How to live a Good and Meaningful life Essay pt.2

What does living a good and meaningful life mean? Many people strive everyday by doing meaningful things to exceed in this goal, while others have a big misconception about what a meaningful life is. Many people get their perspectives from either their own experiences or what we see or are told by others. these ideas come from the larger pop culture, larger culture can be considered a combination of three major sources - corporate/commodified culture, folk culture, and big subcultures.

Our society has been affected or brain washed by what we see or hear from the pop culture. The marginal messages are things we rarely see shown by the pop culture. The dominant messages are things you always see commonly, almost seen as if they are enforcing one idea on society. The media tells us the things we need in life in order for us to be happy by making false meanings of things that dont really matter to our life. Most common pop culture messages we see are people must look good, wear nice clothes, have a big house, alot of money, and stay physically fit. These are just some of the corporate messages that can be found or as we call it Dominant messages.

Looking at several magazines to see what corporate messages are presented throughout different magazines, i wanted to see if exactly i could connect different messages. Ironically both magazines I looked at were incorporating the same message and also trying to presuade their audience / readers to buy or spend money. The first magazine is Titled- Oklist - Spotlight on the Arts (Fall Issue). I came to the conclusion of their pop cultures message was to influence others to buy expensive books / novels by giving brief analysis of several books that may or may not attract a great amount buyers. Although the corporate message is asking the society to spend money, the outcome of spending money will help or enhance our intellengence as well as reading levels. the second magazine i looked at was Titled - Bazzar. Nov 2008 issue, their overall pop culture message was to live a good and meaningful life you must require materialistic things in order to feel good about yourself as well as look good. From both magazines we see how pop culture is influencing the society to spend more money on useless self objects that would supposedly help us have a good and meaningful life. The products they are selling arent things that will help our society grow or expand, but things that are truly effecting our culture and bringing us down. The United States are viewed as having the most cusomers in the world, meaning several people are spending money on things that might not even importance to their life, in other words their just spending money to spend money. Several individuals fail to realize that the corporate media doesn't try to stop or help our society, but more of enforcing these messages on us. they sell us products to add an distraction to our life to stimulate our happiness, so we can forget about the miserable life we are truly living.

The "marginal messages of commodified culture" are those messages sold to us by advertisements, movies, tv, music videos, books, magazines, etc that define the good and meaningful life in a way which is unusual. These "marginal messages" expand the range of visions of a good and meaningful life both by offering new visions and also by (to some degree) contradicting the dominant corporate messages on the good and meaningful life. Marginal messages can be seen through movies, such as Foxfire, where roles of males and females are switched. The switching of roles is not as common as it may seem and sometimes the message the movie sends to the public is not as accepted by society as the main message corporate culture sends out. For example a scene from Foxfire is when there is a nude guy being photographed by a girl. In corproate culture you do not see the roles of males and females often switching. It has become part of our culture as Americans to believe that the man is stronger and the woman is weaker, the man is in control and the woman is helpless. But marginal messages often are about breaking this stereotype between men and women and giving women more power and showing that women can be a bit more masculine.

Corporate Messages

key points

Corporate Message- Doesn't show god, then they dont want to think about god
- something is there without, fully expressing the deeper meaning
- Ex. telephone calls (people leaves messages, and when the other
doesn't call back, they feel neglected allow the other hasnt truly
done anything wrong

Election 08 - Barack For President

Chris Campbell
D-4

Election thoughts

I feel as if many people are overlooking the point that Barack Obama is black. I feel that its way past the point that Barack Obama is black and that he was elected president. Barack obama being black has nothing to do with the fact that he was elected president in my eyes, I feel that he was elected because he is an intelligent man that is bringing new ideas to help support the united states citizens, and help make some what of a change. As far as future views, I feel that many people will change on Obama because I see it as many people are going to be looking for a drastic change soon, not realizing that he only has four years of term as president, and if that long he will be beginning his first term in January of 09. As far as Barack Obama being a “Black President” then he has made history, but I think the real history will be made when he begins the process of bringing the United States back on its feet and back to the way things used to be.
In many of Baracks speeches he continues to mention the word “change”. Change is going to come reguardless, but it’s the fact that if its going to be a good or bad change. Obama mentioned several things that he would like to change, but I wonder how people will start to look at him if he isn’t able to make the changes he promised. Will people begin to turn their backs on him? Will people start to loss faith in him?

Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th president of the United States of America. As a supporter of Obama, personally I was very excited that he won the presidential race. While watching the news, there were a variety of different reactions. Obama supporters were excited, and McCain supporters were booing Obama because they did not believe he should have won. This shows although Barack has won the race, there is still a percentage of people in the world who see him as a bad representative for America, they also view him as a terrorist, and a horrible threat to Americans. Many people believe that just because Obama has won the election, that Americas issues will now disappear...but the truth is they wont. Being that America is going through one of its worst financial crisis, Obama will not be able to resolve all of the issues that we face as a country. People expect so much from Barack, that when he isn’t able to turn everyone’s life around, he than will be looked at as another president who promised Americans a better life, but didn’t live up to his promises. This will serve as a good chance for republicans to say that America made a big mistake, and should have voted for McCain, although that would not have been the right answer to the problem. This will also make democrats look as if they don’t have much control over political and social issues. Overall Obama will have a lot of pressure on him as the new president, and that pressure will come from a variety of people in various situations.