Joel Evans

I recall in class a few weeks ago someone asked why are there no Asian’s in the cool? This truly had me thinking where are the other races in the cool. I never put much thought into it and kind of let the idea just roll out my head. However, earlier this week I found some correlation with Asian culture and cool. Now this relationship isn't the as explicit as Blacks and Whites in the cool. It is more like the relationship cool has with Itutu. They have similar traits, however to say that cool is itutu and vice versa is completely wrong. They same applies with Wu Wei, the Asian aspect of cool I was talking about. Before I go deep into discussing the similarities between the Cool and Wu Wei, I will say that there are plenty of other Asian philosophies that are also intertwined with cool. How do I know this? It's all thanks to my paper on Jack Kerouac , He showed me relationships cool had with Buddhism and how plenty of cool people had great interest in Asian beliefs and ways of life. Moving on We Wei is a Chinese word and it means doing nothing. It comes from the Chinese philosophy of Daoism and is one of the key components of following Dao, or the way. According to one of the key text of Taoism, the Dao De Jing, the way never acts, yet nothing is never left undone. Now this sounds very paradoxical, however, Wu Wei is not about slipping into a state of intense laziness, or being extremely relaxed at all times. The real meaning behind Wu Wei is effortless action, or action less action. Basically being able to do extremely hard task and make it seem as if you are doing nothing at all.  When you do this you are at peace and can handle these task with maximum proficiency. This goes hand in hand with the cool mask, and ironic detachment. Cool people knew and strongly advocated Wu Wei. They under no circumstance allowed for their cool mask to be broken. They may allow for small a glimpse where the mask is slightly taken off, or lifted up, put these chances rarely  happen and when they are over, the cool person proceeds back to Wu Wei. Wu Wei is also closely connected to the Dao idea of flowing with the world. Attempting to making our actions and patterns as spontaneous as the natural forces of the world. Cool people also do the same thing. They live spontaneous flowing lives that are on the edge. Unlike most of us who flow against most of the currents of life, they accept the word for what it is and try to flow within it. This reference reminded me a lot about Jack Kerouac and the beats. Their ability to leave things behind and just flow with what direction their life took them on. Whether that means leaving their jobs and families to live on the open road and enjoy a journey to Mexico, or dropping out of school to search for their true interests and purposes. They are able to respond and react to these situations with total control, causing a unity with themselves and their environments. Some Chinese poets, and artist engaged in Wu Wei to the point that they were drunk. They weren't endorsing alcoholism, but the calmness and looseness that comes from being drunk. Once again there is another parallel with the cool. Cool people don’t necessarily endorsers the use of alcohol and drugs, yet they partake in them. The reason being the high, or the numb feeling allowed for them to follow with their environments better. The were able to cast off all their worries and be more in tune with themselves. The issue that that for most cool people is that they lost their control, and soon the feelings began to run them, rather than the other way around. Now that I have showed you some correlations to Asians philosophy and the Cool, I think it is fair to say that there is a chance some Asians had cool aspects. The reason that they might not be totally portrayed in the cool is because they may not have been totally assimilated into American society enough, to really partake in the Jazz clubs that Whites and Blacks were a part of. Nevertheless I still believe that there may be a cool underground movement of Asians that began to pop up overtime. The problem is that in America we mainly live in a world of Black and White.

I poses a question that I think is very hard to answer in today's day in age. When reading the cool hunt I saw just that hunt for the cool/ However, in today's day in age is cool hunted anymore by big multinational corporations, or is it just feed to us? Does real authentic cool real exist anymore or has it become such a commodity that it no longer exist? In this post I will explain briefly a few reason why authentic cool has either faded, or is a dying breed. The first reason that I think the cool has lost some of its grip and kind of sold out to corporations is how quickly corporations adapt to the cool. We saw with the Nike commercial that corporations were able to buy out the idea of revolution and make its consumers feel like they were doing something revolutionary. In all actuality nothing revolutionary was happening in the commercial at all except for the constant message being played from the song in the background. Nike was just portraying the idea that wearing their shoes was revolutionary. They were able to adapt the the idea of something revolutionary was happening. With this quick adaptation the chase gets easier and easier as time goes on and your consumer base gets bigger, you are able to use more resources to come to the top. Since the chase speeds up there will reach a point where the chase no longer exist and the corporation is able to spoon feed its products to consumers. Using Nike again I will give an example of this. In the past It was considered cool to buy Jordan's from Nike and to this very day it still is. There was a creation point where Nike had to chase and develop an idea to make these Jordan's cool. Now both have blown up so much that Nike needs to no longer chase an cool concept for its Jordan. They are so cool that Nike has two main options for the production of there shoes. Nike no longer has to recreate them in order to sell them. The first option they have is one re resale shoes that have already come out. The idea of retorting them. Here’s the catch Nike can cut corners every year and make the shoes out of cheaper and cheaper martial in order to maximize profit and mass produces them. In tern you are paying more for a product that is no longer as exclusive and is worst quality than it was two or three years prier. The second choice that Nike has to release Jordan's are to just change the color way. Here again Nike barely changes the shoe at all. They Literally just change a few hint colors on them. Send it to the production line and watch as the shoes sell out. Here is a prime example of the cool, or something that is consider to be cool, being totally used and spoon feed to us. Nike is so big now that it knows its shoes are going to sell no matter what. So they can basically say fuck the chase, here is a product that I don’t even need to make commercials for, nor advertise because all of you consumers and websites will do it for me. Nike isn’t the only company that does this, plenty of shoe, clothing, restaurants chains, tech companies and even housing contractors companies do the same thing. Why do you think most new housing suburbs look the same. You and basically everyone beside you have the same exact house each is just tweaked a little both for your own liking. Why do you think apple no longer has to really do anything innovating to sell out its iPhone? They can just take the same exact phone bump up the camera, give it a slightly better processor and now we have the all new iPhone. Granted apple redesigns their iPhone's almost every two years they still can just feed us all the same shit and people will rush in line to buy it. Still there is much more for me to cover in the commodification of cool and I plan to talk about it in my paper. Possibly with a focus on looking at African American culture and how it is deemed uncool until mainstream America takes it, I also want to talk about some of the dynamics in the community and how cool has changed, or what direction it is heading. (I’m still playing with a few ideas in my head on what to really talk about in this next paper)

Many people believe that Malcolm X was a racist militant who endorsed Blacks to be violent, yet that is far from the truth. I’m here today to talk about the quote above and briefly put Malcolm X’s quote under the cool microscope. First things first the quote. Malcolm X her is being critical of the non violence approach to the civil rights movement. He didn't agree with the ideas of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Contrary to popular opinion he wasn’t really a militant either. He believed in the idea of self defense. He viewed blacks as having a physical war with the American power structure. If whites were going through great lengths, by lynching blacks, the KKK, forcing blacks to stay only in the ghetto, etc. Why shouldn’t Black’s go through great lengths to protect themselves from it. Why should they just turn the other check? In a war a person is supposed to defend themselves and this was exactly what Malcolm X was say. Blacks should be so enraged about what is happening around them that they can’t sing. They should be seizing America and rightfully taking what is there’s . This idea aligned with some of Nietzsche was say. In order to gain power you must take the power back from your oppressor, or the people in power. For example if a bully constantly beats you up everyday he has power over you. You listen to what he says and allow him to boss you around. He essentially has control over you. The power is no longer in your hands because the bully has it. Since this is true you can’t become a Superhuman and master yourself. The same idea applies for Blacks in America. Whites has constantly held the power over Blacks since they arrived in America. Malcolm felt like it was enough and that is was time for Blacks to protect themselves from America's bullying. He wasn’t saying the we should go out and kill Americans. This is far from what he was thinking. He thought that Blacks should take back over the power to rule over them and not be oppressed. In order for this to happen they collectively had to be ready to obtain their power “by any means necessary”. Unlike Zarathustra message however people did listen to his message. You can only push someone so far before they begin to lose your cool. This is true with Black’s at the time. Hence why there were mass riots to happen all over the country during the time period. The revolution was very much alive, yet often people overlook them and we are taught only about all the good things that happened. A reason while I think that Malcolm's idea was cool. Cool is too mature for school and the same applies to Malcolm's beliefs. The same reason why cool isn’t taught in school. You have to experience and see things for yourself in order to gain a full grasp of the cool. The same applies to Malcolm idea you have to go around the racial block a few times to see and understand why it isn’t taught in school book. Kids aren’t ready for that, they are only ready for the “singing We Shall Overcome”. The truth is most Americans aren’t ready to admit, or understand the oppressive nature of the American system. The truth hurts and cool knows that;’s why schools don’t teach the hard facts, until they think you are of age in College. Still a lot of things are being taught, yet some things you can't understand until you’ve actually been through them. 

Unlike his mother Jack’s father was a drunk who enjoyed smoking and gambling. His father also wasn't viewed as the ideal father, there had been two occasions where his father hit a priest. One incident was a Jewish rabbi and the other a Catholic priest. I find that is father role in his life was downplayed a lot. There were only brief references about his father, however I think his father played a role in Jack's development. In a way Jack resembled his father, though they might have had different motives, both were alcoholics and I think this is why alcohol was Jack’s poison of choice. Though Jack did other drugs that his father probably didn’t condone, they still resemble each other. There seems to be a duality in his family, his mother was the “good” side of things, while his father was the “bad” side. Allowing Jack to have a split experience with both the “good” and the “bad” side of things as a child. Which transitioned to his new life as a Beat. Some of the “bad” he had experience or witness as a child, so they weren’t total new, or that groundbreaking to him, compared to the average White American at the time.  Still I am curious why Jack hasn’t really talked about his father that much. Maybe he just simply did’t play a key roll in Jack’s life and that is why his mother is mentioned more in his work than his father is. 

Once Jack become of age like most kids Jack went to college. He went to Columbia University where he had an scholarship to play football. However, after his sophomore year he quite and dropped out of school. The underlying reason for this is obvious. School and College where too mundane and too structured for Jack. There was a constant overhead figure that watched and structured Jack’s life at this period. Football on one hand takes up a great amount of time and requires that you have mandatory time for when you wake up, breakfast, lunch, dinner, weightlifting, practice, meetings and when you go to sleep. On top of this you must have a pretty no flexible class schedule that tells you the same thing. There is little free time, or Jack time where he can sit down and do what he wants to do. This hindere Jack's creative process, he wasn't able to focus, learn, or do the things he wanted to do because he had mandatory events that constantly remind him where he should be at. Being that I am a college football player I can attest to what is going on with Jack. I am also to relate to him as well. I swear nearly everyday I think about quitting football, or school and going to do something that more meaningful. Especially because I am a walk on, so technically I am paying the school to play football. There are constant times where football just doesn’t seem for me anymore, it bores me and makes me feel like I am some middle age guy working a nine to five that he hates deep inside. Unlike Jack however, I am not as cool, or radical as him. It was a cool move to drop out of school on top of quitting when you have school paid for by someone else. Jack is literally telling everyone else that I don’t want to conform. He’s not conforming to the idea of getting a college degree and living a boring middle class life. That’s not interesting nor is it adventours. Since this is the case he decided that it was best for him to leave it all totally. Nietzsche writes about this idea with Zarathustra. They both leave everything, (for Zarathustra it's his home for Jack it's school) in order to go live up in a lonely mountain, isolated from the conformity of everyone else around them, so that they could reach some type of enlightenment.