Out of the two aims in this blog post, I believe that the most prevalent one is the Hindu aim of Pleasure. Finding songs that had to do with pleasure was a lot easier the finding songs about community service for me. I believe that pleasure is most prevalent and the easiest to find examples of because in our society pleasure, and pleasing ones self has become the ultimate goal in our lives. While completing this assignment I was surprised to find that there weren’t that many songs about community service or helping others. I believe that this surprised me because in almost every case of a natural disaster or famous cases of injustice in our society you hear about celebrities and musicians speaking out about these issues and talking about helping with the problems and how we need to help each other. One would assume that with these musicians speaking so passionately about helping others you would find more songs about the subject. I suppose that they have realized that songs about helping people aren’t nearly as profitable as songs about pleasure? I think that the relationships between the Hindu aims and American culture are interesting when you compare the goals of our society. As we learned in class Hinduism has the aims of pleasure, wealth, community service and liberation in order of how ones life, hopefully, would go. In Hinduism it is known that a community service is something that one should strive for to get to liberation, where as in American culture we seek wealth and pleasure as our ultimate goals, and if we do community service then thats great for us. American music reflects our societies need for pleasure and wealth. There are those musicians that write about helping others or give proceeds to organizations that help people, and they should be applauded and looked up to in our society. I hope that more people in our society will see that community service is important as at some point in most of our lives we all could use a helping hand.
Song Choices:
The music that I posted for pleasure reflects several different aspects of pleasure. The Talking Heads(one of my all time favorite bands) “This Must Be The Place” Is a beautiful love song, as is David Bowies “Rock N Roll With Me”. The Talking Heads “Electricity (Drugs)” is a great songs about taking pleasure in doing drugs. XTC’s “When You’re Near Me” is an up-beat song about a man who is so in love with a girl that he shuts down, and he loves it! Finally Peter Gabriel’s “Mirrorball” is an absolutely beautiful orchestral cover of an Elbow song about being in love.
The music I have posted for community service covers various aspects of community service. John Legend and The Roots’ “Wake up Everybody is an awesome new song about how everyone need to wake up out of their self-absorbed life to help those that need it. Allen Toussaint & Elvis Costellos “Yes we Can Can” is a similar song about how we can make a difference and help people. Elvis Costellos “Whats so Funny About Peace Love and Understanding” is an iconic song about a man who views that world as it is and asks himself why others aren’t at peace and helping one another. Stevie Wonders “A Time to Love” is a song that asks people to realize that theres enough time to be terrible to one another but right now we need to help each other. And lastly Patti Smiths “People Have The Power” is a song proclaiming that society has the power and strength to help one another and change our ways.
I agree with what you were saying about community service and how in America we're more evident to help ourselves than others. It seems that with the view of wanting the American dream and to help ourselves, we often forget about the people that really need the help. Or that we're so worried about our economy and our country's wellbeing that we often forget about the people who are suffering in other countries, even in the ones where we may be the ones causing the problems.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way you do about the pleasure aim. I felt kind of bad that I could go on and on about songs that talked about sex or drugs, but I had to really dig deep to find songs that said something decent about the community. People, especially in the U.S. should care more about their community and how to help others.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE THE TALKING HEADS! I also have noticed that on most peoples blogs America's wealth and pleasure focus is thought of as negative, but I think wealth in America is more than $$$$$$$$$.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the the question that you posed about artists finding it to be more profitable to have songs about pleasure as opposed to the songs about helping others. I feel that most people want the "feel good" songs about themselves instead of ones about others. Perhaps they find the pleasure songs to be inspirational.
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