On the Nature of Cool

Being cool is a talent that begins where talent ends. Yet we find ourselves surrounded these days by those who seek to perfect the art of cool with no other talent. Such a pursuit can only be pretense, so those that do succeed must have a talent for mimicry. These we celebrate as actors, and we do not begrudge them their coolness - it is merely an occupational hazard.

The descriptor 'cool' extends beyond persons to include activities and objects, even if the ultimate source of their coolness must be someone cool. As any cool person will affirm, they don't do something because it's cool; it's cool because they do it. (Contrast that with the relationship between God and Good: nothing becomes right simply because God wills it; He wills it in the first place because it is right.) Coolness appears to be transferrable along the chain as well. Items can lend their owners some coolness, as is the case with activities and their participants. Upstream of that, a cool designer may have rubbed it off on his work, or other participants may have lent an activity their coolness. Cool items may not always have been created by a cool designer though, so spontaneous generation and discovery of coolness is certainly possible. Nonetheless, coolness seems to be a value which can be created only by labour. Sounds Marxist yet? Cue the modern exploitation of this production.

Yet coolness remains fleetingly undefinable. Often, the best we can say is that we know it when we see it. Wittgenstein observed that we can use words without misunderstanding despite the lack of definitions, so the meaning must lie in how the words are used. Definitions are then ex post inventions to give the sense of the word to someone who has not been exposed to its use. But no; they are discoveries rather than inventions, for definitions have already been laid down unconsciously and continuously while we hear words. Meanings are hypotheses that are provisionally accepted but tested every time you hear a word, and refined sometimes. Definitions are merely attempts to express those meanings in other words. Perhaps our failure thus far suggests that cool as a concept emerges from an amalgam of qualities and is hence irreducible.

Examining the genealogy of the word 'cool', we see that its use in this sense began with the hipsters in the 40s jazz scene. Historically, the description has always been reserved for rebels and outsiders, such as rock stars, delinquents, artists, and even, in France, philosophers. In time, cool became more and more mainstream. But it always retained that anti-establishment flavour - sportsmen like George Best and Sócrates had it, and most cool actors get it from playing cool roles. But certainly there have been cool people and funky things even before the word was co-opted. Think of the Byronic heroes and Lord Byron himself, or further back to the troubadours, knights-errant and paladins, or even further still to the heroes of Homeric tradition. That was why cowboys and samurai were so readily adopted as icons by a cinema that had realised the value of cool.

Can we learn anything about cool from its synonyms? The hip forms a strict dichotomy with the square. The ideal of seeming effortless had already found its expression in the Italian Renaissance ideal of sprezzatura, which means studied insouciance (alas I can never have that, for I am so insouciant I do not study). It is still embodied in the dress sense of stylish Italians. A similar idea is contained in the Roman proverb ars est celare artem, art is concealed art. This should come as no surprise - after all, cool started out as a metaphor for calmness, which soon extends to effortlessness. For the cool, everything is no sweat.

Does our recognition of coolness refer to a moment of revelation in the past, each person's first glimpse of the iceberg, so we enshrine its shards within the sacred fridge of our cultural memory, hoping they never melt? Or is the cool a message from the future, a call to revolution by a Messianic avant-garde, an inviolable edict from that yet-to-be established regime of total cryocracy (a veritable rule of the cool)? Either way, seeing the cool is a Badiouian event, a rupture in the laws of being and appearance which is best explored by the truth procedure of art.

As with all else aesthetic, context affects the process of recognising coolness. The boundaries of cool are ever-shifting and constantly redefined, like those of a reclusive citydweller who sells his apartment for another whenever the neighbours get too close. Does this mean that what is cool can only be relative, that no Platonic Coolness is possible? What is cool seems to be largely a matter of societal consensus, even as trends change. Something deeper must underlie that agreement. Even if it is merely a change in the usage of the word, there must still be a similarity in concept between the old cool and the new cool that led to that word being chosen and not another.

Perhaps we will have better luck finding that commonality by looking at how coolness is perceived in the brain. Does a surge of neurotransmitters evoke the sense of the cool? More likely, there are 'cool' neurons that fire when the brain calculates that something is cool, analogous to the fabled 'grandmother' neurons that may yet be discovered. The meaning encoded by any single neuron is dependent on its place in relation to other neurons, so different neurons would encode coolness in the brains of different people, and in response to different stimuli as well. The 'cool' neuron then activates further associations and responses downstream, which include heightened attention, approval, admiration, and yearning. These underlie the evolutionary benefits of being able to distinguish the cool from the uncool - an appreciation for novelty, and a tendency to form bonds with cool people.

What is it that cool objects, cool activities and cool people have in common? They all must have a trait or combination of traits which deviates from the norm significantly, yet be sure in that deviation. This sureness is shown by cool people in their confidence, and by objects in their worksmanship. What's more, the positive potential of those traits must be intuitively grasped by the perceiver. A recognition of the cool is also a recognition of its influence, hence also an understanding that this could be the tomorrow of society. Thus, coolness is the mark of a novelty worth having. After all, change has considerable risks, so an undeniable sign is needed to persuade people to adopt it. Coolness is essential for any heresiarch who wants people to lay down their lives for his cause, because, although not all cool people start revolutions, only cool people can start one.

Cool people predominate amongst innovators and early adopters, because they dare to be, or are even actively looking to be, different. And coolness is a powerful gravity; it draws in the unwitting meteorites and the witting skydivers. It influences in two main ways - mimetic and memetic. Some people respond with mimesis when they are confronted by the cool, blindly adopting the traits, activities or items of cool without necessarily having the requisite attitude to become cool (nor are they necessarily trying to). Of course, activities and traits often require more work to adopt. However, a more complete picture of this coolness may also be transmitted as memes, by which images of the latest incarnation of coolness enters cultural awareness. There, it reconstitutes society's idea of the cool, and reaffirms its aspirations to that coolness. People are inspired to become cool or to produce cool works, either by restating or refining current standards, or realising new ones.

Whatever is cool soon diffuses to the majority, whereupon it ceases to be; a new search for the cool must be undertaken. These cycles have been facilitated by globalisation and the mass media, and further accelerated still by the Internet. Where a hieratic class of critics and impresarios once resided over the dissemination of cool, the decision is now made by explorers and experimenters from the demotic. They too may ascend to cultural authority as curators and connoisseurs, a position from which fall is certain and swift.

The seeming tragedy of the cool is that it contains within it the seeds for its own negation. Something cool will ipso facto be mimicked by many, and something found abundantly is ipso facto uncool. But new empires can only rise from the rubble of old ones, with the masonry oft salvaged. New standards of coolness do not merely supersede previous ones, but take them into account as well. Unlike real political revolutions, whatever was discarded or exiled by the previous regime is seldom reinstated. This way, that which can never be cool is left where it belongs, that which can still be cool is kept in place, and that which can at last be cool is raised. Hence the revival of the retro and the vintage to be viewed through new eyes. Each age becomes cooler than the previous age, than all previous ages. The dialectic between the New and the Old ends in the Cool. Everything that is new will eventually be old, but it may remain cool nonetheless. Thus does our Universe progress towards infinite coolness, much like the Big Freeze of cosmological eschatology.

So much for idealism. In the meantime, many incommensurable expressions of cool exist as contemporaries, each its own cult with its sacred rituals, objects, personages, sites, and festivals. But one day these may be syncretised into a single religion palatable to all, when it is revealed that they had been worshipping the same Cool all along.

Nowadays it is sufficient to be cool, if nothing else. But being cool often requires many things else. What does it take for us become cool, or to make something cool? I stand already disqualified, for the only way to seem cool while writing is to effortlessly drop aphorisms. Must we be original in order to be cool? That is a great risk, for most innovations do not take root, and even some that do are not cool. It may be easier to look around for what is cool and adopt it before others do. Reviving old modes of cool works as well, given a right eye for what will or will not be cool today. And combining things in novel ways may also give rise to the cool, although less groundbreaking than the outright new and hence likely to have already been tried. Whatever it is, confidence in what you are doing or making is imperative.

Being cool also derives from and builds on savoir-faire, which is an understanding of how to act in every situation. This is a largely unspoken body of knowledge, most of which is agreed upon by society, even if most people do not know much of it. But it is also being continuously redefined, as new conventions are agreed upon, new solutions are found to old problems, and new situations appear. This is where possessing up-to-date, possibly even radical, savoir-faire can make one cool. Having contact with many people and new situations leads to the collection of such knowledge, and these are things which cool people are more likely to do. Which means that cool people are in a good position to stay cool.

Should we then seek to be cool? And what should we do once we are? Cool is the affirmation of a particular mode of existence. That which stands out and is worthy of a future age will necessarily be cool. There is no need for us to directly desire to be cool then; indeed, it is often antithetical to actually achieving coolness. Trying to be cool is self-defeating by definition, because cool is effortless. If you have to try, that means those cool traits aren't part of you, i.e. they aren't yours. What we should do is to keep a lookout for new possibilities of action. Observe what is cool around you, and understand why. Observe what is cool within you, and let it grow. By being exceptional and assured (no simple matter, to be fair), we will automatically be cool. And then there is no need for us to do anything else, for coolness will convince and convert others.