Aim #2 & #4

Success:
1. Queen: We Are the Champions, oldies, 1981
2. Nelly: Heart of a Champion, rap, 2004
3. (R rated) Roy Jones Jr.: Can't be Touched, rap, 2004
4. (R rated) Eminem: Not Afraid, rap, 2009

5. Justin Bieber ft. Jaden Smith: Never Say Never, pop?, 2010

Liberation:
1. Common: A Dream, R&B?, 2007
2. Green Day: The Time of Your Life, Rock, 1997
3. Casting Crowns: Set me Free, Christian, 2005
4. Akon: Freedom, R&B, 2008

5. Mercy Me: God With Us, Christian, 2007

I found that success is more prevalent than liberation.  The success aim is more prevalent today because so many Americans focus on succeeding in life.  We all set goals and strive to reach those goals.  I think that we look at success completely differently than the Hindus.  They were concentrated on wealth, fame and power, however they were limited on these things.  They were also competitive and therefore everything is uncertain and not secure.  Hindus eventually will grow out of this stage in life and move on to community service, but most Americans stay in this success stage of life.  We try to be the best we can at everything.  Today the world is all about being competitive, and winning something.  When you have a job you are always competing with your co-workers to impress your boss, but this is for your own pleasure.  I think that we can relate success back to pleasure because we try to reach goals to please ourselves and others.  My interpretation of Liberation is being freed from the cycles of life, so therefore I used freedom themed songs for this category. I found it a little more difficult to find songs related to Liberation.  I can relate this to the Christian understanding of salvation, which is going to be with God after death, which to me means that you are being freed from this material world into the eternal world with God.  I had to use this understanding in order to find songs to relate to the aim.  The Hindu understanding of Liberation is that you are released from the cycles of life, the Karmic bonds.  This means that you become enlightened and can be released from the cycles.  In order to be Liberated you must follow one of the four paths of liberation.  It surprised me that I had such a difficult time finding songs that talked about being free from this world.  American Pop music can relate to these themes of Hindu understanding, but once again we live in a different society where we focus on ourselves.  This is why success and even freedom are more focused on the self.



aim #1 & #3

Pleasure Songs!
1. Taylor Swift: Crazier, country, 2009
2. Keith Urban: I Wanna Be Your Everything, country, 1999
3. Tim Mcgraw: Felt Good on my Lips, country, 2010
4. Jason Aldean: Cowboy Lady, country, year unknown
5. Tim Mcgraw: My Best Friend, country, 2000

Community Service!

1. Black Eyed Peas: Where is the love?, R&B, 2004

2. Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Jonas Brothers: Send It On, pop, 2009

3. Demi Lovato, Joe Jonas: Make A Wave, pop, 2010

4. Michael Jackson: We are the World, oldies, 1985

5. Leeland: Follow You, Christian, 2009

                The pleasure aim is more prevalent in today’s society.  I think this is true because I could easily think of five songs off the top of my head, and people like feeling good.  There are tons of songs today that are about love, sex or drugs.  It surprised me how difficult it was to find community service songs.  When I searched on google to find community service songs, nothing really came up.  I also noticed that there were a few songs that claimed to be community service songs that were not.  One example of this was a song about hurricane Katrina.  It was aimed to be a song to let the world know what was going on, when really it was a video to make George W. Bush look bad.  The pleasure aim of Hinduism is about love, alcohol, intoxicants, or anything that pleases you.  The difference between this aim and the pop culture of today’s music is that we do not follow basic laws of morality.  In the Hinduism tradition they give you pointers on how to have pleasure.  In our society they just do whatever they feel like doing.  In the community service aim people are committed to helping others, but this is limited because they will eventually run out of work to do.  In today’s pop culture people will only write and compose songs when there is a disaster.  This is not doing community service in my opinion because we have so many people that are homeless or that are in need of help today, but you don’t hear many songs about that.  The only song I could find that was not about a huge disaster was a Disney channel song about recycling.  Although today’s pop music is very similar to these Hindu aims there are some significant difference such as the pleasure aim where you have to be intelligent about it.  Also with the community service aim you are committed to helping others, and today we only help others when there is a big problem, even though there are millions of small problems that are going on all around us.