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Parenting

Crazy Wacky Cool

by | Feb 19, 2004


So what is cool? When is something Phat, rad, bad, wicked, nasty,
neat-o, groovy, awesome, etc… It’s hard to pin down. It depends on the
age of the person involved. A five year old thinks that a new remote
control race car is the coolest thing on earth. A young teen thinks that a
weird haircut is ultra-cool, and an older teen (sometimes) thinks that
smoking is cool. Many adults think that a new sports car is cool. Elderly
folks think that oldies are cool.

Obviously these are generalizations. There are some teens who think
that a new trick in Visual Basic programming is cool (those teens are often
considered uncool by the others, but you just wait until they buzz by you in
fifteen years in their new SUV on the way to their third vacation in Bermuda
while you drive off to your office downtown). Anyway, the point is that
it’s a very vague concept. I think there are some basic teen rules though.

Rule #1: Anything which implies obedience to authority is automatically
uncool.

This is interesting. We all realize this is true, but why?
Imagine you have tickets to a concert of your favorite band. Two days
before the concert your dad says to you “You had better be at that concert
young man! (right!). It takes a bit of the excitement away, doesn’t it?
This feeling stems from a basic human feeling of independence. We begin our
lives as purely dependent beings. We can’t even feed ourselves that Gerber
carrot & pea stuff. As we grow however, we feel this intense need not to
owe anyone anything. This comes to a head during the teen years. (Have you
noticed this?) But we need to be careful not to be ridiculous about it.

Dad: “Now don’t you dare bite your thumb off!”

Teen: “Aw dad, lay off!”

This rule is the reason why for some strange reason there are people who
purposely dress like criminals. This is true in all decades. In the
fifties you dressed in an undershirt and leather jacket with a pack of
cigarettes rolled up in your shirt sleeve to look like a real “rebel”. In
the sixties, coolness was to dress like a member of the “revolution”, hippie
style. These days you have folks dressing like “Thuggs” on purpose.
Mirroring a culture of murder and mayhem. All of this stems from the “I
ain’t got no authority” problem.

Rule #2: What rich famous people do or wear or think is cool.

Now why is this? Just because some dude can be paid to act like a
nerd on TV I care about his opinions? Don’t I have any of my own? Don’t I
have a better way of coming to conclusions?

This generally comes from a perceived sense of popularity. It works
like this. A lot of people know who this person is. This means that they
are popular. They must have opinions and behaviors that make them popular.
I’ll copy them.

Whoops.

Notice the problem? Usually people first grasp this when they see a
celebrity on TV who they admire say something utterly ridiculous:

Celeb: “That’s right Ed. I married my 18th wife for love. This is really
the last one. We just met last week and I can tell just from her toenail
patterns. We were destined to be together.”

Usually one dose of that stuff (which isn’t too uncommon) gets us to
thinking. Maybe the celebrity is really a dork! Sort of like the emperor
has no clothes thing.

The basic point is that if we really thought about what “coolness” really
was, we might be a little surprised, and not so concerned with it.

Here is your chance to help me out. Help me understand the following
problems:

What are other basic definitions and causes of our perception of “coolness”?
Why is it that as people get older they start to care less and less about
coolness?


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Some Responses….(maybe you’ll see yours up here!)

—Kin

Is it the “older,” or just the more involved in The Society – which is made-up of the rule caretakers? In other words, if the child was involved with his family in doing indispensable acts towards the success of the family (i.e. buying the food with the household budget for the week or month) they would take pride in being part of The Society. Parents sometimes make youth feel like beggars and second class adults who CANNOT – not would not – be a part of The Society. It is human nature to despise The Society that will not let you in!

—Vincent

The feeling of “being cool” is an immature way of trying to fit in with one’s
peers. Peer pressure began with the advent of grade levels in schools,
introduced in England a little over a hundred years ago with the specified
and satiated purpose, according to the Encyclopedia Britannia, of removing
authority from the family and placing it among one’s peers. Prior to this,
education was vertical, which is the Biblical pattern. The older children
taught the younger ones. Authority in the family was supreme. But by
changing the educational system to a horizontal one, caused the current
anarchy that we see around the world, the lack of respect for authority on
all levels, and the erosion of morals and character among those in
authoritarian positions.


Actually this is not new. This horizontal educational experiment was tried
before in history, with equal disastrous results. It robs people of
creativity and personality development, because they are supposed to fit into
some cookie cutter or mold.


—Steven

The reason that people care less about being cool as they grow
older is that they’ve seen many fads come and go. Maybe after a while,
their attitude is ‘So what? Once a new fad starts, it’s becomes simply
one more convention.’

I’m 49 years old. I’ve seen all kinds of clothing styles, hair
styles, wide ties, thin ties. I can’t think of any fad that would
transform my life. It’s kind of like ‘been there, done that’.


—Penina
 
There is a well-known Robert Frost quote that goes as follows: “Two
roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and
that made all the difference.” We all know the situation Frost is
talking about. Those situations when we have to make really big choices
that will affect the entire direction of our lives. There is a lot of
pressure on us to determine what is the right thing for us to do and it
seems very difficult. To make things easier, Frost gives us his rule of
thumb: take the road less traveled by – do what is different.


My first year of camp, when I was eleven, my counselor had a really
weird hat that she would wear when we went hiking. It was a brightly
colored jester hat, complete with floppy pom-poms. All of us
eleven-year-olds in our pink baseball caps looking at our
nineteen-year-old counselor, thought it was the coolest hat in the world.
We told her how cool we thought it was and that we all wanted hats just
like it. She responded that her hat was cool because nobody else had one
like it; that in order for something to be cool it has to be different
than what everybody else is doing. It has to be the road less traveled.

What my counselor liked about the hat was neither the bright colors, nor
the pom-poms; she liked it because it was different. This is because
being different makes a statement about the way you perceive yourself.
Those who are not afraid to be different give off an air of
self-assuredness and self-confidence. They are not afraid to let their
“true self” shine through. Simply going along with what everybody else
is doing implies that a person is uncomfortable with himself. Because of
a lack of self-esteem, a person will hide himself and (literally and
figuratively) dress up like another person. In addition, conformity is
brainless. One takes on ideas and values simply because other people
have them, not because they make sense or seem right. For this reason,
echoing Frost, my counselor extols those who do their own thing and
refuse to conform. Still, the question in my mind is, did she actually
like the hat itself?


You see, anti-conformity can be just as brainless as conformity. Instead
of needing to be like other people, you need to be different. You are
still just as dependent on others for your own ideas and values. In
addition, anti-conformists will draw their self-esteem from who they are
not, rather than who they are, and that is not true self-esteem.


So, while the quote sounds like it possesses a deep insight for life,
the emphasis of the message is slightly off. When it comes to deciding
what to do, being different is not what makes the difference. Making a
proper decision with integrity is what makes the choice meaningful and
right. Whether or not other people are doing it is something that will
have to be dealt with at some point, but it is not the main factor in the
determination. Hopefully, the integrity that aided in the initial
decision will give you the strength to follow through and keep your way
no matter how many other people walking beside you.

What it comes down to is that when deciding which way to go we have to
look inside ourselves, instead of around ourselves. It means not doing
things just because other people are doing them and not doing things just
to be different (or “cool”). Decisions we make on the inside – by
ourselves, from ourselves and for ourselves – make us special. Being
comfortable with what we choose means having an inner peace of mind and
satisfaction that manifests itself in an outer pride – that makes a
difference, whether or not what we are doing is so different. So when
two roads diverge in a wood, don’t look around to see what other people
are doing, take the one you think is right.


—Respond to Penina
(Penina is a regular PG writer. We will not provide the email addresses of other responders.)

—Jeff

In discussing the issue of peer pressure and appropriate actions with my
11.5 year old son, I have pointed out to him that if “everyone” is
doing, or wants to do something, its probably wrong. And while this is
not a cosmic law, we have found that time and time again, it has held
true. The torah comes to teach us not to follow the “herd” mentality.
The real advantage of free choice is ability to choose “NOT TO DO”.

—Howard

I think people care less about coolness as they get older is because their bodies give way to their heads. When they are young whatever they see impresses them and they run after it. As they grower older their mind can perceive the stupidity and danger behind some of the things that are called “cool”.

—S.G.

I think the following summarizes a person’s perspective as he matures:


At age 8, I thought everyone was talking about my shoes.
At age 13, I thought everyone was talking about my new clothes and hairstyle.
At age 16, I thought everyone was talking about my friends.
At age 18, I thought everyone was talking about my school choice.
At age 25, I thought everyone was talking about my new mate.
At age 30, I thought everyone was talking about my great career.
At age 35, I thought everyone was talking about my new house and car.
At age 45, I thought everyone was talking about my children.
At age 70, I thought everyone was talking about my grandchildren.

When I got to 80, I realized that no one was even looking or cared all those
years.
If we realize this earlier, we won’t spend many years trying to impress others,
and will instead spend time making ourselves happy.


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