“What is a Good and Meaningful Life?”
People define what a good and meaningful life is based on their culture. Culture can be grouped into several categories. Corporate Culture, any culture that’s sold for example, TV, news, products and other kinds of media are corporate culture. Another part of culture is folk culture, culture expressed by word of mouth, this is usually based on family and friends who may have told you stories like “the 3 little pigs” which is passed on by word of mouth and is folk culture, unless its sold as a book. The last part of culture is called “big-sub-culture” a big sub culture is a culture that most people know about that’s a part or is contained in a larger culture. Big sub cultures like Christianity in America are part of American culture and most people know about it but not all people are Christians.
Because there are many different ways and opinions on how to live a good and meaningful life we should look at all or at least most of them and consider them as possibilities and give deep thought as to wether we would pursue them. Any one who looks at only one opinion of how to live a good and meaningful life or weighs one message over another will be confused and won't be able to live a good and meaningful life because their vision of it is one-sided and uneducated.
Each of these categories can then be broken down into sub categories based on their messages. These are dominant messages that are obvious and noticeable, marginal messages, which may be harder to pick up on and are sometimes unintentional, and unacceptable the “bad” messages that are prohibited based on that culture’s values but still make their way into society.
My definition of a good and meaningful life is simple and should answer many questions. My criteria for a good and meaningful life is that the person is happy, doesn't hurt anyone and leaves behind a legacy for others to remember. A good life is one where the person is happy and they don't hurt anyone else, this answers the question of "if a serial killer enjoys his work is his life good?" the answer would be no because he's hurting people, it's not necessary to hurt others to live a good life and there are many examples of peaceful people who live good lives.
To have a meaningful life the person has to leave a mark on the world, meaning is what makes people notice your life, if your life is meaningful, and by extension more meaningful than other people's, then you should be noticed more than other people. If a person was kept away from society and was happy and didn't hurt anyone, his life would be good, but because he didn't leave any mark on the world his life wouldn't be meaningful. My definition is simple enough to include many different life styles, but has enough criteria to rule out questionable and harmful life styles.
Corporate Culture gives us very few lifestyles to chose from and rigid paths to follow in those lifestyles. For example the "Rags to Riches" lifestyle demands that the person is a minority, and lives in a bad neighborhood. This person has to have some sort of talent like playing basketball or rapping. This person has gang affiliations, gets involved with drugs or gets assaulted or any combination of these. They then beat out the competition and become celebrities and have their own movies and documentaries etc. What they don't tell you is that everyone is after that dream and there's only a few spots and everyone thinks they're the best of the best.
Aside from that dream there's only a few others, there's the common one which everyone knows, graduate high school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, get old, retire and die which most of America does. Then there's the super rich people who inherit money and make even more money "Riches to more Riches" like Donald Trump did. Either way all of these dreams involve money, working for it from poverty, making money from money, or just having enough to get by we all need, use and want money and our lives have to revolve around it.
Dominant messages are the most obvious and are the most intentional messages in media. These messages are specifically put there by the creator to get a point across, these messages are in everything regardless of weather they are intentional or not. The dominant message of "Game pro" magazine is that life is upgradable, they advertise the newest gaming systems and games, gadgets and other electronics. This implies that we should improve themselves, the way that we do that as Americans is to buy bigger and better things thus a meaningful life according to Game pro magazine is to have the newest and best electronics and games.
"The Economist" made its own statement about what a good and meaningful life was. The economist encourages the reader to buy things, not only commercial goods like the cars they advertise but they influence investing as well through stock data graphs and market predictions. The Economist not only emphasizes the need for material possessions but also states that money on its own is important through its use of investment information. There are also pictures of business men and other rich people to entice readers to become like them. To the economist a good and meaningful life includes expensive things, money and power in the form of a high paying career.
The film "Fox Fire" from Columbia studios has the dominant messages of a feminist movie however if the film is deeply interpreted there are different messages underneath. The film's beginning shows a student being molested by a teacher, the victim and other female students say that they can't do anything about it, but a strong courageous woman convinces them that they can. The strong female character had many masculine traits like her dislike of vanity, the clothes that she wore and the way she talked which implies that to lead you must have masculine traits. The film relates leadership and power to masculinity and vulnerability to feminine traits therefore to live a good life with power and security you must be a man or have masculine traits.
The film "Pump Up the Volume" shows a rebellious teenager named Mark (Hard Harry when on his radio) who plays music and talks over the radio on a pirated signal. Mark's father represents the dominant messages of corporate culture, while Mark represents the marginal messages. Mark listens to unknown music and stands out from the crowd, he's weird and has weird things and rebels against society and chooses not to conform to society's expectations. One marginal message that can be taken from this movie is that you shouldn't be like everyone else, living a good and meaningful life means being different and standing out. However the film shows his uniqueness through the things he has, tapes of unknown bands, radio equipment, exotic pets etc. To have a meaningful life and to be different you have to buy things that make you different, you have to have different things along with being a different person.
The reason why we shouldn't listen to only corporate culture is because their messages are meant to be sold, they don't care what they say as long as everyone is happy and they make their money. Corporations do what sells, not always what's right. Any message coming from a profit making organization should be listened to and analyzed but not taken for fact or weighed more heavily over other lifestyles.
Folk culture is a culture passed on through word of mouth or through your family and friends, these messages are "pure" and haven't gone through the corrupted filter of the corporations. These messages on how to live a god and meaningful life will come from your family and friends. Folk culture itself was mainly passed on by word of mouth, but is now spreading rapidly with the internet and thanks to message boards, forums and sites like Myspace, Facebook and other profile sites folk culture has been able to spread throughout the country faster.
"How to become the Perfect Boyfriend" is a video about just that. They explain several ways that a man can have a better relationship with his girlfriend. These include things like listening to them, being supportive of them etc. The main message was fairly obvious, that we all need to be in a relationship, they didn't say you had an option in dating, according to the video we all need people to rely on and partners to make our lives good an meaningful. The video emphasized connection between people in relationships and showed that a meaningful relationship is worth working for. The video conveys a good and meaningful life as one with a significant other whom you have a good connection with and enjoy being around.
"How to Avoid Wasting Time on Facebook" is a tutorial on how to make Facebook time more productive, the video says that you must quit all of the meaningless applications and ignore requests for those applications. The video's message was to evaluate what was productive and what wasn't. It implied that a meaningful life comes from efficiency and avoiding becoming a slave to the internet or becoming a slave to meaningless things. The video also subtly emphasized that connections with real people were more meaningful than useless applications on Facebook.
We shouldn't listen to only folk messages either because they come from either people we don't know in the case of the internet, or people who overly positive or overly negative, in the case of parents and family. Because these people know you they can "sugar coat" things or make things seem worse than they really are, parents are the ones who dictate which lifestyles are acceptable and will have biased messages. On the other hand the people who don't know you won't be able to give appropriate advice. Like all other messages on how to live a good and meaningful life, folk messages should be considered but not weighed heavier than other messages or taken as true just because someone you trust said it.
