Folk Culture messageS on Living a Good Life. Online advice from regular folks

These messages communicate a way of being in order to be accepted. In my interpretation these examples are a guide on how to be a normal person. Sex and money are the two main factors known that round the world. In this post I am focusing more in the sex aspect. Sex can involve many factors, including gender. Most people consider men and women to be from different planets. As Greek culture suggests these two actually are, Venus and Mars. Based on this ideology, men and women learn to behave differently, and learn the drastic differences that separates them from the opposite sex. As children grow up the feminine or masculine distinctions are shown, parents do not necessarily have to teach directly what a woman or a man is supposed to do, children also learn it by simply living in society. If a man or a woman do not behave the way they are supposed to they are mostly considered to be homosexual. In order to have a good life and fit in high society, you must behave like a lady or like a gentleman.
These examples are also a representation of how society does not allow unique personalities. Our sense of uniqueness is ultimately a copy of something else, but generally is not identified as one.

Regarding the online advice on how to be the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend, I personally think is quite futile to even attempt such thing. This definition of perfection is easily recognized and understood, but complicated to practice and impossible to dominate. People, regarding their gender, will always struggle at some aspect in their lives. It is not possible to feel completely at disposition for your partner the entire time under this culture. Regardless of how controlling these articles may be, I still find them interesting.


There is no such thing as the ultimate perfection. To someone, even one person, that definition will not fulfill his expectations, therefore the ultimate perfection will not be perfect. perfection is an opinion. In this case it is folk culture's opinion, but we believe it is the truth. In my opinion being perfect is boring. There is no room for creativity or analysis. There is nothing to improve, nothing to work on. Even though people pursue perfection they do not accept it, because it is not wanted. By communicating that perfection is difficult or even impossible to achieve, then people would have a reason to live. Because perfection is easily interpreted by happiness, which is what we need to live a good and meaningful life. For example, finding the perfect wife, the prefect job, the perfect car, etc. But perfect to who? When our hard work on pursuing perfection is not acknowledge by others we resign on it. In other words, we are not working on making our lives better to live happily, we are working on making others less by us having more. I think this is due to our competitive culture we grow up in, as previously mentioned in my Inauguration post.


Another example from popular culture is facebook. In my opinion facebook has a great impact on the youth today. It is found as a way of communication between one another, and it is perfect for those who cannot talk face to face.
This communicating method suppresses reality even more. Due to the practical way of hypocrite self-expression, facebooks helps the youth on avoiding reality. For example, countless hours are invested into checking messages or sending messages, so that the level of cyber popularity increases. Most people urge to be recognized in some way, therefore facebook exists to save their day. After all, the Internet is classified as the life of many. I personally do not have facebook, so I would not know the satisfaction it can bring. I cannot help to assume that it would be a total waste of time, but if folk messages are communicating methods to reduce life time on facebook, then I assume that it is "bad".


I am aware of how these messages impact my life. I have the need to be part of something, and live along with others. But personally I do not agree on how we are told to be in a specific way in order to fulfill the expectations of somebody else exactly like me. I have been living under culture my whole life, and I do not attempt to fight it, but to change it. For some there might be no difference between these two distinctions, but it makes no difference. Results are ultimately the only thing that matters to most people. accepting or avoiding my reality makes no difference in the world. The world will keep on raising puppets, regardless if they are good or bad.


Moreover, as people we interpret culture messages as our reality, so we must follow them by all costs if we want to exist. If we fight against expectations or even change our culture we would simply tie up to a different one, and follow some one's righteous beliefs.