COOL NOT COOL

You know how people say you should talk if something is bothering you. Well, something is. I am at a stage where everyone I see around me is trying to be cool in some or the other way and to be honest, I am not very cool about it.

If you ask me, I personally feel the want to be cool arises from a person's own inhibitions.

Let me explain. Let's say you are watching a movie with your friends. Suddenly a funny reference to some other movie comes up which is not very common and hence not easily understood. Your friends have no clue about it and are silent but you have understood the reference. What is your immediate instinct? Do you deliberately laugh more than what you should so people around you know that you have understood that reference? And then when your friends look at you, do you find pleasure in explaining what that reference is? Now ask yourself, did that reference deserve that much attention or is it your inhibitions about you not being smart enough or your want to be cooler than your friends that made you behave the way you did? This is actually just one of many simple guilty pleasures we have. It is completely okay to want to feel special and there is nothing grievously wrong about it. The real problem comes with what this catapults to.

And that is brainless standing out where people have this unwanted unwarranted desire to be apart from the crowd.

A sheep deciding to not follow a flock leading itself to death might survive.

But, the same sheep trying to not follow a flock just for the sake of standing out has more chance of getting killed by a wolf.

So, being exclusive is never wrong because many major inventions came about because someone did so but to be exclusive for the sake of being it doesn't do much good because more often than not there is a convention for a reason.

A bigger problem that this metamorphoses into is elitism which according to me is coolness with pontification.

Something is this world is very likeable to you until a section of people like it and it is no more appealing because there are so many people already attracted to it, so now you have to find something new that is likeable to stay a class apart. A worse situation is when you hate the same thing you previously liked because everyone else likes it now.

This phenomenon is constantly visible in the usage of language, liking for entertainment or a predilection to an opinion about a social situation.

And that's where vomiting becomes puking which becomes retching which becomes chundering until all the synonyms in the dictionary are exhausted and an endless cycle of the sheer desire to use a more classy word takes the wheel.

Don't get me wrong when I say this because I am a literature zealot myself and completely advocate for the right use of words with their proper meanings. My only point to make is for those superfluous trends that catch on.

And then again, Friends becomes boring and so does Harry Potter and the latest I have heard is Breaking Bad being boring. I know some of you might want to stop reading this right here because I included Friends in this and you hate it. But believe me, I intentionally did it to sell my point.

I strongly believe that liking and disliking are personal preferences and everyone has the right to do so and everyone has a different penchant for things. You not liking something popular (either because you genuinely didn't like it or you refrained from liking it knowingly or unknowingly to stay classy) is absolutely okay because you could not find it interesting in a way people did and I am absolutely, unequivocally fine with it.

My problem is when dogmatization is associated with it. No one should like it because I don't like it. I represent the general perspective and an indubitably right perspective and am the self-appointed connoisseur of taste in general. Basically, with an attitude of "Yeh kaun hai jisne pooh ko mudkar nahi dekha", you ask "Yeh kaun hai jise mera pasand nai pasand aaya OR mera napasand pasand aa gya".

Entertainment is just one example, but social situations are not immune to this either.

Infact, pontification in social situations is a huge problem and a bigger problem that is in tandem with it is people's predisposition to laziness. Lethargy in a variety of tolerable situations but intolerably, very much in acquiring knowledge.

People just want to understand the world (whenever I say world, I also include the people that live in it) with their existing knowledge and do not want to consider the possibility of something existing beyond what they already know. So basically, for them, education is a school-time activity and not a lifelong escapade and that is what bothers me because I wonder how someone's conceit can be deeper than the Mariana Trench that they feel everything they need to understand the world with all its crests and troughs spanning across a plethora of fields and disciplines, can be done with just their existing knowledge acquired over a period of a little more than 15 years.

So, I am amused when people use the phrase "logically speaking" to talk about things they have read nothing about. Because, what is logic? It is reasoning based on your incumbent knowledge. So, your argument with that phrase is questionable because it is based on deduction using your incumbent knowledge which may not be completely sufficient to talk about that particular matter.

There is one side of the argument which seems stupid when seen through your existing knowledge lens because it in actuality needs a lot of reading and perusing to completely understand that point of view and there is other side of the argument which seems to be a panacea for world problems for the average guy with their average knowledge. And it is heartbreaking to see the number of people choosing the second way, the easy way out because it doesn't need augmenting one's knowledge in that field and needs taking no pains to understand that particular situation. To add to that, the cherry that comes with the latter is it would make you stand out just by sharing incomplete, uninformed, unresearched, biased information (I don't even want to call it knowledge) without having to go through any pains and guess what guess what? Makes you sound cool.

Wait, am I against logic? No, don't misunderstand me. My biggest complaint is with the superfluous usage of logic because ironically, it brings with it a demon by the name of 'illogical oversimplification'. And with that, you can right any wrong by oversimplifying it.

So, slander becomes freedom of speech, abuse becomes freedom of touch, thievery is nothing but the law of conservation of possession and murder becomes the law of conservation of life itself.

And that is what bothers me.

Do I have any advices? Of course, I do. I wouldn't rant for so long if I didn't now, would I? :D

Be open to listening

Nothing good is going to come out of you being obstinate about your argument when the truth is not on your side. So, be open to listening and be genuine about it. If you are listening just to counter the opposite argument and not to put some meaningful thought into it, we are back to square one.

Flip the coin

No, I am not asking you to test your luck but rather think from the opposite perspective. I find myself being a lot more understanding about things in general when I imagine being on the other side. And again, be sincere about it. In fact, forget your argument completely and for once, try to rally for the opposite side yourself to understand what the fuss is all about on the other end.

Respect opinions

As hard as it might seem to be, people can have different opinions than yours. That in no way gives you the right to pontificate. If your idea of co-existing is having standardized opinions (which have to be yours), neither does the problem lie with the opposite person nor with their opinion, you very well know where it lies.

Let them have their opinions and you can have yours (about topics worth opining about, I do not advocate for slander in the name of freedom of speech).

Calm your ego

Most people live in the delusion that they can never be wrong. I mean, they genuinely believe they came to be in this world to be a messiah for people, to obliterate their melancholy and eradicate all despondencies with their oceanic knowledge and sagacious insights. Don't be like them. Be more wrong now so you can be more right later.

Use common sense

A little. Please? Especially to keep a check on your logic. (Maybe an entire article on this some day). I implore you to see reason ;)

Fight the urge to be cool

Maybe hormones-wise, it might be a little difficult to do so, but it is worth it for a better world.

Speak because you have something to say and not because you have to say something. [Plato]

Finally,

Keep calm and don't be cool :)

PS: This article will forever be a published draft. (I may hate morons but love oxymorons :) )