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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.