I say “cool,” all the time, seriously. “What, exactly, is cool?” Colin Eatock asks in this fun article. He talks about what it means to be cool in the current culture, when and how ‘being cool’ became cool and everything else in between!

Excerpt:

And of course people can be (or not be) cool. Steve McQueen was very cool. Clint Eastwood? – not really: he’s too edgy and tightly wound. Collectively, the Beatles could be cool, but viewed individually, John Lennon was cooler than the other three put together. The Dalai Lama is cool (or, at least, admiring him is), but it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing a pope as cool. Barack Obama is sort of cool, for a politician – although the word on the street says he’s failed to live up to his full cool potential. Tony Blair tried very hard to be cool, and for a while he seemed to enjoy some success. But you can’t fool all the people all the time……

What, exactly, is cool? Cool is a cocktail (stirred not shaken) of modern virtues: relaxed, even-tempered, flexible, fair-minded, broadminded, egalitarian, forward-looking, liberal, socially adept, creative, adventurous, urbane, cosmopolitan, stylish, fit, sexy and smart. Cool has confidence, independence, and its own kind of dignity. Moreover, cool possesses these qualities unselfconsciously and without apparent effort……

But cool also has a down side. Cool can be cruel, as any nerdy, socially awkward teenager can tell you. Such kids experience cool as a malevolent force designed to intimidate and marginalize them. And cool can be snobbish – even though snobbery is officially contrary to cool’s values. To be uncool is, well, very uncool……

Read the full article here

(via 3quarksdaily)