Submit with swag!

“What Does It Mean To Be Cool?” by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Central Argument: The definition of “cool” is a “paradoxical fusion of submission and subversion” because you cannot be considered cool only if you are constantly submitting to someone, you have to somehow have to break the rule and do something unexpected.

I agree with Thorsten Botz-Bornstein in his definition of “cool”. He says that the definition of “cool” is a “paradoxical fusion of submission and subversion” because you cannot be considered cool only if you are constantly submitting to someone, you have to somehow have to break the rule and do something unexpected. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jesus Christ, and African-American slaves are example of “cool.”

When the British took over India, they made Indians pay for salt and cotton which Indians made. Mahatma Gandhi was the Father of the Nation in India. He was a man who overpowered the British without the use of violence. He used many tactics and one of them was, ‘The Dandi March’ or also known as, ‘The salt march’. It was a long march about three hundred and twenty kilometers to a remote seaside village named Dandi. This march was a one of the greatest non-violent battles and it broke no rules. He travelled all the way to Dandi, to protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India. The british taxed Indians for their own cotton and salt. Gandhi opposed this. He told people to make their own salt and cotton. No rules broken, no violence used, yet made a difference.

Gandhi Ji didn’t break any rules but he was cool because he made the oppressor look stupid and powerless. His solution was very different and unexpected. He didn’t tell the British to stop what they were doing; instead he submitted to the British but reacted with a completely different and unexpected way. Therefore he was “cool.”

In the Bible Jesus tells his disciples about the concept of turning the other cheek. He tells them that if someone slaps them, they should turn the other cheek for them to slap them again. He tells them that if someone wants them to carry their backpack for a mile, they should carry it for them for two miles. This practice takes away the power from the oppressor and makes them look stupid in a way. This practice is also an unexpected reaction. If someone slapped me, I would have beaten him up, because that is the kind of reaction which is expected. However this is not cool because I am doing the same thing as before. If I told them to slap me again I am doing something unexpected and therefore I am taking my opponent’s steam away from him, leaving him dumbstruck.

In the movie Lage Raho Munnabhai, Sanjay Dutt practices this and tells other people to practice it as well. In one case of this movie, a man is pissed because his neighbor spits Pan at his door after chewing it. Sanjay Dutt tells him to smile at him every morning and clean it in front of him. This shames the neighbor, and eventually he apologizes. By cleaning the pan of the door, the man is doing something unexpected and therefore he is “cool.” He is submitting to the neighbor, but he is tweaking the system in an unexpected way.

            African American slaves are another example of the definition of “cool.” When the whites in America bullied them and were racist they kept their cool. For example when a white person were harassing a black man, the black responded by submitting to the white man. He didn’t resist. This made the white man look stupid, because what he was expected didn’t happen. This is another example of turning the other cheek. African Americans were “cool” because they reacted differently to oppression from the whites in America.

            The definition of “cool” is when a person submits to someone else with attitude and swag. Mahatma Gandhi and African Americal slaves are examples of this. By turning the other cheek, like Jesus suggests, a person submits with attitude and swag. By doing this they are cool. However these unexpected behaviors change over time because what was considered unexpected in the 1600’s will not be considered unexpected in the current world.