HW 30 Psychological and Philosophical Theorizing of Cool

How does cool relate to our attempt to live in relation to this emptiness?

Cool as evolved in the human society in a big way, for a very long time. People look at cool as a way to fill in that "emptiness" they feel inside themselves in order to feel like they are someone in the world. This can be looked at in different ways, whether it be positive or negative, or anything else.

Cool itself has been discovered as overated, or better yet, it has been discovered as being non-exsisting. Cool has many multiple definitions, so many that it can't easily be narrowed down to one meaning. However, if you look past that, everyone is able to live through life and have their own perceptions of the word "Cool". After trying to figure out what cool is or what is does for one's benefits; a fork has formed in that path. in other words, in this situation of people using cool to make something out of themselves in life has become suchn a huge topic to think about, that the questioning of the term has been put on the side for the time being.

Over the past few generations, people have been using cool to live their lives. That's right, as weird as it sounds (which that too is weird, since I live on "Cool" in at least one way), it has become true. In the episode, "Merchants of Cool" from the series "Frontline", the topic of cool is explored. More specifically, the show concentrates on corporations trying to get on their buyer's sides in order for them to keep making profits, or maybe in even increase those profits. However, what is also revealed is that corporations aren't selling too many actual products as a main sell anymore, their biggest profit maker is Cool itself.

Corporations know that the general public look up at pop culture as somewhat of an inspiration, so smartly to their benefit, they jumped on that idea and built it into empires. For example, Britney Spears. Britney is looked at as an inspiration, mostly to young, teen girls. Aside from the CDs, the clothes and perfumes, those girls are taking life advice from Britney Spears (which at the time, when she was normal, although it still is a bad ordeal). Girls have looked at Britney Spears as a role model, so when they see what she does and how she lives her life, her young fans follow her lead and copy her. Before Spears made it big, I'm pretty sure there was less attention to "being sexy" being given by people. But now that she's on top of the world, she is now a leader for thousands of followers, waiting for her next move.

Overall, people use pop culture and being cool as a way to push themselves to being someone in this world. This can be looked at as both positive and negative. Positive because more people are being inspired to go out and explore the world, to make an impact on many other people in the process. Negative because while they're doing all this positive stuff, it's based on someone elses actions (little girls being sexy because of Britney Spears' ways). I myself can even admit that me wanting to become a pro wrestler was because of the wrestlers I saw on the TV when I was a young boy who had no idea about going into the world by myslef. All this inspiration, is it nothing more but a joke? It's hard to say. I think this topic can be answered in many different ways, which that itself may be the real reason of this subject.