Many things, both from myself and from others hinder me from living a good life. From myself, I am challenged by laziness and the desire to have fun. Often times I do not want to think about what the right decision is because I am lazy. If I had to choose between going to a party or going out to dinner with my family, I might not take the time to think about the effects of missing dinner with my family. I am lazy to a certain degree, so I do not want to put effort into thinking about it. Also, I want to have fun so I will chose to do what I think will be more fun.
Other challenges to me living a good life come from the people around me. Popularity is probably the biggest. Usually, I will put my popularity before doing the right thing. If my friends talk about someone behind their back, I will probably not stand up for that person for fear that my friends would dislike me for doing that.
Other challenges are presented to me by sources outside of the group of people that I know. One of these challenges is seeing celebrities appear to have so much fun while making immoral decisions such as having pre-marital sex. Consumerism is another challenge to living a good life. Advertising companies try to force us to buy something by appealing to our personal desires like sex and popularity. If we can resist that temptation to buy something only because it is cool, then we will be better off. It amazes me how big of an influence money has on people. You hear people say that “money makes the world go around” and that people will do anything for money. These sayings are proven true by advertising agencies who don’t care what the product is or what negative effects their ads may have on people. All they care about is whether it sells and how much money they make. They don’t care that getting kids hooked on cigarettes will lead those kids to an early death. They don’t care that by using naked women in their ads, they are corrupting children’s minds. These companies need to change; they need to think about the consequences of their decisions from a moral standpoint before they think about it from an economic standpoint. However, I don’t see this change happening in the near future because even if one person were brave enough to object to an idea because they considered it wrong, they will probably get fired because they are not helping the business. Therefore, the only way to make any progress would be with government regulations. The FCC has received a lot of criticism lately for strictly enforcing its regulations of language on the radio. They even have forced Howard Stern to move his radio show to satellite radio. They may seem harsh, but I think that in the long run our society might benefit from not being exposed to vulgar language and images constantly.