Saturday, February 5, 2011
BLOG ASSIGNMENT #1: Hinduism Aims - Pleasure and Community Service
It is easier to see the aim of pleasure more then the aim of community service in American pop culture. This is not because Americans don't do and act on community service its just because Americans focus their lyrics more on happiness and pleasure. Pleasure also has a much more open interpretation because it is whatever is pleasurable for each person. Pleasure songs can easily be about the act of pleasure, which is love, sex and drugs, but it can also be about traveling, meeting people, and the happy times in their life. Pleasure is just being happy. It can mean different things for different people. For me pleasure is about being around the people I love and doing activities that are fun. This was an easier topic to pick out songs for because the interpretation is left up for yourself to decide. But for community service the first thing that comes to mind in our culture is getting community service as a punishment for something he or she has done. This is quite unfortunate because it then brings more of a negative connotation with it, when the act of community service should be the complete opposite. It should be fulfilling and uplifting and giving back to the community. But on the contrary there are songs about helping out the world, making the world a better place to life, and doing what they can for other people. That is also a form of community service, and a very important one at that. Making someone feel better, going out of your way to do something for someone, and doing your part in giving back to the community is more what goes on as far as community service in American lyrics. Not to say that its a burden or to call it something its not but community service can mean many things. That was the type of songs I focused on finding because songs about the act of community service are hard to find but songs about making the world a better place are more accessible.
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I liked that you decided to get deeper into what pleasure and community service mean to you and to our society. I think that was an interesting approach to the assignment because our views on the Hindu aims are relative to how we view the aims themselves. When we talk about pleasure we do tend to automatically think things that are 100% pleasurable for all people like sex, drugs and love. I know thats what I was searching for. But I really like that you thought about relative happiness.
ReplyDeleteNice interpretation. I agree that most of american music is focus on the aim of pleasure because that seems to be the songs we like. Thats why searching for songs seemed easy to find. I though your interpretation of community service was interesting, that was not the first thing i would think of.
ReplyDeleteI like that you pointed out the negative connotation given to "community service". I hadn't thought of that before. I also like that you acknowledged pleasure can be anything to anyone. It was more difficult to find community service songs, but it's because our culture has standardized what counts as goals to focus on and what doesn't. Our culture doesn't promote you to be a priest, monk, or nun, nor does it promote you to grow up and volunteer for others as your job, or to join a missionary. It promotes "get as much as you can, while you can", and this seems the opposite of what Hinduism meant by pleasure.
ReplyDeletePleasure can totally mean many different things to different people and I feel like we just think about what we have in common with everyone else when someone mentions pleasure. I think in some ways we have merged the ideas of pleasure and happiness with pleasure almost having a negative connotation where it can only be achieved by delving into an activity that others would condemn (sex, drugs, partying etc.) with love being the only one accepted by all. I like how you noticed that community service does have a negative spin on it and seems like a chore rather than a duty to humanity.
ReplyDeleteI agree that community service has a negative stigma associated with it. Perhaps that is because when people get in small amounts of trouble a judge will make them do community service. They obviously don't want to do it, this may be where the association comes from. Additionally maybe it's negative because we are taught to put ourselves first.
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