The art of being cool (or the mindset)

Today in class I learned a couple of key things that I didn’t pull from our reading about being “cool”.  The first and most important is that cool is a state of mind and if your trying to be the cool then you are doing it wrong. The second thing I learned is that criticizing hipsters (I can’t believe hipster appears without a red line under it!!!!) seems to take a gratuitous amount of cursing. The third thing was a point I inferred myself that is also pretty pessimistic. Overall I think finding cool as something you can achieve starts as a self esteem complex, because if being cool is truly unattainable than we should learn to all be comfortable where we are. A perspective that is so quickly passed up in society is that true individualism comes from acceptance of all people, and taking note that all people includes your self and the image you may portray to others. Once we accept that we may never be the “cool” society wants us to be we can figure out that we are all individuals no matter what we wear, believe, or make at home rather than the grocery store. I think this relates to Frank’s argument, because this means that a true counter culture may be just as unattainable as cool. This comes idea comes to fruition in the fact that the ideas I previously stated (finding your own individualism) are only achieved in our society through consumerism, which means that the corporate American can easily create what is rebellious or different for every generation. In the end I think it all comes back to one question do you know who you are, and if you don’t then you might want to take sometime to figure it out, because if we are never comfortable in our own skin (which is impossible if it is made for us) then we may never reach the top of Maslow’s pyramid of needs (self actualization and or reaching your full potential).