BOYCOTT
COOL!
" That's one more
kid that will never ... get to be cool."
- Neil Young, Rockin' in the Free World, 1989
" Id rather be dead than cool."
- Nirvana, Stay Away, 1991
What a difference a couple of years makes.
When Neil Young used the word cool, he was talking about people
who are non-conformists. Its a major challenge to be a non-conformist
in the modern world. The pressure to be dull and bland is overwhelming. With
enough effort and discipline, though, you can deflect these social influences.
You can develop yourself create your own map to life such that
you become truly unique. However, as Kurt Cobain, who was unique, accurately
perceived, this is no longer the meaning to which the term cool
applies.
Real cool is dead. It has been transformed, transmogrified actually, into corporate
cool. Cool is no longer what you become through your own creative expression,
your dedication to being original. Instead, it is what you are told is cool,
through advertisements, as a stimulus to get you to buy. (A Buddhist monk has
described the current use of the word as narcissistic detachment,
i.e., a new and subtle form of socially approved personal selfishness.)
A non-conformist is someone who has an alternative approach to life, who takes
a stand against the rotten and depraved uniformity that is now shoved down our
throats. Cool was first established by hippies and other long hairs in the late
sixties and early seventies. (Another term used then was far out.)
Social institutions took note, and as a defensive response turned the word against
us. Cool is now used as a weapon, by corporate and media fascists, to brainwash
weak and undisciplined minds.
The word has been re-engineered to describe the exact opposite of what it originally
meant. So now we have Nike cool, Pepsi cool, even extreme sports cool.
Extreme sports X games are bullshit, for the following reason. Corporations
and television media have taken risky, individual pursuits (steep skiing, snowboarding,
skateboarding, big wave surfing, rock climbing, mountain biking, etc.), where
competition between people traditionally was not an objective, and commercialized
them by adding the competition.
The real objective of dangerous sports is to push your limits and transcend
the distinction between mind and body. At the most difficult moments, in climbing
this is called the crux, mind and body become unified. There is
no conscious separation; it is a form of enlightenment. At such moments, instantaneous
personal growth is possible. Under the threat of death or serious injury you
push yourself to do something that you have never before been able to accomplish,
to literally change who you are.
Corporations take out deepest strivings, and make them hostage to the profit
motive. And for the X games participants, the tattooed corporate spokespeople,
who needs enlightenment when you can be rich?
Every new generation is being conditioned more intensively than the last, into
docile consumers and workers, what have been called sheeples. The only
way to stop this is to fight back. But there is a price to resistance and rebellion.
The institutions are determined to preserve and if possible expand their power
over us. At its worst you may be killed outright, witness all the activists
around the world who have been murdered; or beaten down until, as Kurt demonstrated,
you take your own life.
Fortunately, as a weapon of corporate propaganda, cool is relatively
easy to disarm. Boycott the word. Never use it, and shun those who do. Explain
to them that its not cool to say cool. And, of course, never
buy anything that is advertised using the word or its associated image.
Its time we showed some originality anyway and invented a new word, or
many. Its a continual process, even radical and phat
are now out of date (not to mention tubular.). And when all else
fails, theres always excellent. Thats what cool means
anyway.