HW 33 - Cool Paper Outline

We've got 3 more days of Phase 3 of the Cool Unit - where you're being taught new information, concepts, and skills. After that we'll move to Phase 4 - where you attempt to integrate what you've learned into powerful and relevant insights and understanding. To help you prepare for the transition, please make up an outline of a cool paper. The most important parts:
a. a thesis or central idea
b. a collection of sharp insights and major points
c. a collection of evidence from previous assignments, class notes, and other research

The outline should be posted by 8:30am Monday, January 11. The rough draft of the paper should be posted by 8:30am Monday, January 18.

Your goal eventually will be to write a paper that explores one or more angles of coolness - it doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be, comprehensive. It should be colorful, lively, include your own insights and observations, as well as the most powerful insights you've collected from your brainstorming, interviews, stories, research, class sessions, readings, film clips, and guest speakers (Matt Fried and John Fanning).The paper willl end up ~2-4 pages in length.

For the outline you need to choose a thesis/central-idea to start with. You can change it later. I encourage you to identify your own angle/thesis. The following suggestions could be used, or could serve as orientation and inspiration.

1. If we realized X we would play the cool game a lot differently. We'd do more of Y and less of Z.

2. Coolness - as a heroic internal narrative and the successful command of attention and social significance - is a basic human need. We need to be cool - what are the best ways for us to do that, individually and collectively?

3. As Goffman (and maybe Shakespeare) argued, our sense of self is but a shadow of our character. And that character is merely an attempt to meaningful integrate our performances in the scenes we've been cast in. So, really to be cool, in the best sense, would be to become a director (or scriptwriter) rather than just an actor in the drama of our lives - as shown in the short stories we wrote. Otherwise we'd have to remember that a black sheep is still a sheep! Unfortunately, most characters' experience in institutions, families, and peer groups disables this power of transformation.

4. Coolness is a social disease whose etiology consists of consumerist attempt to adorn a basically meaningless/unfulfilling life. The cool epidemic can be ameliorated with proper public health measures such as banning advertising to children and schools systematically helping students form positive and powerful identities as distinct and admirable 'heros' rather than allowing them to remain as interchangeable seat-warmers who need to pierce themselves to seem interesting, as in the present situation. That requirement that schools help students become heroic would also mean greater interaction with the community, a focus on helping students develop unique areas of study, and support for experimentation and discovery.

5. Coolness is a tragic trap that appears to solve problems of meaning and significance but only worsens them, as demonstrated by Tolstoy and my own experience.

6. If we could become more aware of death and aging - by systematic visits to senior centers, hospitals, hospices, and funerals - by discussion and philosophy and theology - we could free ourselves from the triviality of the cool pose.

7. We're stuck in a culture of celebrity worship, status obsession, and pervasive mediocrity and meaninglessness. Frankly, a truly heroic life and abundant attention from others won't be available to 98% of people - since almost all of us are trapped in meaningless jobs in a meaningless rat race watching meaningless TV shows. Facebook friends, unique tattoos, new apps on your iPhone, clothes from a hip store with semi-nude workers, vacations to exotic places, and a big screen TV provide some relief from what would otherwise be a grey hopeless misery.

8. Different perspectives on cool reveal the different life chances available to sectors of our society. People aren't dumb - generally we'll take the coolest option we're offered.