"Group Sex" by the Circle Jerks
"The Art of Partying" by Municipal Waste
"Shimmy" by System Of A Down
"Shots" by LMFAO
"I Just Had Sex" by The Lonely Island
Aim 3: Service
"Faraway Coast" by Dropkick Murphys
"10 Years of Service" by Dropkick Murphys
"Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya" by Dropkick Murphys
"The Fighting 69th" by Dropkick Murphys
"Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" by Toby Keith
The first Aim, Pleasure, was much more prevalent than the third Aim, Service/Duty. This is probably because most people consider sex, drugs, alcohol, and whatever else gives them pleasure to be much more fun than songs about service and duty. An example of this is when I asked my roommate for suggestions for the first Aim, he was able to find dozens of songs about sex and drinking. When I asked about the third Aim, he didn’t have much to offer. People would rather hear fun songs than depressing ones. Go figure. What surprised me was how few songs I was able to find that were about service or duty. I’m sure there are many songs about war out there (and those were the songs that I chose for the third Aim). But there weren’t many that I actually liked (not that Toby Keith’s song is my favorite ever). As far as how close these songs are to the real meaning behind the Hindu Aims of life, I think they are close, but don’t quite hit the mark. The Aim of pleasure is fairly obvious, but I think many American songs don’t take it as seriously as the Aim does. For example, the song “I Just Had Sex” by the Lonely Island meant to be a comedic song, whereas the Aim of pleasure is much more serious. The song does fall under the category of pleasure, as it is about sex, so in that regard, American pop culture is very closely related. The Aim of service/duty, however, varies greatly. In Hinduism, there are castes, and each member of the castes are meant to perform their duty within the caste. There are no castes in America, so doing a service or doing one’s duty is a lot more vague. I chose songs about war because I feel that doing one’s duty for one’s country epitomizes the concept of duty. This may not coincide with the Hindu idea of service or duty, though.
I agree, songs about war have a very song since of duty and community service to them. Even if you agree with the war or not the fact that men and women put their lives on the line to help ours have better lives is most commendable.But on the other hand I feel like the Hindu aims are more about compromise and how to live a more serene way of life.So it the topic of war might not be what hinduism would lean towards I think it fits very well from a more western point of view.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your sentiment that the songs about war don't quite hit the mark. I think that those may be saying that we are helping people in the global community and protecting our own interests, but the songs that I think are closest to the Hindu ideal of community service are those that extol the virtue of extending a helping hand to those in need (most songs deal with this on an emotional level, though the Hindu aim is probably more interested in the actual tending to the ill and starving).
ReplyDelete@ ryan--Agreed, I also think that there is a huge disparity between motivations behind why we perform our community service. I think that Americans in some situations use community service as a means to get out of trouble, make up for a poor decision in the past or even to pay it ahead for future poor behavior, things like that. But in Hindu its really not community service if there is an alternate motivation behind why you chose to perform community service. At that point, it becomes self-service again to me. Thats the biggest difference I have noticed between our idea of service and the Hindus'.
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