paper

Intro:
You see them on the internet, on TV, on the sidewalk, in trains, and even on the side of NASCAR’s. Advertisements. Small messages telling you how to improve your almost perfect life, how to make life meaningful. But do they work, in a motor oil commercial a handsome white man stands next to his mustang’s engine in his big garage. This shows the message of his life is perfect, except for the fact he is using the wrong motor oil. When he does use the right motor oil his life becomes perfect and meaningful. But wait, I'm not a big handsome man with a mustang. Does this mean my life is lacking something? This is how we are taught to think, rich people are powerful people, and powerful people are right. So to have a meaningful life we need to work to be rich and powerful right? Wrong. A meaningful life is a life that you choose; if you choose to climb Mount Everest or if you choose to sit at home and watch paint dry as long as you choose. These messages of a meaningful life don’t help create a meaningful life, they prevent it. Corporations use billboards and commercials to scream at you, the best way to life a meaningful life is to scream back.

Argument one, Bansky:
If you go to west London to Portobello road there is a bridge. Under the bridge ever Saturday there is a market. One stand inpeticular sells Che Guevara clothing. This of course is a message in its self. When you analyze this you see that it is saying the way to live a meaningful life is to buy and wear clothing that have revolutionary figures on it. One morning the people of this street woke up to see the bridge painted by an unknown person. Across the bridge there were six pictures of che. In each picture he has cool sunglasses on and other apparel, but in each picture while the image of the sunglasses stays strong the image of che seems to melt away. Till in the end you see a melted face with that is impossible to recognize, with really cool sunglasses on. This makes the clear statement that people no long wear che because they agree with what he believed in, but because you get to have the revolutionist persona. And that has gotten to the point where people no longer even know what he stood for. In other words Commodity your descent. The artist of the images is known as Bansky, and what he did was meaningful. He stood up and stated his opinion. He ignored the fact that vandalism is illegal. In big impossible to miss letters he made a statement, thus leveling the playing field against all the corporations who scream advertisements at you from billboards.

In our culture ads have almost become sacred. When you go into the train they are usually behind plastic, almost like they are on display at a museum. These ads are everywhere we turn screaming at us to change. All I’m saying is scream back. Take those very same ads and do something to them. These ads were shoved in your face; they were forcefully given to you; that means you may do with them as you please. Asking permission to take or change an ad is like asking permission to keep a rock some one threw at your head. (Bansky)

Argument 2, Graffiti of the mind:
"Graffiti the land with skyscrapers. Graffiti the sky with airplanes and satellites. Graffiti the minds of children with your man-made laws." (Rehab-Graffiti the world). From an early age we are programmed to think a certain way. In kindergarten we begin to learn the morals we hold through life. It is in these early stages we are taught to shut up and sit down when going against a person in power. A life in which you are told what you are going to do, may it be block time or nap time, and is not a meaningful one. As we get older we no longer are told we need nap time but the same fallow the orders mentality are still in place. We are taught to fallow the rules and question nothing. This prevents us from choosing what we want to do, and thus prevents us from having a meaningful life.

Students are taught history, math, science, English, and how to take shit. The school system is set up against the student. Students are looked down upon by the average teachers. Students are more like sheep them people. We are herded from class to class. We are told to respect and suck up to even the worst and stupidest teacher because they are a teacher. If we try to speak up to against the teacher, even if they were wrong, we are sent away to the principle where we had even less power then we did before. In some schools they get harassed for walking in the door. They walk through metal detectors and get searched. We are then told that all of this is helping us, that this is opening new doors. That is not true, they are choosing which doors they want opened. Think about the number of times you have learned about medieval Europe. How many hours have teachers spent talking about it like it was important? While people where dieing of a plague caused by poop and rats in Europe, Muslims were making technological achievements; but we only learn about the dead people. When was the last time you learned about a rebellion? I personally was barely taught about the American Revolution. School is not meaningful, it has potential to be if the student is given more of a choice, but the system now puts blinders on us like race horses.

I have a friend who is a wonderful artist. He has sketch books full of drawings, some of them graffiti style. When I asked him if he wanted to go draw on a wall, he said no because it was against the law. It is illegal for two kids to tag a wall, but companies throw movie posters up on every blank wall they can find. What’s the difference between us and them; money. No body makes a financial gain from graffiti, even if it’s a beautiful mural. In Pompeii graffiti was used to state political views. People would put their ideas for politicians up on a wall, after a period of time the wall was paint over to make room for more views. My friend wanted to graffiti, but man made laws told him that it was wrong. He is being controlled. He thinks he can choose what he wants to do, but how is he free when he can’t even draw where he wants.

Argument 3, other people’s ideas:
Unfortunately not every one has thought about this as deeply I have, or I have been forced to. There for they do not have their own answer, they actually buy the crap that is fed to them. This became clear when I asked people on the street what they thought meant life meaningful. I realized the more “normal” the person was, the lamer the answer. One man I went up to was a rich upper class white man. When asked to rate the meaningfulness of his life on a scale of 1-10, he gave me an eight. When asked why so meaningful he said “Well I have a good job, a family and a nice car”. That answer was so brained washed in I almost puked on his clean ironed hundred dollar suite.

I asked a few more people and got a few more boring responses, until finally I asked a homeless woman. When asked refused to give a number. When asked what made her life meaningful she replied ““Man, I use to go to school, life was stupid. Then I did drugs, life was different but still not meaningful. Now I’m a hopeless addict and life is still as meaningless as it ever was. The only difference between the different lives is I went through different problems.” This is as close to a meaningful life as I got from strangers. This women was not a drone, she had her own ideas. And while her life wasn’t the best, she was now choosing what she did everyday. It seems that “only when you have lost everything are you free to do anything.” (Fight club 1999)

Argument 4. Dominate messages:
There are some messages that are put out by large corporations. These are the messages that try and tell you how to live a meaningful life. One example of that was the car motor oil. The messages commonly tell you that your life is almost meaningful, but it lacks one thing. And if you get that one thing, your life becomes meaningless until you get the upgrade. Got a radio? You need a TV! Got a TV? You need cable! Got cable? You need on demand! Soon you have hundreds of channels you don’t watch and your shoes are over 100 dollars for a reason you can’t figure out. The worst part is, we think these ideas are our. We think we bought those shoes because we like them. It just so happens that everyone else has the same idea and Kanye wore them in his video. The fork in the road turns into a diamond.

“There's a war going on for your mind. Media mavens mount surgical strikes from trapper keeper collages and online magazine racks.” (Flobots) In our daily lives the media shove messages in our faces about how to be happy. They show pictures of models and tell you that you too can have flatter abs. There is no tolerance for being different. There is known “you could try this product, but you’re still beautiful with out it”. Usually the messages are clear, but sometimes you have to analyze.
Many remember the ads on the subway for Trimspa. Until her passing the star of the ads was Anna Nicole Smith. One advertisement Shows Smith, coming out of the water in a wet suit and holding a surf board. This is supposed to be an image of the good life. The advertisement almost seems to say that you can have this life too. Along the side of the picture there are smaller pictures of other people who have lost weight. In the after picture all of them are standing on a beach. The only way you would know this ad is trying to sell a pill is by the small bottle in the corner. Next to the bottle it says “are you ready”. This gives the idea that you can look good and be on a beach when ever you decided to start taking the drug. This ad says that the meaning of life is to be able to look good on some beach. People are looking for a way to get out of their sad lives; ads like these distract them from doing some really thinking to come up with a good answer of how to make life meaningful.

Argument 5, marginal messages:
All you need is love by the Beatles gives a more marginal message. It states “all you need is love”. It tells you that as long as you have love you don’t need anything else, which is ironic coming from a group of rich guys who are in a popular band. This “all you need is love” idea which is backed up by a simple and happy video; is naïve and is more meant to sound nice then to be actually true. We can all say that all you need is love. But if you ask a homeless man who needs to beg for change to get some food, I’m pretty sure he will ask for a little more then just love. The Beatles can sing this song because they can get what they want. They can have this happy mushy all you need is love life style because they don’t have much to worry about. It is just as hard for a poor struggling family in the ghetto to relate to this song as it is for them to relate to then 50 cents get rich or die trying.
The 1999 movie Fight Club is a story that goes against the cooperate messages. It agrees with my argument, the best way to live is to live your own way. In one part of the movie by literally putting a gun to the back of his head, the Tyler Durden forces a connivance store worker to chase his dream of becoming a vet. “Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessel's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever tasted” This is putting out the idea that to live a truly meaningful life you must do what you want. Living by other people’s standards and laws leads you along a lame life with no real meaning.

martin luther king day

There isnt much i can say about MLK day. For most of the day i forgot why i had school of. This holiday is meant for the black people to be proud, and for the white people to twittle their thumbs and hope no ones brings up what other white people were doing in the the 60s. I didnt watch Tv that day so i didnt get to see the I have a dream speech i have seem over and over.

MLK day is for the postage stamp MLK but also for the postage stamp black people at the time. Everyone loves hearring about the giant march on washington, but there are facts that are forgotten. In the original plan, the protest was going to be a mob of angry black man and women storming washington and demanding their rights. it was suppouse to put fear into the government. unforetunetly plans were changed. the protest became funded, and these people who gave money also gave "advice" too. the angery storm of washington quickly became, the peaceful march on washington. After the march not one congressman interviewed had changed their stance on civil rights, why would they. All they saw was a bunch of black people saying that they didnt like how they were treated, which wasnt a big secret.

MLK day is a day of taking people of the past, and putting them on a pedistal.

comments

how to be a perfect boyfriend: its nice to know that every girl is so simple that by watching a video afew minutes long i have a perfect understanding of how to make them happy. These tips seem to be basic and logical. If your too stupid to know you have to listen to what they say, then you deserve to be doomed to masterbation and hookers for the rest of your life.

Facebook: While these are true i think there is a bigger problem to look at. If you have hours of time to waste on facebook, the problem isnt that your not ignoring enough requests, its that you have nothing better to do. the best way to avoid facebook is too make plans. you wont spend that long on facebook if you know you have to meet a friend for a movie at 2. facebook is what we do as we wait for something better to happen.

obama

surprise surprise the man that was on everyones t-shirt won. And he gave his speech like he was suppouse to. And it sounded like every other speech. I really dont listen to much to these kinds of speechs. All they talk about is how the new president wants to change the country. its rare that the president actually lives up to the standards he sets for him self. unforetunetly the standards are already high for obama.

Like always he talked about peace. he talked about helping all the smaller countries of the world as if we are gonna stop exploitting them some day. He talked about the working class. while im glad they got special attention i dont see any strong plans for them. it seems that a meaningful life is one where people help the smaller people.

I have no reflection on his speech because there is nothing to relfect on. of course it sounds like he will really make a change, thats the point of the speech. all that shows is that he hired some good speech writters. I believe strongly that actions speak louder then words, and i look foward to reflecting on his actions.

kindergardeners

dear kindergardeners.
hurry up and finish your cookies because if you can understand what im about to say it can change your life. In afew years you will begin to be fed propoganda that tells you that you are powerless. let me give you some examples. when your whole class wants to go to the playground but your teacher says no because its math time. your teacher will try to control the whole class just because she is a teacher and you are a student. You dont have to take this. there is nothing stopping you from leaving. start thinking of those orders of what to do more like suggestions. If you gain these morals you will grow up to stand up for what you think is right instead of falling in line.

I bet you have heard if you have nothing nice to say dont say anything at all, ignore that. if someone is being mean, tell him or her. feel free to say shut up stupid. this idea of always being nice will only lead to you not being able to tell people who are doing something wronge (like the government) to cut that shit out. You need to learn how to get people to stop doing what ever you dont want them doing.

Your parents/teachers are not always right. I bet you are often told you are wrong and the only reason they give is that you are younger and you dont know better. Dont listen to that. that will only lead to you thinking that who ever is in power is always right. you need to learn how to question things and how to keep talking even when you are told to shut up.

Dont snitch. learn how to take matters into your own hands. you are probably told that when some one does something wrong to tell a teacher, fuck that. when some one is bothering you deal with it your self. learn how to independent. when you grow up there wont always be someone to tell, you will get picked on by people in power. if you learn to be independent you can deal with these people, if you learn to tell the teacher and the day comes where the teacher figure is picking on you, you wont know what to do because there is no one you can snitch to.

the teachers dont always do whats best for you. Did you ever notice that nap time went alittle longer then you wanted, or play time in the playground was alittle shorter on cold days. some times people in power sacrafice things in your life to make them happy. this happens more and more when there is a large number of you, like a school or country, and the person in power doesnt know you as well and doesnt mind taking things away from you. learn how to tell this is happening in hopes that you may find a way to stop it.

dear joan

dear joan
how are you. Im doing well. I am currently taking a class on the meaning of life and i realized that you gtreatly shaped my life. Back in middle school you were my middle school director. you were also a closed mind puppet who was to busy trying to please the teacher and parents that you forgot about the kids. Time after time my friends and i would come to you with logical and 100% statements about how the teachers were horrible at their job. Not one time did you listen to us. it is because of you that i first realized that people in power only look out for other people in power. your lucky i was small, if some one tried to pull the shit you did today, there would be issues. If i ever have to see you again, i hope its through a scope.

fuck you
-dylan

april fools day

April fools day is a day of mischeif. It goes against the "sane" way of living. In normal day life we are told to not piss of anyone. we cant say or do anything that would offend a group of people, april fools day flips this. a strong message of april fools day is laugh at other peoples expence. It tells us that we should do what ever makes people laugh.
It is also a small version of anarcy. during this day we do what we want with no thought of consquence. This is what is meaningful; to do what we want, when we want. It's the ultimite form of freedom.

winter break

The majority of what i did over break i will not write about so i can still plead the 5th. Besides that i spent alot of the time skatting and chillen with friends. christmas day was spent in new jersey with family. New years was spent with friends in williamsburg. and all it was a chill break.

Looking back i think of two things. first is the saying "we are the people our parents warned us about" Some of things i did my parents warned me against when i was younge. this of course means they didnt give me the idea that it was meaningful, i guess that means i learned it from society. thats nice of them to teach me such great things.
the second thing i thought of was how practiced the gift thing is. everyone has to get some one something. the only time where i ever see my aunt is on x-mas when she gives me a $50 gift card to barnes and nobel. i personaly would be fine is she didnt give me anything, especially since i didnt give her anything. someone tells us that aunts give presents to neifes that they never see.