What is meaningfulness? Is it giving meaning to something? Or is it something that needs to be established by ones self to a person or particular object? Some questions need to be asked to find out the meaningfulness of objects on a profound and also a philosophical level. The meaningfulness of a paper cup can be talked about on a philosophical level but also it can be discussed at a personal or intimate level. To be able to have a philosophical conversation about a paper cup you need to understand it on a personal level before hand. Questions such as what is a paper cup, why do I use a paper cup and what does it mean to me to have a paper cup can only be asked when talked about personally first.
For the sake of the piece of prose, the paper cup will be put into context. The Paper cup is a coffee cup; the same questions can now be adapted to the coffee cup. Why do I need a disposable coffee cup? What does it mean to have a coffee cup?
On an intimate level, there are all sorts of sub conscious thoughts running back and forth between your brain and your actions, you may be walking through a crowded alley way and pushed to the sides are traditional coffee shops with full time barista’s creating love with the coffee machine and you smell the bitterness of the amazing coffee aroma, you instantly feel like a coffee, then you see the victims of the smell, consuming there short blacks, smiling enjoying everything that the experience brings. Your sub conscious now is saying you don’t just want a coffee but you want the experience attached, you want the wait between ordering and the first taste of bitterness, you want the conversation, you want to be the first person to say that the coffee is amazing, you want everything associated with coffee that you forget about the coffee.
You can argue that it’s the same with coffee on the run. People today cannot function without their morning coffee and it is quite sad that they leave the house without breakfast and pick up a coffee to go, relying on it to give them the nutrients and ability to break the shackles and work through the day. Many of us know that a paper cup is not an environmentally friendly and viable product because of the products applied, therefore the paper coffee cup is not sustainable. Yet so many people get take away coffees because it is so easy.
If people knew the real consequences about the paper cup would they still so regularly buy take away coffee, and if people really knew the consequences, would they then realise that it is indeed an environmental issue and by continually buying this product they are contributing to he problem. By putting fear into society does this change the meaning of a take away coffee cup to people who persistently buy take away coffee? Or does it become a cigarette package, with all the terrible pictures and statistics on the side, but still people buy them. If people know the consequences then they are doing it for a reason, I asked myself this question and I found it hard to answer, all I could do was go down the philosophical road of why people buy coffee in take away paper cups and what does it mean to actually have a take away paper cup.
What does it mean to have a take away coffee though, why do us humans do it knowingly by doing so we are slowly killing the planet? There is a meaningful alliance between what it means to hold a cup of coffee in your hand, it means you like coffee, and therefore there is a conversation between yourself and another person. By drinking take away coffee there is a socio economic status, showing others that you are efficient, you are professional, you are distinguished and even some may believe that they are more important for having this paper cup in there hands. There is definitely a sub conscious link between having a take away coffee and an establishment with ones self.
I have been in a situation where my mates would purposely carry around a water bottle, not because they want to stay hydrated but because by carrying this bottle made them feel more important, even sexier, it does sound funny but that is the way they described it. I tried it and funnily enough there is a chemical reaction between the action and your brain, which makes you feel like a better person for holding this clear earth damaging crude product.
I use this example because I cannot wrap my brain around the idea of how a product as simple as a paper cup ban become so meaningful to some people that they are willing to damage the planet.
This is an example that shows the link between products and our image. This opens another area for discussions, subliminal messages through the media and advertising to make their targeted audience want to have them, disregarding the consequences of the product and how it is produced.
There a number of products that create a stir amongst the public, I remember such a product was the aluminium scooter, every child wanted one of them but even products like this they only have a small Life Cycle. The paper cup has been around for a long time, and I know that it is nothing like a scooter or a present for that matter, however it is a product that I believe is taken for granted.
At a philosophical point of view, we can study Aristotle, Baudrillard, Beck, Barthes, and Descartes great thinkers and try and understand the logic behind their thinking and try and interpret it into the interaction between a coffee cup and what we perceive a coffee cup to mean to us. However if we are taking the philosophical road just what is a paper cup, disregarding all aesthetics, it is an object that holds contents or usually liquid and in this case coffee, it holds something that we cherish or something that we consider to be valuable because of how society makes us think, it is however only paper and is very similar to what you write on, what you print on even what you make aeroplanes with.
I believe that there is a level of thinking logically when talking about the paper cup but more so there is a more personal interaction and meaningful relationship that you have with a paper cup. The meaningfulness of a paper cup to me may be different to another person but no matter who, there is a meaning. Some people buy them because it is efficient and some buy the coffee in a paper cup because they feel a certain way, they want to be the envy of peers and its true there have been times when I have personally bought a coffee and others could not afford to and I feel good about myself that I can enjoy something they cant, and that is how I think at a subconscious level, it seems horrible, and then by holding the paper cup they can see what they want and as long I hold it for it will be playing on their minds.
Then what does the paper cup mean to me in a raw sense as opposed to what it means when holding it amongst people, a paper cup is nothing it is useless when you think of it in terms of being a single item hollow and weightless, it is an insignificant product that means nothing to me as a person it doesn’t have a say in my life it doesn’t influence or control the way I live, it is and insinuates nothing to how I might be. However if you give the cup context and you put that paper cup in a scenario then you have a whole different meaning and what the paper cup means to me. The cup transforms from this trivial object that can hold mass and turns it into a conversation, an object of desire and something of worth. It comes back to the group of people holding their coffee cups out the front of the local chain coffee house with there extra, extra large coffee’s believing that the more coffee intake the better and more productive they will be, and you see the interaction between them as they laugh, become deep in thought and discuss issues from work or an article from the newspaper, you see the meaningfulness of this cup is not just the cup it is the way the cup makes you feel when holding it and how you feel when it is taken away from you.
Its funny how an object means nothing to you unless it is desired by another person, you know that old teddy bear that you never play with any more or that old Nintendo 64 game that is covered in dust they have been forgotten but until your brother or sister comes and takes it away from you become possessive and don’t want to give it away.
There are connections between objects and the way we think and interact with them, a paper coffee cup is a simple object that has no meaning attached but when put into a situation where it plays a role in how we think, feel and act around others it changes the meaningfulness about the whole object.
What I am trying to explain is that objects by themselves have no particular meaning and it is up to the individual to judge how to interact with the particular object. It comes down to society and how society leads individuals to believe and act around things, through advertising and the media. Meaning comes with how you feel and how you sub consciously feel without being told by another person. The paper cup means nothing to me but when I am with friends drinking a coffee I feel a certain way, it has a meaning to me that is different from drinking from a drink bottle or even drinking from a ceramic mug, there is a different sensation a different feeling from them to a paper cup, there will forever be a association with my uni life and the paper coffee cup because it reminds me of the times of running downstairs to Hudson’s Coffee to grab a latte’ to pick me up from some boring classes.
I don’t believe in the meaning of a product in any other sense then the way you yourself perceive it to be because that is how meaning comes into products and design, the paper cup is meaningless to me unless it is in my hand filled with coffee sharing stories with my friends as they themselves sip at the paper cup.
What is meaningfulness? Is it giving meaning to something? Or is it something that needs to be established by ones self to a person or particular object? Some questions need to be asked to find out the meaningfulness of objects on a profound and also a philosophical level. The meaningfulness of a paper cup can be talked about on a philosophical level but also it can be discussed at a personal or intimate level. To be able to have a philosophical conversation about a paper cup you need to understand it on a personal level before hand. Questions such as what is a paper cup, why do I use a paper cup and what does it mean to me to have a paper cup can only be asked when talked about personally first.
For the sake of the piece of prose, the paper cup will be put into context. The Paper cup is a coffee cup; the same questions can now be adapted to the coffee cup. Why do I need a disposable coffee cup? What does it mean to have a coffee cup?
On an intimate level, there are all sorts of sub conscious thoughts running back and forth between your brain and your actions, you may be walking through a crowded alley way and pushed to the sides are traditional coffee shops with full time barista’s creating love with the coffee machine and you smell the bitterness of the amazing coffee aroma, you instantly feel like a coffee, then you see the victims of the smell, consuming there short blacks, smiling enjoying everything that the experience brings. Your sub conscious now is saying you don’t just want a coffee but you want the experience attached, you want the wait between ordering and the first taste of bitterness, you want the conversation, you want to be the first person to say that the coffee is amazing, you want everything associated with coffee that you forget about the coffee.
You can argue that it’s the same with coffee on the run. People today cannot function without their morning coffee and it is quite sad that they leave the house without breakfast and pick up a coffee to go, relying on it to give them the nutrients and ability to break the shackles and work through the day. Many of us know that a paper cup is not an environmentally friendly and viable product because of the products applied, therefore the paper coffee cup is not sustainable. Yet so many people get take away coffees because it is so easy.
If people knew the real consequences about the paper cup would they still so regularly buy take away coffee, and if people really knew the consequences, would they then realise that it is indeed an environmental issue and by continually buying this product they are contributing to he problem. By putting fear into society does this change the meaning of a take away coffee cup to people who persistently buy take away coffee? Or does it become a cigarette package, with all the terrible pictures and statistics on the side, but still people buy them. If people know the consequences then they are doing it for a reason, I asked myself this question and I found it hard to answer, all I could do was go down the philosophical road of why people buy coffee in take away paper cups and what does it mean to actually have a take away paper cup.
What does it mean to have a take away coffee though, why do us humans do it knowingly by doing so we are slowly killing the planet? There is a meaningful alliance between what it means to hold a cup of coffee in your hand, it means you like coffee, and therefore there is a conversation between yourself and another person. By drinking take away coffee there is a socio economic status, showing others that you are efficient, you are professional, you are distinguished and even some may believe that they are more important for having this paper cup in there hands. There is definitely a sub conscious link between having a take away coffee and an establishment with ones self.
I have been in a situation where my mates would purposely carry around a water bottle, not because they want to stay hydrated but because by carrying this bottle made them feel more important, even sexier, it does sound funny but that is the way they described it. I tried it and funnily enough there is a chemical reaction between the action and your brain, which makes you feel like a better person for holding this clear earth damaging crude product.
I use this example because I cannot wrap my brain around the idea of how a product as simple as a paper cup ban become so meaningful to some people that they are willing to damage the planet.
This is an example that shows the link between products and our image. This opens another area for discussions, subliminal messages through the media and advertising to make their targeted audience want to have them, disregarding the consequences of the product and how it is produced.
There a number of products that create a stir amongst the public, I remember such a product was the aluminium scooter, every child wanted one of them but even products like this they only have a small Life Cycle. The paper cup has been around for a long time, and I know that it is nothing like a scooter or a present for that matter, however it is a product that I believe is taken for granted.
At a philosophical point of view, we can study Aristotle, Baudrillard, Beck, Barthes, and Descartes great thinkers and try and understand the logic behind their thinking and try and interpret it into the interaction between a coffee cup and what we perceive a coffee cup to mean to us. However if we are taking the philosophical road just what is a paper cup, disregarding all aesthetics, it is an object that holds contents or usually liquid and in this case coffee, it holds something that we cherish or something that we consider to be valuable because of how society makes us think, it is however only paper and is very similar to what you write on, what you print on even what you make aeroplanes with.
I believe that there is a level of thinking logically when talking about the paper cup but more so there is a more personal interaction and meaningful relationship that you have with a paper cup. The meaningfulness of a paper cup to me may be different to another person but no matter who, there is a meaning. Some people buy them because it is efficient and some buy the coffee in a paper cup because they feel a certain way, they want to be the envy of peers and its true there have been times when I have personally bought a coffee and others could not afford to and I feel good about myself that I can enjoy something they cant, and that is how I think at a subconscious level, it seems horrible, and then by holding the paper cup they can see what they want and as long I hold it for it will be playing on their minds.
Then what does the paper cup mean to me in a raw sense as opposed to what it means when holding it amongst people, a paper cup is nothing it is useless when you think of it in terms of being a single item hollow and weightless, it is an insignificant product that means nothing to me as a person it doesn’t have a say in my life it doesn’t influence or control the way I live, it is and insinuates nothing to how I might be. However if you give the cup context and you put that paper cup in a scenario then you have a whole different meaning and what the paper cup means to me. The cup transforms from this trivial object that can hold mass and turns it into a conversation, an object of desire and something of worth. It comes back to the group of people holding their coffee cups out the front of the local chain coffee house with there extra, extra large coffee’s believing that the more coffee intake the better and more productive they will be, and you see the interaction between them as they laugh, become deep in thought and discuss issues from work or an article from the newspaper, you see the meaningfulness of this cup is not just the cup it is the way the cup makes you feel when holding it and how you feel when it is taken away from you.
Its funny how an object means nothing to you unless it is desired by another person, you know that old teddy bear that you never play with any more or that old Nintendo 64 game that is covered in dust they have been forgotten but until your brother or sister comes and takes it away from you become possessive and don’t want to give it away.
There are connections between objects and the way we think and interact with them, a paper coffee cup is a simple object that has no meaning attached but when put into a situation where it plays a role in how we think, feel and act around others it changes the meaningfulness about the whole object.
What I am trying to explain is that objects by themselves have no particular meaning and it is up to the individual to judge how to interact with the particular object. It comes down to society and how society leads individuals to believe and act around things, through advertising and the media. Meaning comes with how you feel and how you sub consciously feel without being told by another person. The paper cup means nothing to me but when I am with friends drinking a coffee I feel a certain way, it has a meaning to me that is different from drinking from a drink bottle or even drinking from a ceramic mug, there is a different sensation a different feeling from them to a paper cup, there will forever be a association with my uni life and the paper coffee cup because it reminds me of the times of running downstairs to Hudson’s Coffee to grab a latte’ to pick me up from some boring classes.
I don’t believe in the meaning of a product in any other sense then the way you yourself perceive it to be because that is how meaning comes into products and design, the paper cup is meaningless to me unless it is in my hand filled with coffee sharing stories with my friends as they themselves sip at the paper cup.
Thank you,