The crisis of coolness

By: Reyshimar Arguelles

EVERYONE seeks acceptance in ways they could not possibly pass up. We have to prove ourselves before a crowd, hold a conversation, and listen to pointless anecdotes and conflicts that have no bearing on the way we live.

But, the excruciating dive into the crowd is made all the more necessary by our growing loneliness. In turn, it transforms us into creatures of bad faith who have to throw away morals just to get ahead.

Naturally, we all hate company and the only reason we join groups and make friends is to avoid being un-cool. You are a different sort of animal if you refuse to walk the same path all the other elephants march on. It makes perfect sense because, being social animals who won’t go a day without making ourselves heard, we need to get lost in a miasma of voices if we were to silence our addiction for loneliness.

Socializing is technically surviving because all of us aren’t even islands, to begin with. But if we had our way with it, we could all just gather in a small rocky place in the middle of the Pacific and build a society upon it.

We cooperate when we need to. We help out, often out of this selfish desire to be better than everyone else. And we make it seem like we are doing each other service when in fact we have other agendas in mind. That’s where our folly resides, in this process of hiding underneath dignified masks and keeping our darkest sides hidden from others.

It is through this process that we become just as dangerous as we are decent. Lots of people hold this malady close to them that they deceiving others come off as a norm. But that is the saddest part: we force ourselves to lie just to weave ourselves into the narrative of the crowd.

But lying is just half of it. Not being able to discern a situation is just as obscene. Impulse dictates us into accepting the easier way out of a problem rather than running towards it like you would a bathroom door when you have a bad case of diarrhea. Working smart holds the risk of trampling over other people for the sake of self-interest. If we were to accept this as a fact we could not detach ourselves from, then we are doomed.

There will be no morals to speak of, no ethics to guide us into accepting what should be true for all. We will be allowed to do whatever we please, creating problems that will never be resolved unless we overhaul this mindset of agreeing with the crowd just because it is the easiest way out of creeping loneliness.

This is the crisis of trying to be cool. Even if you say you are anti-establishment and subversive, there is virtually nothing potent enough to help dilute just how insignificant you are. One celebrity family has proven outright that any semblance of decency could effectively be erased when the right conditions are met. Underneath thick makeup and designer garb, we could still become savage animals when our main goal is to protect what is supposed to be rightfully ours.

So, what can we draw out from these reflections? Absolutely nothing, which is the same thing you get from following the Barretto family’s petty squabbles that do nothing but make us hate celebrities even more.

You might have wasted your time reading this piece, but just think of the pointlessness of being too engrossed in the lives of people who do not even know you personally.

The Barretto sisters have each other for their own personal amusement. Whatever comes out of their conflicts are for themselves to resolve. We have our own gardens to cultivate, our own loneliness and internal struggles to tackle.

Don’t get lost in what this mundane world offers. Get lost, rather, in the maelstrom of your thoughts.