Psychological and Philosophical Theorizing of Cool [HW #30]

"How is a cup empty? We usually say that a cup is empty if it does not contain any liquid or solid. This is the ordinary meaning of emptiness. But, is the cup really empty?"

According to Buddhism, our lives are like cups. If it is not filled with a solid or a liquid- something visible, we believe that it is empty. But in fact, the cup is never empty. There are still particles that hold a place in the cup, regardless of how apparent that is. However, living in a predominantly superficial world, where merit only exists when it can be instantly perceived, we need some sort of signifier to believe that our cups are full. "The cup exists, but like everything in this world, its existence depends on other phenomena." We only (think we)know what we perceive. Therefore, we coat our significance to see its reflection.

Viktor Frankl's metaphor of the existential vacuum says that: "If meaning is what we desire, then meaninglessness is a hole, an emptiness, in our lives. Whenever you have a vacuum, of course, things rush in to fill it." I agree, in that there is some sort of socket in our lives that needs to be filled. However, we do not live our lives as a vacuum, collecting dirt to fulfill that need. Going back to Buddhism, the nothingness does not even exist. We do not need nor do we fill our lives, because it's already filled. We're just not acknowledging or appreciating the moments, because we're so caught up in making them special, or valuable.

One way of coating those moments already in our lives is being cool. When you're cool, and you do cool things, your life becomes note-worthy. By winning over other people's approval, you can see how valuable your life is. It's not that we're gaining meaningful experiences, but it's that we're reconstructing those experiences in our lives so that they're observable.

One portrayal of this aspect in our live is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The donors in this book are encouraged to create works of art, ones that are worthy to go in the gallery. Being that their (as well as ours) fate is to die, they want to have these art pieces as proofs of their existence. In a similar manner, we want to have these "immortality projects" to prove that we matter. And trying to act cool, and drawing attention from others is one of our methods. But just as the characters are passively living their lives by trying to act cool, so are we. For the most part, both the characters in Never Let Me Go and the people in our society, we are caught up in making our significance apparent through acting cool, we fail to see the bigger picture. For them, it's pretending to be important to a certain teacher by having a fake pencil case gift, and neglecting that the purpose of their existence. For us, it's receiving ignorant comments while acting ignorant, and losing sight of our situation (this applies to Never Let Me Go as well).

In both of cases, we are not extracting anything from being cool, aside from external approval. We're not really acting as vacuums and gaining any meaningful dirt to fill our emptiness. Instead, the motion of acting cool is just us coating our lives so that they're more attractive, so that people will take notice, and therefore prove that we're worth something. It ties back to our discussions about having a mask on. Because our identity is there (regardless of how authentic it is), because we're layering it so that it fits to social expectations. And in that process of layering, we lose that identity. Our lives aren't being filled with anything. The particles in it are just changing so that they can their reflection can become apparent.