HW 30

Cool is an idea that has overtaken our culture. Almost everyone is obsessed with being cool and the only thing that differs is the group that they want to appeal too. What is it about cool that makes us want to be it. What is it about ourselves that makes us so insecure that we have to fit in to other people’s standards. Why do we feel such a sense of emptiness? Maybe it is a lack of attention or love for simply being alive, or maybe it is fear of death, maybe we naturally want to feel important. All of these things play roles in the reasoning for insecurities but one of the biggest reasons we seek approval and importance is that our roles in society change as we get older and we get less attention as we grow. As a child one receives a large amount of attention from their parents, their family and many other adults around them. Little children are tended to most of the time and taken care of. They get attention just for being around and they get used to this attention. As children begin to get older and start going to school where they seek the same attention from their peers and therefore find ways to attract the attention of those around them and feel accepted and important in the same way they do at home. As we being to enter middle school and high school we become more independent and this is many times something we want, or think we want yet we still seek attention from others in school or from groups of friends outside of school. “The goal of being cool is feeling good about yourself, feeling valuable.” (Matt Freud, December 8th)

As we get older more is expected of us we handle more responsibilities and we are expected to care for ourselves. The change of roles we go through and “separation from the mother” both cause us to have a need to fill an emptiness with a feeling of importance and the easiest and most common way to do so is to give of an image that attracts other people and makes you seem important. People have a natural need to feel wanted and accepted however, in our society there is a desire for an unnatural and excessive amount of acceptance and importance. I think society has taken this idea and has turned it into an extreme hierarchy(which by the way goes hand in hand with a capitalist system)that leaves few feeling important and many feeling meaningless. Our need for acceptance has turned into a competition to see who can feel the most important of all. There are people who constantly obsess over feeling important and better then other and it's pathetic. I believe there is a difference between a longing for acceptance and what goes in our society today, specifically in pop culture. I don't think there is anything wrong with seeking acceptance however there is a problem with putting others down and competing obsessively to feel the most important.