big paper thing

money, family, love; are these aspects of life or is one of them the meaning of life. In the last couple weeks the class has explored what the meaning of life is, what other people say it is, and what people tell us is the meaning of life. During this exploration I have come to the conclusion that there is no real meaning of life, there are just excuses that people think up to make their life worth living.
There is no such thing as a meaningful life, but there is such thing as a wasted life. When people spend all day in a cubicle then go home and watch tv, just to end up in the cubicle the next day, that is a wasted life. A non wasted life is a life in which someone takes chances and creates stories. to me a "meaningful" life is one that is full of new things and adventure. we are on this earth for a set amount of time before we die and are forgotten. as long as we are on this earth we might as well have fun.

The first person I asked was a white business man. The first question was “On a scale of one to ten how meaningful is your life?” He replied “Ten”. “How so?” I asked. He once again replied with a small answer “Because I’m alive and that’s what is important.” This was similar to the answers I got from most wealthy looking people. Another business man replied “A full ten because I live in this great country.” It seemed that the richer they looked the faker the answer seemed.


The middle class people’s answers were much more scattered. One white middle class man said “I like my life because of my friends and trees.” When I asked him to clarify what he meant by trees and he said he meant nature, and not marijuana. While this answer was unique it was a little dull. The most interesting answer came from a working class Latino man when asked what makes life meaningful he replied “Helping other people because your life is meaningless unless you change some one else’s” This answer is exactly like mine. It seemed that the middle class people were more humble then the upper class, but still had lame answers.

When looking at corperate culture you see alot of the same dominate messages. many of them are focused on material goods and how they can improve the quality of life. In the music video lipgloss by lil mama, the message is that material goods, such as lip gloss, can improve your life by making everyone want you. “Is that my lip gloss is cool my lip gloss be poppin all the boys be jokin and chase me after school”. She is saying that her lip gloss is the reason she is so popular. This brings up the point that to be popular you need the best material goods. “the girls don’t speak they rollin their eyes they lip gloss cheap.” According to this song there is nothing more to a person then what they are wearing. The girl is cool because she has nice lip gloss, all the boys want her because she has nice lip gloss and all the girls are jealous because she has nice lip gloss. The video backs up my points. The beginning Lil Mama wants to be in the cool crowd, so her friend giver her some make up and in one day she is the coolest kid in school. This gives the impression that they key to as meaningful life is to be popular and pretty; and the key to a popular and pretty life is to buy material goods.

A major part of dominate messages is that you are almost perfect, but by buying some products you can be truly perfect. this can be seen most in diet pills. such ads that scream "get flatter abs" give the impression that to have a truly meaningful life you need to be skinny. In early 2000 a very common ad on the subway was trimspa. these ads usually included anna nicole smith on a beach along with other "success stories". in the corner of the add it says "are you ready". this message tells you that you are close to living a meaningful life, in this case being sexy on a b each, but all you need to get it is one material good that you can get in three easy pavements of 19.99.

another type of message is marginal messages. these types of messages usually go against the dominate messages, but there is some factor that makes it so we dont take it as seriosly. An example of this was the movie fox fire. The movie is about a group a girls who become friends and learn to depend on each other. This idea of women dont need men to survive is not seem very often. It says that a meaningful life can be lived with out a member of the opposite sex. The message in this movie is unfortunetly contradicted. In the movie the group is started by a girl name legs, played b angloina jolie, who defies the rules.