37

INTRO

Cool is a method and means for us to feel accepted. It gives us a sense of belonging and in most cases purpose. We use the aesthetic idea of cool so we can provide ourselves with a standard goal to work toward. It is the path we unwittingly follow because it is the way we think we should live. Coolness is used as the guide and reference book to which we should act. The movie stars, musicians and athletes that are seemingly always cool are used as the visual aids to replicate and copy. We all are trapped in the cool box and are forced to walk down the cool path with the threat of being alienated.

In summary coolness is a basic, life-spanning, constant goal we are constantly striving towards. It is the attempt to show those immediately around us that we can be significant and acceptable. As a result of our obsession with attracting and sustaining approval we do what ever we can to be seen as a fitting part of society and a necessity, whether it is in sports, politics, entertainment, or intellectually. By using material signifier’s set up around our lives we perform a role that we hope will deem us heroic and pivotal.

ARGUMENT 1 archetypes

However, if we all looked heroic and cool in the same way we will end up wise to the real reason for our need to be cool. Therefore we enact different versions of cool (archetypes.) These archetypes allow us to pick a path that may seem slightly different. Each archetype allows the individual to belong to a specific group and feel accepted by a small mass. And most of all we can jump away from our conventional lives and move to something new and original. Why are these archetypes so popular? Since it is nearly impossible to become cool, heroic or even acceptable to everyone in society we pick an archetype to stick to because it gives us a sense of belonging even if it ostracizes us from the other archetypes. As Mr. Fanning said in his lecture to the class “getting a tattoo is like joining a tribe.” By getting a tattoo, he joined the tribe of rebel. Each archetype in society is a tribe and wearing or getting the signifiers is like joining that tribe. Naturally, we join the tribe that will get us the most success and attention.

Archetypes provide us with the ability to stand out from those in different tribes and blend in with those in the same tribe, to stand out while fitting in, we look like a hero and become accepted. Which is something hard to come by, rarely do we as a mass receive the means to look acceptable to those like us and rebellious and unorthodox to those who are not.

Further more why is rebellion so enticing. We always seem to gravitate and put those who have the strength to a rebel on a stage. The book Cool Rules by Dick Pountain and David Robins explain how we use cool “Cool is an oppositional attitude adopted by individuals or small groups to express defiance to authority-whether that of the parent, the teacher, the police, the boss, or the prison warden.” (Pountain, and Robins.) The cool pose is a way for us to express an anger and retaliation to the major forces in our culture. This proves that we as a society don’t like the values we instill or the way we group ourselves. Thus showing one of the paradoxes of the cool culture although cool is a major player in our culture we use cool to reject our culture.

Unfortunately, most people spend their entire lives trying to stand out, look heroic in their archetypes, and fail drastically. Making the enactment of archetypes and need to be noticed futile and pointless, living a life obsessed with only aesthetics in kind is itself meaningless. Even worse is that most people don’t realize or refuse to accept how futile their attempt to be cool and heroic is and don’t realize how much more their life could have meant if they weren’t so obsessed with aesthetics.

One example of this uncommon realization is from the book The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy. In the book Ivan Ilych becomes terminally ill, and it is only when he is close to death that he realized how pointless it was to live a life obsesses with monetary success and material items. "It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.” (Leo) Ilych is saying that he was fooled by thinking that doing what society said would make him happy but it just masked what he should have been doing, it turned out his life under the archetype of success had the reverse effect of what it should. He realized that because he spent his whole life trying to be a hero for his wife but it only made his life meaningless.

ARGUMENT 2 performances

As I mentioned briefly before we all fall into specific archetypes and we portray these archetypes in different ways, here I will expand on this idea of performing for approval and acceptable portrayal of an archetype.

We can’t just claim to be a part of a tribe (archetype) we must prove it, and show it so that people can identify us. In other words we perform the role so that we can further prove we are part of a tribe. We are all performers trying to portray a specific type of character. The archetypes are all depicted in different ways as to separate them from one another. The differences are known as signifiers, signifiers are often clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, and vocabulary. We use the signifiers to perform which create signified’s/characters. The signifiers being material items like clothes and hair explain why material items play such a large part in societies perception of cool. The material signifiers help us perform our cool obsession. The Wikipedia page for the book the presentation of self in everyday life by Erving Goffman a psychologist who studied this theory states: “According to Goffman, the social actor has the ability to choose his stage and props, as well as the costume he would put on in front of a specific audience. The actor's main goal is to keep his coherence, and adjust to the different settings offered him.” ("The Presentation of Self In everyday life") The actor, which is a metaphor for the average person, uses a costume (signifier's) to maintain his coherence and act with acceptable actions. Goffman is saying that we are all performers using the props and costumes around us to portray ourselves as cool, heroic, and acceptable. Using collected props we enact dramatic roles for the audience in front of us hoping to gain acceptance into their sub-culture.

Some argue that Shakespeare originally introduced the theory that we are all performers trying to attain acceptance. His quote from the play As You Like It “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances” explains that society and obsession with acceptance has brought life down to simply performing for each other following their lines and narration never really experiencing or introducing anything new out of fear of losing approval. We aren’t daring enough to try and come up with a different way to act with each other. Pretty much everyone plays the cool game because pretty much everyone is scared to death of social detachment.

Even I have realized my own performances and our insatiable need for endorsement. When I was younger I had two basic groups of people I was friends with, my school friends and my camp friends. I think it was because the two groups we so different I had to play different roles to get their validation. They came from two slightly different cultures, one urban and the other suburban. For my suburban friends I was forced to act much more centered around pop-culture and stars, where as with my school friends those values didn’t hold much weight. In one situation I was forced to look and act a lot more MTV and stereotypical teenager. I was forced to perform in separate interests so I could be accepted and awarded a stamp of approval.

Evidence of what signifier’s mean and instruction manuals on how to play a character are everywhere. Even in music, songs are great examples of instructions on what you should look like or do in order to be cool or acceptable in that archetype. The Eric Clapton song I’ve Got a Rock n’ Roll Heart gives a manual on what a tough man should like in order to be seen as a man. “I get off on ’57 Chevy I get off on screaming Guitar.” Eric Clapton, who is often regarded as one of the coolest people in the 1970’s is giving his listeners tips on how to become more convincing performers for the character of tough, cool guy.

Our obsession with cool and addiction to approval from others forces us to use our lives like a stage performing for an audience who we desperately seek approval from. Performance has become natural; pretty much all of mankind performs so that they can be accepted by their archetype. We do this without realizing that the underlying reason for everyone’s performance is the same, our constant need and crave for approval. Our need for approval is filled with acting like a performer fitting in to any and all archetypes.

ARGUMENT 3 the origins of our crave for approval
So where does this need for approval stem from? All cultures seem to have some way of attaining and sustaining approval. In Native American cultures in order to be accepted and gain your manhood you would go out on a sort of expedition. In western culture you must wear certain clothes and listen to certain music. But why? It is a need we have been chasing since we left infancy. We all at least on the sub-conscious level realize the insignificance of our lives and try to at least become acceptable if not heroic and significant and use the idea of cool to try to get to the level of approval from others and from there attention and heroism.

When we were babies we were given immense amounts of attention and affection. Everyone looked at us like we were amazing masterpieces of art, and took care of everything we needed. And we accepted it as the norm, got used it and enjoyed being the center of attention which is in no way surprising so now as a result nearly everything we do is done with the goal of trying to attain that feeling of centric attention. Much of this is adapted and expanded from the lecture “The Psychology of cool” by Matt Fried who brought up the point that we have been coddled to thing we are the center of our universe since we developing and have ever since been trying to obtaining this feeling ever since infancy, even into our adulthood and as we become elderly we try to look special for the nurses in the retirement home. We use cool as a mechanism to reach approval and then significance in all stages of our lives.

Schopenhauer, a physiologist and social theorist said that there are three major forces that distinguish us as normal and acceptable our broadcast sense (health beauty education), our possessions or financial ability, and our presentation to others. In order to gain a status of normality we must reach an approvable look, financial ability and life style. This is why the concept of cool is so popular, our definition of what is cool contains each of these concepts, and thus what is will grant us normality is our ability to look cool.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion as a society we use the cool-concept to fill the demand for approval. We use archetypes and variations of people to jump into a specific box. The box allows us to perform and act for the approval of others in similar boxes. We insist on performing and acting out in these cool forms because of an essential want for attention in societies brain chemistry.

We are a culture of people who are scared to be left alone, scared to be alienated and afraid of feeling like only a select few will come to our funeral. Victor frankl started the idea of Sunday neurosis and the existential vacuum where we realize the insignificance of our lives in the spectrum of the rest of world and try desperately to seem significant. Cool enacts us to seek approval and assimilate with a small group hoping some of them will know and remember us.

• Verbal communication-Lecture with Mr. Fanning January 6 2010
• Cool rules quote- Pountain, Dick, and David Robins. Cool Rules Anatomy of an Attitude . London: FOCI, 2000. Print.
• The death of ivan ilych quote- Leo, tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilych. Print. Web copy url- http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/WorldeBookLibrary.com/deathivan.htm
• Goffman Wikipedia quote- "The Presentation of Self In everyday life." Wikipedia. 25 October 2009. Web. .
• As You Like it quote url- http://shakespeare.mit.edu/asyoulikeit/asyoulikeit.2.7.html
• Eric Clapton I’ve Got a Rock n’ Roll Heart lyrics url- http://www.lyrics.com/ive-got-a-rock-n-roll-heart-lyrics-eric-clapton.html
• The psychology of cool Matt fried personal communication December 8 2009
• Schopenhauer information and reference- from here http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=3886&kapitel=3&cHash=41723e61122#gb_found
And from here: http://sofandy.blogspot.com/2009/12/hw-30-psychological-and-philosophical.html
• Victor frankl reference- http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/frankl.html

hw 36 comments for other peoples drafts

comment on brittani's cool paper

Hi Brittani i know you told me what was posted the time i read it isn't your entire essay but I think it is a great beginning. Its insightful and brings up a lot of good points. From what i read i think you main idea was about how cool is used as a way to express oneself but more so how cool means different things to different people. In other words The cool concept has provided nearly all of society with a method of expressing their ideology through speech and physical appearances. This a great thought that shows how cool is practiced through material items to supress an intangible fear

I agree with you completely one of the main reasons cool is so widely practiced is because it allows us to express opinion. cool is a way for us to pick an appearance since we cant pick anything else about our physical characteristics we go to cool so we can gain control. Trying to change something that you simply cant is probaly one of the reasons cool is such a big industry, companies like Levies make millions of dollars helping you mask the immutable aspects of ones self.

some things to work on and to better shape you paper are to obviously it you should work on completing your arguments and centering them around your main idea. Always keep you main idea in mind so you dont go off track which i sometimes do. I think it might be a good idea for you to look over Andy's paper, it will not only help you see a model of what ideas are good to bring up it might also provide you with evidence or remind you of things we discussed in class for you to add in you paper. also in your section where you talk about tattoos and what they represent i think you should expand a little on that and try to emphasize the importance of these acts (tattooing, hair-styles, clothes) each of these tangible items are separate but you could intertwine them under a central idea. All in all what you have has some solid ideas and interesting points, you just need to add a little, reshape it and make sure it flows which is normal for a first draft.

comment on will's cool paper

hey will i decided to comment on you rough draft for homework 36

I'll just start by saying that i really think your topic of cigarettes and their role on the cool stage is really original. its an interesting angle that is definitely worth exploring. I think your papers overall theme and main idea is that cigarettes have become one of the main symbols of cool and further more cigarettes have become the one truly explosive and predominate aspect of the cool society it has had the unique ability to show rebellion to our neighborhood and conformity to cool heroes.

we go to great lengths to accomplish the cool pose, we even risk our own health to look heroic.
When someone picks up a cigarette for the first time they leave their traditional archetype and shift to a rebel in their own or their parents eyes and a conformist to the other rebels. the different cool poses we conform to are like the and what can make this so bad is that in some cases we as a society distort the truth, rejecting the realization that what we are doing to be cool is hurting us because it has become defining component in our everyday life. Like how so many people still smoke even though it is proven to hurt us.

Your comment that cigarettes show how desperately we want to be cool is really insightful and really worth expanding. That could possible become an entire argument. You should definitely go into more detail on how cigarettes allow us to look cool but also why we want to look so cool and why its tangible items that don't show anything real. If you do end up expanding on why we act so cool in your final paper you could use the lecture from matt fried for evidence. also i agree with what andy said there is a lot for you to analyze what he said specifically about how its cigarettes and not pipes is really interesting and worth going into.


comment for alicia

Since your thesis is about our sense of emptiness and how we use cool to fill that void I think you can find some good evidence from homework 30. I wrote about a psychologist named victor frankl he talked about how we often realize out insignificance in comparison to the rest of the universe. You should probably talk about how cool is a way to combat that feeling

Your fist argument is interesting and worth putting in, but just so it doesn’t seem too epical it might be good to write about where cool is set in our upbringing, more of why of a why do we care so much and what does cool do for us, if you do decide to write about that the lecture by the psychologist matt from a while ago might be good for evidence and reference.

When you talk about archetypes it might be good to quote the lecture from fanning and the feeling of joining a tribe. Andy told me in my paper I needed to make my paper a little more personal so it couldn’t to talk a little about what joining an archetypes feels like, but not too personal. Just a bit about leaving one box and joining another so are we ever really not in an archetype or cultural group.

For your last argument I think the use of mean girls as evidence is a very good idea.

Your outline seems to be set up really well and if its any indication of what your paper will be it should be good. Hope this helped

Evan

ROUGH draft

INTRO

Cool is a method and means for us to feel accepted. It gives us a sense of belonging and in most cases purpose. We use the aesthetic or of cool so we can provide ourselves with a standard goal to work toward. It is the path we unwittingly follow because it is the way we think we should live. Coolness is used as the guide and reference book to which we should act. The movie stars, musicians and athletes that are seemingly always cool are used as the visual aids to replicate and copy. We all are trapped in the cool box and are forced to walk down the cool path whit the threat of being alienated.

In summary coolness is a basic, life-spanning, constant goal we are constantly striving towards, it is the attempt to show those immediately around us that we can be significant and acceptable. As a result of our obsession with attracting and sustaining attention we do what ever we can to be seen as a fitting part of society and necessary, whether it is in sports, politics, entertainment, or intellectually. Unfortunately 99% fail in their attempt to heroic. By using signifier’s set up around our lives we perform a role that we hope will deem us heroic and pivotal.

ARGUMENT 1

However if we all became heroic and cool in the same way we’ll end up wise to real reason for our need to be cool. Therefore we enact different versions of cool (archetypes.) These archetypes allow us to pick a path that may seem slightly different. Each archetype is allows the individual to belong to a specific group and feel accepted by a small mass. Why are these archetypes so popular? Since it is nearly impossible to become cool, heroic or even acceptable to everyone we pick an archetype because it gives us a sense of belonging even if it ostracizes us from the other archetypes. As Mr. fanning said in his lecture to the class “getting a tattoo is like joining a tribe.” By getting a tattoo he joined the tribe of rebel. Each archetype in society is a tribe and wearing or getting the signifiers is like joining that tribe. Naturally we join the tribe that will get us the most success and attention.

Archetypes provide us with the ability to stand out from those in different tribes and blend in with those in the same tribe. They allow us to stand out while fitting in, we look like a hero and accepted. Unfortunately most people spend their entire lives trying to stand out and look heroic in their archetypes and fail drastically. Making the enactment of archetypes and need to be noticed futile and pointless, thus living a life obsessed with only aesthetics is itself meaningless. Unfortunately most people don’t realize how futile their attempt to be cool and heroic is and don’t realize how much more their life could have meant if they weren’t so obsessed with aesthetics. One example of this uncommon realization is from the book The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy. In the book Ivan Ilych becomes terminally ill, and it is only when he is close to death that he realized how pointless it was to live a life obsesses with monetary success and material items. "It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.” Ilych is saying that he was fooled by thinking that doing what society said would make him happy but it just masked what he should have been doing, it turned out his life under the archetype of success had the reverse effect of what it should. He realized that because he spent his whole life trying to be a hero for his wife but it only made his life meaningless.

ARGUMENT 2

As I mentioned briefly before we all fall into specific archetypes and we portray these archetypes in different ways, here I will expand on this idea of performing for approval and acceptable portrayal of an archetype.

We can’t just claim to be a part of a tribe (archetype) we must prove it, and show it so that people can identify us. In other words we perform the role so that we can further prove we are part of a tribe. We are all performers trying to portray a specific type of character. The archetypes are all depicted in different ways because of their different members. The differences are known as signifiers, signifiers are often clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, and vocabulary. We use the signifiers to perform which create signified’s/characters. The signifiers being material items like clothes and hair explain why material items play such a large part in societies perception of cool. This is why cool is such a big industry, coolness is controlled and dictated solely by material things. The material signifiers help us perform our cool obsession. The Wikipedia page for the book the presentation of self in everyday life by Erving Goffman states: “According to Goffman, the social actor has the ability to choose his stage and props, as well as the costume he would put on in front of a specific audience. The actor's main goal is to keep his coherence, and adjust to the different settings offered him.” The actor, which is a metaphor for the average person, uses a costume (signifiers) to maintain his coherence and act with acceptable actions. Goffman is saying that we are all performers using the props and costumes around us to portray ourselves as cool, heroic, and acceptable.

Some argue that Shakespeare originally introduced the theory that we are all performers trying to attain acceptance. His quote from the play As You Like It “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances” explains that society and obsession with acceptance has brought life down to simply performing for each other following their lines and narration never really experiencing or introducing anything new out of fear of losing approval.

Our obsession with cool and addiction to approval from others forces us to use our lives like a stage performing for an audience who we desperately seek approval from. Performance has become natural, pretty much 99% of society performs so that they can be accepted by their archetype without realizing that the underlying reason for everyone’s performance is the same, our constant need and crave for approval. Our need for approval is filled with acting like a performer fitting in to any and all archetypes

ARGUMENT 3

So where does this need for approval stem from? All cultures seem to have some way of attaining and sustaining approval. In Native American cultures in order to be accepted and gain your manhood you would go out on an expedition. In western culture you must wear certain clothes and listen to certain music. But why? I believe it is a need we have been chasing since we left infancy. We all at least on the sub-conscious level realize the insignificance of our lives and try to at least become acceptable if not heroic and significant and use the idea of cool to try to get to the level of approval from others and from there attention and heroism.

When we were babies we were given immense amounts of attention and affection. Everyone looked at us like we were amazing masterpieces of art, and took care of everything we needed. And we accepted it as the norm, got used it and enjoyed being the center of attention which is in no way surprising so now as a result nearly everything we do is done with the goal of trying to attain that feeling of centric attention. Much of this is adapted and expanded from the lecture “The Psychology of cool” by matt Fried who brought up the point that we have been coddled to thing we are the center of our universe since we developing and have ever since been trying to obtaining this feeling ever since, even into our adulthood and as we become elderly we try to look special for the nurses in the retirement home. We use cool as a mechanism to reach approval and then significance in all stages of our lives.

Schopenhauer, a physiologist and social theorist said that there are three major forces that distinguish us as normal and acceptable our broadcast sense (health beauty education), our possessions or financial ability, and our presentation to others. In order to gain a status of normality we must reach an approvable look, financial ability and life style. This is why the concept of cool is so popular, our definition of what is cool contains each of these concepts, and thus what is will grant us normality is our ability to look cool.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion as a society we use the cool-concept to fill the demand for approval. We use archetypes and variations of people to jump into a specific box. The box allows us to perform and act for the approval of others in similar boxes. We insist on performing and acting out in these cool forms because of an essential want for attention in societies brain chemistry.

homework 34 `

The concept of Cool and the cool-pose has the unique ability to constrict our life style and form our lives at the same time we are trapped in the figurative box of archetypes and social roles. We are born into a role, political alignment, neighborhood, or race and without giving it a single thought 99 percent of us jump right into the symbols established by our cool predecessor's. They tell us what to do and how to live while making it near impossible to change.

Coolness is often utilized to marginalize racial, economic class, and gender stigmas. Although the archetype signifier's may not have been originally created to enforce societal rules they have become so popular that in too a many cases signifier's have become the only way for us to act. Most people say that your cool pose and the tribe you reside with make you stand out, but in reality they have just become the mandatory symbols of our social circle. Without them we just look lost and strange. The symbols have become giant marks on our skin that allow you to walk by anyone on the street and they immediately know "this kid is a rebel" or "he doesn't care about school" or "he goes to private school."

Whether or not we need new maps or if the whole map idea should be eradicated is a very complex issue. Without them many people would feel lost not knowing where to go in life. Since everyone wants to be accepted either by their culture or by another we would become wanderers having no idea if its right to this or that. However the culture maps offer much too little room for us to change or get to the next level. Similar to the analogy Andy made in class about the actual map that stops at the tip of New Jersey making extremely difficult for us to get into New York (New Jersey and New York being two different cultural maps.)

The poet Gwendolyn brooks who wrote the poem We Real Cool explains in an audio what she believes a group of cool boys think of themselves. The Boys the poem is about regard themselves as real cool, leaving school supposedly makes them so cool and great. This idea that cool young men don't go to school has been seen and played and re-written so often that even the boys themselves believe it. But all it really is is them conforming to the cultural map provided because they believe it is their social responsibility. The New York Times article A Poverty of the Mind by Orlando Patterson has a good quote: "SO why were they flunking out? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture" The cool pose culture that these kids follow is masked as what you should be doing. If you want acceptance and integration with your peers than follow the social map, even if all they are doing is limiting themselves. This is the cycle of our social maps, it locks us in to a state/social circle and uses a great bargaining chip, our compulsive need for acceptance.

hw 33 cool outline

possible thesis:
coolness is a basic, life - spanning, constant goal we are constantly striving towards, it is the attempt to show those immediately around us that we can be heroically significant. As a result of our obsession with attracting and sustaining attention we do what ever we can to be seen as heroic and necessary, whether it be in sports, politics, entertainment, or intellectually unfortunately 99% fail in their attempt to heroic. By using signifier set up around our lives we preform a role that we hope will deem us heroic and pivotal.

Part one:
why we want to have attention so desperately.
it is a need we have been chasing ever since infancy. everyone most on the subconscious level realize the insignificance and frivolousness of their life in the grand scheme of things and use the act of being cool in its many forms to try and change it. It will also contain some information about the sense of emptiness and homework 30 where a learned a lot about the void we have a fill with being cool.

I think much of my evidence for this argument will come from the lecture "the psychology of cool with matt" we had in the beginning of December. I will mostly stick what he said about how we got used to attention we got when we were babies and we are always, even as we become elderly try and obtain again. I will also use a lot of the information I used and learned in homework 30 on frankl. I think the cool rules hand-out probally has some good quotes for this because it discussed a lot of what cool is. I can relate this to why cool is so widely practiced.

Part Two:the aspects of cool
this is really just going to be talking about the different ways we try and become cool. A lot of this section will consist of the archetypes of cool and they all somewhat make us look like heroes. I will also talk about how we are really always a part of one archetype and just move from one to another when we crave a different source of attention.

For evidence i plan on using a some of Fanning's lecture, primarily the parts where he talked about joining a tribe. As well as some of the people who are symbols of the archetypes (actors, musicians etc.)I might also quote some of The Death Of Ivan Ilych the parts where he realized the things he thought would make him cool and happy (material things, monterary sucess) only made things worse and showed him that spending life attempting to be cool made his life meaningless.

Part three: performances
this part is mostly focused on the way we show our coolness and archetypes. Here i really talk about why material items play such a big role in our perception of cool. This section is about the signifers and performances we play and how they relate to the signifeds and characters we give off.

For evidence in this part i plan on using a lot of information from the merchants of cool as well as some of the Goffman stuff and the Shakespeare quote: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players"

hw 32

What does tattooing signify to you? Is it heroic/artistic/bold-self-expression?

I think that in many ways tattoos are a way for us to rebel from our childhood which was mostly sugar-coated and coddled and go to what we see as the different exotic world. Tattooing signifies a personal rebellion from what we were raised with, the normal social map, and the sheltered life style. It is a way for us to break free from what is considered normal society and move to another culture. It signifies being the leader or rebeler and that becomes the essence of cool. This is an archetype that although is full of people and won't make you a trend setter will still make you cool. We are just conforming from one Archetype to another, we are island hopping coolness as a way to constantly appeal to a mass group, suppressing our constant need to be liked. and tattooing just so happens to be one major signifier for the cool archetype, rebel.

Its interesting that now most people get tattoos as a small, generally insignificant act to anyone but themselves as a method of revolting to the major sources in western culture like Government and Religion. But much of tattooing was started by exotic indigenous cultures as a right of passage or a sign of religion and respect with conformity to society in mind not rebellion. Its interesting how something that used to be considered sacred was copied and copied and copied to the point where it is now just a way to flaunt you sexuality and act rebellious and reckless.

I'm not saying that all tattoos have no meaning, some people get tattoos as a remembrance of a significant time and that is acceptable. those few just use tattoos as a way to externally show pride for themselves. However some people get tattoos because it makes them look "cool" and they really don't know why. they get a tattoo with no meaning and end up regretting it. I think that here is the confusion and misconception of what a tattoo means. Since tattoos were introduced into western culture by soldiers and gang members tattoos were automatically given the stigma of bad and taboo and because many religions speak against tattooing a lot of kids get tattoos thinking it will give them the face of cool. This is similar to what Mr. Fanning was discussing during his lecture. There are levels of sophistication, getting a tattoo can be meaningful and significant and be a symbol for a major event or it can be a kid getting a tattoo of a keg on his chest so that he will liked and seen as cool. That kid feels like he's joining a tribe, the tribe of rebels but in many ways all he is doing is reinforcing the claim that he just desperately wants to be liked and accepted.

One of the reasons I think tattoos are so popular with teenagers is because at that time teens are trying to figure out how they can break free and become an individual, they have become aware of the decisions being made for them and crave control, like we discussed briefly in class if you have control it prevents you from being seen as animalistic. Control is one of the ways we can be accepted or even cool. and tattoos are a popular way of being seen as in control of our life choices. By getting a tattoo one will have for a short time the feeling that they have some control over themselves, therefore the impression that a tattoo denotes cool.

E.C.

In the beginning of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" Ivan Ilych is materialistic and ignorant. His views on what he sees as most important are monetary success, an important job, and pleasing his wife. He does what ever he can to get a high paying job in the law courts so that he can find what he thinks is happiness for himself and his wife. It is no surprise that his idea of what will make him happy is similar to the social map of his culture, which says that in order to be happy ones life must be easy and sophisticated. Much of his original views and his cultures views on how to be happy consist of tangible items. The map that Ilych is provided, that he unwittingly follows, tells him that if he wants to be happy he has to make money and have nice and expensive things.

However Ilych changes his ideology completely towards the end of the book. His sickness which was inadvertently caused by his materialistic attitude allows him to see that his values and the map were a waste, serving no real purpose in living a meaningful life. His understanding that he is going to die is a way of him realizing the lost cause of following the map of social stigma. He comes to terms with the fact that he will die and that nearly everyone will die without living a meaningful life, a life that is truly lost and has no substance past acceptance by his culture. Ilych is showed how useless the map he followed was, all it lead him to was a wife who he hated and a "floating kidney" which leads to his death. He finds no meaning of what he was supposed to do and is left feeling like he wasted his life.

Ilych definitely should have lived differently, he should have lived spending less attention and time on things that only looked good to others and offered no real happiness or meaning to his life. He should have spent less time trying to be accepted and live properly. It is unfortunate that he did not realize that until the end of his life and even then didn't fully comprehend what he did wrong: "Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done," it suddenly occurred to him. "But how could that be, when I did everything properly?" (chapter 9) It was because he is convinced these things will give him happiness that he dies feeling like his life was a loss.

I think that in many ways it is Ilych's wife, Praskovya Fedorovna's fault for Ilych's obsession with having unnecessary things that give a false sense of happiness. Praskovya Fedorovna pushed Ilych causing him to feel that he desperately needed to have things like monetary success to be happy. And because Ilych did follow societies rules and the map set for him he followed what Praskovya Fedorovna leads him to believe. It is Ilych's unusual circumstances that allow him experience what he is told will make him happy and then realize why they were a waste that offered him no meaning, making him enlightened but too late.

I think that one quote that shows Ilych's confusion between what his expectations the map would bring and its reality is:

"It is as if I had been going downhill while I imagined I was going up. And that is really what it was. I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me. And now it is all done and there is only death.”