, people rely on corporate culture to tell them how to live a good and meaningful life.

In today's society, there are many opinions about living a meaningful life. However, these opinions are not generated through the minds of people, rather forcefully shoved into their brains by corporate culture and what major companies and celebrities think a meaningful life consists of. Everywhere we turn we are smacked in the face with a new ad describing to us how to make our life better. We see beauty ads that tell old people that this anti-age cream will make them look younger, and these people buy these creams because our society values youth. We see car dealers who say that in order to be the most attractive to the opposite sex you need to have an expensive car. One example of how corporate culture tell us how to live is when you look at a magazine, such as Vogue, People, and Glamour, you see ads for clothes and cars, and pictures of celebrities with their friends, family, special someone, or shopping. These magazines are telling us that in order to live a meaningful life; you must have nice clothes, money, love, friends and family. According to corporate culture, in order to live a meaningful life, you need to have materialistic things. Instead of thinking on our own, we rely on corporate culture to tell us how to think and how we should live OUR lives.

Corporate culture also tells us men will always dominate over women. There are very few movies or TV shows in the world where women are in power. In the James Bonds’ movies, there is always a Bond girl, and she always falls for him. It doesn’t matter that she is a strong character; she always ends up with James Bond. In the movie, Not Another Teen Movie, the main character, Jake Wyler, gives a makeover to the nerdy girl, Janey Briggs, and then they end up together. In Not Another Teen Movie, Jake ends up as the hero of the story, by saving Janey from her geek status, and they end up together in the end. In most movies that corporate culture makes, the guy is always the dominant character; he’s always the hero. There aren’t a lot of movies where the female is the dominant character, and where she is a hero without the help of a male character.

Another thing that corporate culture tells us about living a meaningful life is that you should spend time with family and friends on holidays. On Thanksgiving, corporate culture tells us that everyone should be with his or her family and friends, and having a good time while stuffing their faces with turkey, apple pie, mash potato, along with other food. Corporate culture also tells us that we should think about what we are thankful for, and make sure everyone shares what he or she are thankful for. On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, corporate culture tells us that we should wake up early in the morning to go shopping for Christmas specials. Stores open early, and have a lot of sales. Corporate culture tells us that we should “shop ‘til we drop”, and buy Christmas presents for people, since everything is reduced from its normal price. I went shopping on Black Friday this year, and found it crazy. There were people rushing all over the place to buy stuff before 1 PM (the ending time for major sales). The sales workers have been working since early into the morning, and people have been shopping since about 5 AM. I didn’t enjoy it nor do I think the people who had to work did either. It was not meaningful at all.
I was recently on Google, trying to see if I could find my blog on there. I typed in “life doesn’t have to be meaningless”, and found an interesting result that I thought I would post for everyone to see. On this link, http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/1754124.aspx, someone is talking about living a good and meaningful life, and I found a comment posted to this entry very interesting. It states that:

savypat (3440) ranked 726 out of 31,111 in life
4 months ago
How can a life be meaningless? If you have the energy of God in you there is a purpose to your life, You only need to love yourself and that love will attract other love, it may be the earth, the trees, animals or space. All of that is present because you live. Do not listen to others in this matter, look in your heart and listen to your purpose. Blessings …. (is this to be continue)
I thought this was interesting because this person is talking about how a life cannot be meaningless if God is in your life. To this person, religion plays a huge part in living a good and meaningful life. Although this person does mention love, they focus more on the aspect of God in someone’s life, which I found interesting because it is very different from what other people think. When asked what makes a life meaningful, people rarely bring up religion because of the controversy it will start. They also don’t bring it up because corporate culture doesn’t tell us that religion is important when living a good and meaningful life. Corporations don't put out ads focusing on religion and God, and no one ever focuses campaigns based on religion. One reason for this might be because since there are so many religions, to just focus on one would hurt a campaign or ad. For example, if Apple made an ad about how Jewish people use iPods, and every Jewish person should own one, then that ad would only target Jewish people, and other people of different religions might not want to be an iPod, because it is not targeting them. By targeting only one group of people, corporations are narrowing down their sales, and people won't buy their products as much.

During class, Jace and Katherine both shared their views on what makes a life meaningful. Jace said that “meaningful things come from ourselves”, and that “we make our lives meaningful”. He says that we don’t need materialistic possessions in our lives to make it worth living, what we do with our lives makes it meaningful. Katherine said that in order to have a meaningful life, you need “to have love in your life”. She states that it doesn’t have to be romantic love, it could be friendly love, but as long as love makes a presence in your life is all that matters. Katherine’s view connects to what our media and surroundings tell us, because it has to deal with happiness in ones life. Jace’s view contradicts what cooperate culture tells us because he says we don’t need materialistic things, we can make our lives meaningful without it.

Marginal messages are messages that are important to living a good and meaningful life, but they are also messages that corporate culture doesn’t really show in their media. Some marginal messages that corporate culture only tells us sometimes are stand up for what you believe in, even if it means going against the system. In the movie “Pump up the Volume”, the main character, Hard Hardy, had his own underground radio show that went against the school system. On there he played inappropriate stuff that the teachers of the school he went to found out about. Hard Hardy’s radio show defied the system by telling teenagers stuff that they shouldn’t be hearing, telling a kid to kill himself (which the kid did), etc. In the movie “Foxfire”, five teenage girls stand up against a teacher who was sexually abusing one of them. Even though they were girls, they fought back, and made the teacher fear them and promise never to touch a teenage girl inappropriately ever again. Many movies never tells you directly to stand up for what you believe in, rather hiding it behind other more dominant messages. Marginal messages are more about trusting oneself rather than trusting what corporate media is telling you to do.

Folk culture is another way people get their ideas on how to life a good and meaningful life, even though it is very rare to see this happen. People get ideas from Folk culture from generations before them. Folk culture is basically the passing of ideas from generation to generation. Folk culture tells us that in order to live a good and meaningful life, we need to have love, friendships, family, struggle, and balance, to name a few. Folk culture tells us that love is one of the most important things that we can have in our lives. It’s “what makes the world go round” to quote Bob Merrill. Folk culture also tells us that having good friends and family is what makes our lives meaningful, because they are what help us live our life the right way, in a safe protected environment. Folk culture also says that we need to be able to balance all the problems in our life, because in the end, it will all be worth it. With every struggle comes a happy ending.

Corporate culture has taken our holidays and twisted them into something that would benefit their financial pockets. For example, Christmas use to be a holiday about spending time with your family, friends, and loved ones, but now huge corporations such as hallmark has turned it into a day where people go crazy buying stuff for other people, and the image of a perfect Christmas with friends and family is lost on most Americans. On Christmas, people go out and buy presents for each other. Corporate culture sends out mixed messages about Christmas, first stating that Christmas is the day where you are suppose to relax and spend time with your loved ones, but they also tell people to go out and spend money on gifts for other people. Corporate culture tells us that Christmas is a time for giving people presents, whether it be expensive or inexpensive, everyone is expected to give their loved ones presents. Some contradictions about Christmas are: corporate media portrays Christmas as a stress free day; it is a day when you need to just relax. However, Christmas is also one of the most stressful days, because you need to buy presents for everyone, and you want to make sure you are getting everyone the perfect present. Whether you’re in school or at your job, during Christmas season, buying presents for people is always on your mind, which is a huge distraction when you are trying to get your work done. TV portrays Christmas as a day when you need to spend time with your family and friends, but sometimes that might be hard for people, because they might not like spending time with their family, or they don’t have people to spend the day with. If you don’t have a family or friends, then Christmas can become a lonely day for you, and when you see images of people on TV celebrating Christmas with your family and friends, it makes you feel lonely. In order to live a good and meaningful life, corporate media tells us that we need to buy people presents on Christmas, which means that you need to have a good job, and that you need to have loved ones to give presents to. If you have a good job, you will have enough money to dish out presents for all of your loved ones, but if you don’t have a well-paying job, then you can’t get presents for your loved ones. Corporate media likes to emphasize the point of having money, especially around Christmas. Corporate media tells us that if you don’t have enough money, it’s hard to live a good and meaningful life.

Animals are all around us, and they too live good and meaningful lives, but humans always consider ourselves superior and think our lives are better than animal lives. We, as humans, seem to think that animals are just there for our purposes, and we aren’t equivalent. But why is this? One of the reasons we believe that we’re superior is because of Genesis Chapter One. In Genesis Chapter one, verse 26, it states “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” After reading this, people believe that God made animals for our purposes. We are the rulers of all animals, as they are only there for us. In Genesis chapter one verse 28, God states “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”Basically, God is saying that we as humans should multiply and take advantage of everything the earth has to offer. That means taking advantage of the fish in the sea, the fowl in the air, the cattle on the ground, and everything that“creeps”upon the earth. So if someone was to read the bible, what would make them think that we were equivalent to animals? Certainly not Genesis chapter one verse 26 and 28. Unlike Genesis, the scientific classification states that humans and animals are all the same because we are all part of the web. On the scientific classification chart, humans are the homosepiansepains (the wise humans). But since humans are in the same chart as animals, and we all came from the same place, that means we are all connected. We all divided from Eukargate, which means in some way we are all the same.

To sum up this paper, and to sum up this course, a good and meaningful life can not be defined by one definition, rather a bunch of definitions combined into one. We all live good and meaningful lives, although some might be more meaningful or meaningless than others. This course has taught me a lot about our society and how our culture works, and this paper is a wrapup of all my opinions.