Cool

1975

High School Graduation Speech, Penfield High School

            The debate over the virtues of small high school versus large high school rages, and probably the biggest plus on the side for having a senior class of over four hundred fifty is the diversity achieved among the students.  A kid at Penfield has the opportunity to mingle with others from groups with wide ranges of interests, wealth, and intelligence.  These groups each have, among other characteristics, a particular dialect—but they all seem to share at least one word in common.  The word “cool” has been around a while but, unlike some other slang that took hold in American English at the same time—“nifty,” “swift,” “groovy,”—“cool” has not become uncool to say.  Nowadays, “cool” describes anything good or excellent or nice or superior.  The unabridged dictionary dedicates half a page to connotations of cool.  The reason “cool” has stayed, and even taken on broader meanings, is that “cool” has always meant unexcited/calm/dispassionate. Today, unexcited/calm/dispassionate is the best way to be.

            An easy example of this is found in writing a composition.  Imagine being assigned to write a composition on any topic; and you pick a topic that you’re all worked up about.  Go home, stay up all night, and write a dynamite essay.  Spill your guts, tell it like it is, man.  Turn it in that morning, and have it returned the next day covered with red ink.  Not concise!  Not precise! Not specific!  Too many generalizations!  Garbage!  Rewrite!

            Now you have learned your lesson.  This time, go home, watch Carson.  At one o’clock choose a topic that doesn’t really choke you all up, and write the essay in half an hour.  Just throw in a few examples, make some up if you can’t think of any.  The teacher will eat it up.  I don’t criticize the English teachers for stressing the importance of using concrete specifics in writing, but I make the point that for today’s society’s child, it is much easier to write well when he couldn’t care less about what he is writing.

            Another familiar example of how passion has lost respect in this day was in the 1972 Presidential Election.  Early in his tour, Edmund Muskie was a strong favorite for the Democratic nomination.  Up in Hew Hampshire, a reporter asked a personal question about his wife, which naturally disturbed him, and he cried.  This scene made the national news, and people were horrified.  How can a man who cries lead our country in a crisis?  He might start crying again!  It was the beginning of the end for Muskie, and the next time he runs, you can bet he’ll do his crying in the closet, where it belongs.

            I could go on forever with these concrete, specific details of society’s rejection of “uncoolness,” but a final case must be pointed out.  I mentioned dialects, of kids, earlier.  Serving on the School Board this year, I have learned a new dialect.  The dialect of education administration contains a great many “inputs” and “datas” and “feedbacks” sprinkled liberally among the statistics and readouts.  Computer-oriented language is infiltrating many would-be “human” areas of life, not only education, and this is directly related to people’s loathing of emotional display.  The computer is the epitome of “cool” and Mr. Spock, the ultimate Joe Cool, is a cult hero.

            All this is not to say that society pressures us to be cool all the time—not at all.  We are provided mechanisms, and there are certain times when we are allowed to guffaw and sob, scream and work up a sweat.

            TV is modern society’s keystone, and its power lies in its ability to allow people a release.  After an entire day of being suave and debonair, everyone needs to go home, and get psyched up over an episode of “Bonanza.”  Little Joe is brave, the women are beautiful, the bad guy dies, and the excitement will give anyone over thirty a heart attack if they’re not used to it.  In one hour, you can get as emotional as you like, and with society’s approval, because everyone agrees that passion is healthy, even if it is in poor taste.

            The other famous American mechanism for releasing those emotions you’ve been controlling all day is sports.  You can get right into the game or race, or if you’re not a physical person, you can spectate.  Watch a sporting event approaches watching TV, in terms of getting your excitement from watching someone else—who’s getting shot if he’s on “Bonanza,” or is on his nineteenth lap if he’s in a five hundred in “the swamp.”  Although the excitement is vicarious, it is also true, however, that onlookers participate in that athletes depend on them for support.

            Society’s view of playing sports, the other side of the coin, is interesting.  The basis of any athletic competition is getting psyched, sharp like a knife.  The last thing you want to be before the sectionals is cool and bored.  What’s so interesting about sports is that everyone says that they reflect the conditions of real life.  And even if this is not true, everybody seems to believe it.  Notice how top athletes are so highly paid, and even in school, an excellent athlete has no shortage of friends.  Evidently this means that because they excel in sports, they can excel in life. Yet, if real life is like a football game, why is a man looked upon with raised eyebrows if he gets sincerely psyched up over politics, or war, or money, or love?

            Life is not a football game.  But how do you account for modern day ennui outside the shadow of the tube or stadium?  To the student of history, it occurs that it may be traced to America’s Puritan heritage.  The Puritans gave us a great deal, and the stifling of emotion and the domination of cool could come from them.  A second explanation could be the old “swing of the pendulum” theory. The 1960’s brought “revolutions” by blacks, women, gays, youth….Now all these movements are not so massively popular, and the emotionalism that accompanied them is dead.  People today may simply be reacting to the discomfort of that time, by squashing any passions that arise….that could lead to its return.

            Another more daring explanation arises in light of recent developments in Washington.  Could the entire nation’s attitude toward emotion have been directed by the CIA and FBI?  If you think about it, it would be a pretty sharp move on their part.  Keep the people cool and bored, and the federal government need face no protest marches, riots, or other related unpleasantries.

            I have no certain explanation of course.  But the Past offers lessons in what happens when people suppress emotions.  The Salem Witch Trials happened because people’s fears were uncontrollable, and everyone went berserk, because they had never been forced to cope with emotion.  Fear often has away of getting people excited, when they don’t want to be, and it they can’t deal with it intelligently, things go badly.

            But, the stalwarts will cry, we have our emotional outlet devices, we have our TV and our sports!  For them, Aldous Huxley in 1932 predicted a Brave New World, where passion is frowned upon, and people have devices and pills and special sessions whereby they release their emotions safely.  Just like today, except more so.  More recently, in Sleeper, Woody Allen showed a picture of a future society, where folks are bored with sex.  Instead of TV, they have an orgasmatron.  Definitely frightening (well, I suppose it depends on your point of view!)

            The hope for avoiding these future horrors lies (where else?) with the young!  Things must change, beginning in the schools.  Apathy and boredom, right now, are widespread, under the guise of “cool.”   Jean Paul Sartre describes three states of existence men may take: rock, vegetable, or what he calls “the authentic man.”  Rocks and vegetables are easily found in school.  They are popping milk cartons in the commons, because they are cool, and bored, and not at all excited.  I once saw a rock excited.  His friends locked him outside in the smoking area in January.  He was pounding on the door, yelling; it was fascinating.

            The rabbis said, believe it or not, that when the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, that wasn’t so bad.  What was so terrible was that they were happy.  Fed and clothed, they were content in their bondage.  The fact that students have to put up with ridiculous rules is not so terrible, what’s a little inconvenience.  The really poor thing about the situation at Penfield is that very few people want to make things better.  Most kids, and even teachers, prefer to remain calm, unexcited, cool; and this attitude carries over with the kids into their adult life in the big wide world.  The trend is stunted, and will be reversed, when there are Turnabout Weeks, and Novel Education Months.  When teachers are thrilled, or at least act it, with their subject and enthusiastic about their students; when administrators convince themselves that they really love kids; then those kids might get psyched about school, probably learn something, and definitely change the world.