Friday, January 22, 2010

New Paper

It doesn't really matter man. Well, who cares, life goes on right? Every day we wake up and look in the mirror and try to decide if we like what we see, some days we do and others we don't. Some days we like some things and not others and the next 10 minutes are spent trying to fix that. Then we go out and join the friends and family who judge us even if they say they don't, because they see the same insecurities that we do. It’s become something that we have inherited from the people around us. We are never OK with ourselves because there is always someone who is better. There is always something wrong with us and the fact of the matter is that there are hundreds of solutions, but none of them are good enough and that is the funny part. We want to be "perfect" but how can we if nothing is good enough? Is that what life has become? Have we lost the pursuit of happiness and took on the pursuit of perfection.

In school we put on the fake happy faces and take the endless amounts of shrapnel from the insult bombs our "friends" are constantly dropping on us. We smile and laugh at the jokes they make and inside we think, "Why is this happening?" But in the end we realize that it is just another in an endless line of tests that we must endure in order to be cool. Or what other people will view us as cool. In our own minds we are just loosing our dignity, sanity and individuality in order to fit this cookie cutter mold that has been imposed upon us by the hope eating monsters around us. Then again 10 seconds later we become one of us. It is a mask that we all must wear from time to time. For some it becomes an identity. It is a mask that can become like a face but it never will. Some people wear it so often that they don't know anything else, and others wear it so little that they detest when they look back and see that they had worn it. The second we interact with other people, our own face is compromised. And we put on a mask that is slowly stitched together by the people around us. It is made and destroyed every day and the more we are with people, then the less it becomes from us and the more it come from them. The thing about situations like this is that they are always worse explained then when they actually happen. It is like a surgery, it is completely painless until it is over and you have all the scars that need to heal. There is no way to speed up the process, it just takes time. It’s ironic that we get so lost in a world of cool. We loose our own identity and begin to take on others, Friedrich Nietzsche had the idea, "The surest way to corrupt a youth it to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike then those who think differently." What do we learn by playing follow the leader? We never get to establish a point of view if we are constantly changing our thought to be like those of the masses rather then those of the individuals.

The idea of “Youth” is astounding. We are the future and yet we follow each other like the blind leading the blind. What makes this so great is that whether or not people to chose to call us ignorant, we are only a step above. “The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy”(Alfred North Whitehead). As a generation we think that we are the best because we express ourselves as individuals by taking a fad and making it our own. I don’t see anything wrong with that, we need to grow and learn how to do things on our own. What I have a problem with is how cool fits into this all. Cool is what makes people make things their own, but its never really their own. It belongs to the masses. Their ideas are no longer theirs when they try to be cool. They have surrendered their ideas and freedom to their new lord and master. But who needs free will when you can be accepted by your peers by only changing a little bit of yourself? But as with all other rules, there are exceptions. Some people are lucky enough to be the beacon to what is cool. They are the shining example of what cool is and for the most part, people will change to be like them. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they look like, they just have the personality and energy about them that makes people look up to them and respect them. Nothing about this is fair. It isn’t fair that some people can be cool, or popular or anything like that without doing anything but being them selves. High school is a war zone and there are no sides that you can choose to be on. You need to be able to claw your way to the top and once you get there, sure it’s a great feeling, but then everyone is gunning for you.

The worst part about all of this that is changes people. Friends become enemies, and the people you once trusted don’t seem so safe anymore. Depending on someone is a risky game that is never as painful as it may seem. The social battlefield that we endure every day is one that always leaves the scars that run deep. And all it takes is one grenade that hits too close and suddenly “Poof,” everything is different. Trusting people becomes a game, all of this in the name of false prophets. Everyday we get on our knees and bow to a god names Nike, or Levi’s, and for what? The hope that we will fit in and be accepted by the people around us who are even more lost then we are? What gives them the right to judge? My answer is simple, they know more about being “cool” then anyone else. It’s similar to how a priest becomes a priest. They have to study hard and fill out certain requirements, such as not being married. It’s all about being able to fit the requirements. Once they do then the extra work comes easily, like studying and learning to fill their responsibilities. It’s the same for the leaders of cool. Once they are chosen, it’s all about living up to their responsibilities. They are lucky and happen to fit the requirements so they are naturally chosen to lead the masses on their hopeless hunt for cool. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if it is hopeless because no one likes to think about growing up. Cool is just a way to stay young, at least for now. I know nothing lasts forever but that never stops us from trying.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

HW 36 - Triangle Partner Help

Quinn,
I thought you really had a strong start with how you had the story and how it gave an emotional and personal view into your own struggle with cool, i think the way you were able to personalize it gave me at least a much deeper and more significant view into your paper. I think the story itself can be used to a multitude of levels, such as a personal view on the oppision of cool, or maybe as a youth in revolt type thing. It can end any way you want it to and make it have any message you want it too because the emotional level of it allows it to be like that. With all that said i do think there is some room for improvement, the story is very good but there is some cleaning up to do with who talks and the grammer and such, then my biggest problem is the second half, i think that you really could do so much more then the be what you want to be stuff. We are always discussing that in class and i think there is so much more that you can talk about that. It is just kind of cliche, but if you touch it up and put some of your own personal thought i think that this can be something great and really moving and deep, but thats just me.
Sam
Will,
So you bascially were saying that smoking is a way for people to be cool like John Wayne, but still be independant and badasses because they are being rebelious and "stupid."
Something you could include goes back to the early days of when smoking was being outlawed everywhere and yet it was still strong, They were increasing the taxes and yet people still found a way. It all about the ability to find a way to smoke for the reason that they can say they do,
What you could do to improve this would be to just kind of move it forward.
You need to work in details, right now it is just a shell, then again it is just a draft, i think it was a strong beginning.
This is a good paper, it is much better then the nonsense i have as of now, but yeah.
cool story bro
sam

Monday, January 18, 2010

HW 35 - Cool Paper Rough Draft

Cool can be used as power to lead thinking, its not the ultimate in how we will be lead but someone in power understanding what is cool can help influence their thinking and decision making and overall presentation of themselves. What is being said is that cool is in the eye of the beholder but the powers that be have a good amount of influence on that. We may look at some Nike shoes as cool and others that aren’t for several reasons. They might not be “Fresh” or someone already has them. There are so many reasons as to why not but so few as to why something is cool. That’s a huge problem with our society; we always find hundreds of reasons why we shouldn’t do something but only a few as to why we shouldn’t. Maybe because we are lazy, maybe because we have a narrow field of vision, and maybe because we are heavily influenced by the people of power. All that being said that doesn’t necessarily a bad thing. If these people have the right ideas they can start us in the right directions and possibly push us to new heights but that is never what happens because as I stated before, people always find something wrong with the actions of others. Now it isn’t new information that people are difficult but the new question is, is it intentional for people to be the way they are and what kind of effect does cool have on this? I think that people are collages of the people around them. They never loose the ideas of what used to be cool; they just build on it with more information from other sources.

People as a whole can be difficult but they usually have the intentions of being good but being so easily influenced, those intentions can easily be skewed. They look out for other people but the need to be cool can make them over look the need to support their fellow humans. It all links back to the need to save face and how every human is looking to save their own face. Their face being their masculinity/femininity, their dignity, their reputation and everything that makes them stand above other people. They want to be able to save their own face and then save others because everyone is looking out for number one and that would be themselves. The way cool affects this is because cool runs this whole operation. It is not a relatively new phenomenon though. In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, the main character Macbeth kills the king to whom he swore allegiance so that way he would have power and riches and henceforth be “cool.” It isn’t that different now. We are just as quick to turn on each other for that shot at being cool. Not every single person is object to this rule but a greater percentage is. And whether or not they would attest to it, they are. People like to give themselves credit by saying that they do care about people. But if the building was on fire then a greater number of people would dash for the door then try to help anyone who may be hurt or in trouble. No person is actually completely bad or evil; they do have the ability to show compassion, which is what makes us human. Communication helps but the willingness to help a lesser person is what make us different from the animals.

Is compassion cool? Does it really matter? I have come to realize that judging if something is worth caring about or not is just another way of trying to be cool. There is no way for there to be something that is completely cool because there is not very much that the majority of society agrees on. We all might have similar ideas and thoughts but they are all individual to us. Just like our haircuts or out personalities. The idea of trying to be an individual is total and complete bull s&*t because we are all pretty different from each other. The only problem is that people look over the little things because they are too busy judging a book by its cover. If they got close to them then maybe they would realize that they were cool but the problem is that takes a lot of effort and as stated before, people are lazy. It takes too much effort to get close to someone and they don’t want to waste that kind of time and effort on a person because they don’t ever see them as “worth it.” After all, what has this person done for them? People are always looking for some kind of retrabution for the things they haven’t done, like the world owes them something. They think that by being an individual and buying the shoes that some billboard taught them to buy and by wearing big headphones that some music video taught them to buy, they should automatically be repaid in full by society for that, that by being here and doing that they have done something amazing. The only question is what makes peoples like this? Its because everyone acts like this and they are just doing what they were taught was cool. When we see a movie that portrays some person who doesn’t care and acts like the world doesn’t owe them anything, we are shocked because we aren’t used to seeing peoples like this because people like this are new to us. We aren’t used to it all. I can’t imagine that is a bad thing but I think that if we saw that more then we would all probably be better people. But seeing it once has a small impact in us. Enough to change us and add a little more to our collage of cool.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

HW 34 - The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

Nothing that has to do with cool is ever in the eye of the beholder. It is always in the eye of the community around them. So whether they be from the upper east side or Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn, they are representations of the cool in their community. They are affected by their friends from school and the people around them. These people are the people who shape them and make them into who they are today, not through brute force, but through a lifetime of what it is to be cool and they are simply passing these ideas down into people who are younger versions of themselves. They will make all the same mistakes but they wont learn much because they wont know they are mistakes because they will be happy with them.
The next step is that we Act Cool. We do it so that we can be rebellious to our parents and yet fit in with our social groups. But if our social groups say not to be rebellious to parents then we aren't. We all need to fit in and our social groups are often based a lot around our race and where we live. So we are who we are because of our race and where we live. Our looks are everything about fitting in. We fit in best with people who are like us. Whether that be by age, gender, race or anything like that. These are all the things that put us where we are. It is like a filing system, these are all categories that we fit into and they base everything we need to learn based on all these things. They base our entire life off of that stuff.
John Fanning is the perfect example of this because his race played a small role in his future with tattoos. The reason he did that was because he wanted to be different. Which can be played back to race, but it has more to do with age and gender. He was a male teenager. He wanted to be different and by getting tattoos, he proved that he was different and was worth being cool because he was willing to go the distance to be that cool. That isn't a bad thing. It is a rare thing to find someone who is willing to go the distance to get something accomplished nowadays but he did it because he realized that it was worth it.
The Poem by Gwendolyn Brooks is a really good example of people who were willing to go the distance. The were willing to sacrifice their educations and any shot that they had of being successful in a good way for their shot at being cool. They saw it and they decided that it was worth it be be cool and shoot pool. The reason that the poem is good is because it captures their angst, and how they manage to cover it up and bury it down with things like being cool and how that can lead to worse things in life. I am not saying that all cool stem off from the cover up of angst, but a good majority of them are. The way that it is covered up is determined by race, gender and where they live.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

HW 33 - Cool Paper Outline

Thesis:
  • Our ideas and representations of cool, change based on what the people in power believe is cool, people are collages of the people around them. They never loose the ideas of what used to be cool, they just build on it with more information from other sources.

Sharp Insights/Major Points:
  • People are always looking for the next cool thing by looking at what their friends think are cool
  • People are collages of the people around them
  • Cool is all a way to save face, whether it be their own face, or the face of others.
  • Anatomy Of an attitude
  • How race affects cool
  • Cool in gender
Evidence:
  • We play genders, we are born with a sex
  • Dating standards
  • Tattoos are an initiation into a "tribe"
  • FEED
  • Matt Fried's assorted quotes
  • The effect of "Cool" on the sane vs the insane mind.

Monday, January 4, 2010

HW 32 - Tattoos & The Presentation of the Self

No one in my family has a tattoo and i am most certainly not allowed to get one while i am living here. I kind of want one but i was never sure of what to get, i wanted something that i designed but was drawn much better then i had drawn, and kind of has a shock value to it. Regardless of the fact that i wanted it to be cool, i thought that it would be cool to have something that stood out. Its cool to be different. Everyone once and a while i think about cool designs that would be and consider what it would like, but i remember that when i am 80 (if i live until then) i would still have that tattoo.
I know people who have tattoos that mean nothing to them, and others that are Chinese lettering that say dragon or strength (allegedly). They think they look cool and regardless of how much of a tool they are for it, they still do it for their own reason. Mostly to be cool, but regardless. Yes i think it is beyond idiotic for someone to get a tattoo just to be cool, i think it would be smarter if they got it because it meant something to them. Partially because i really don't like tribal tattoos, and because it is an extension of their personality that people don't have to know you to see, so it should make a good first impression. I don't think asshole is the first thing they want people to think about them when they seem them, so why get something that represents that? Just my thoughts
When John Fanning, our principal came in and started talking about his tattoos it was really interesting how he viewed them as a mix of his own personal feelings and as his ticket to fit in. He got them so he would feel like he joined a "tribe." I really liked that because it was a blunt statement of the truth and i really liked how he understood how he did it to be not only a bad ass, but fit in as a bad ass. Sometimes you have to do things that are taboo to some to be accepted by others.
In complete honesty i think that a tattoo is something that can very well exhibit some sort of message that someone believes in. It can represent their own thoughts, beliefs or religion. If it means something to them then i think that it is okay that they do it. If i ever have something that i believe in enough then i will get a tattoo of it but until i think i will stick to not having one because i don't need it. I think they are cool and they are worth "piercing my skin" for. I have friends who have tattoos and they have them that represent different things. They aren't there for catching attention, they are there for their own personal knowledge that they have them and that they are representing them. I don't think i would have a problem having something i really liked represented on my skin, but i would have to be okay with it years later. Those are just my thoughts though.