Ludacris, “Whats your Fantasy,” Hip Hop, 2000
Keith Urban, “Only you can love me this way,” Country Music, 2009
Limp Bizkit, “Nookie,” Rock, 2000
Marvin Gaye, “Lets get it on,” Soul/ R & B, 1973
Meat Loaf, “Paradise by the dashboard light,” Rock, 1993
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmPMMitJDYgCommunity Service Songs:
Black Eyed Peas, “Where is the love,” Hip Hop, 2003
Band Aide, “Feed the world,” Pop/Rock, 1984
Michael Jackson, “We are the world,” Pop, 1985
The Beatles, “Help,” Classic Rock, 1965
The Temptations, “Lean on Me,” Soul, 1972
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVatt3BplaQ The two Hindu aims we are looking at here are Pleasure and Duty/Community Service. My personal opinion is that Duty/Community service is the more important of these two aims. Pleasure is definitely the more enjoyable of the two, but it takes a better person to be willing to help another person than to participate in something enjoyable to them. As well learned, not every Hindu accomplishes the Duty/Community Service aim because of this. While searching for songs related to pleasure and community service I learned that in American culture related to music there are far more songs related to pleasure than there are related to community service. This is probably related to the fact more people are interested in pleasure then they are in helping others.
The Hinduism belief is that a person can have or do whatever they want to as long as they follow the basic laws of morality and they seek their pleasure intelligently. This differs from the songs sung in American Pop culture in a couple ways. The first difference is most of the songs relating to pleasure merely just focus on the pleasure they receive from doing something. The other difference is they don’t worry about doing it intelligently. All they care about is the pleasure that they receive. No matter what the cost or costs that are associated with receiving that pleasure.
In relation to duty/community service, I feel that American culture places far less emphasize on this then the people do in Hinduism. Just the fact that there are so few songs relating to this topic proves that we do not emphasize this enough. In addition, more people in our culture are self focused on themselves rather helping others. Everyone who practices Hinduism is not interested in duty/community service either though. This is why not every Hindu reaches the third and fourth aim.
I think you picked some really great songs for the Community Service list. Nice job. You have a good mix of genres, song messages, and decades. Also, I think the last point you made about not all Hindus reaching the third and/or fourth aim is important. We're focusing a lot on how Western culture lacks an emphasis on Community Services, but not every practicing Hindu places great significance on it either. As mentioned in class, some Hindus pursue pleasure for many lifetimes, and maybe it's important to note that the popular American music we've chose only represents one or two lifetimes.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your point that not ever Hindu completes his duty or community service and rarely is Moksha achieved. Perhaps, it is not just an American disease of selfishness and lack of community service but a global epidemic. An epidemic caused by increasing globalization of media and technology that decreases a sense of community, which would have been the strongest sense during the times when the Vedas were written.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that it takes a "better" person to help another person instead of doing something pleasurable for themselves. Helping others may be what said person gets pleasure from. But does that make them any better than someone who finds pleasure from creating art, or reading books?
ReplyDelete