What it is to be cool

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by €uroMeinke

I'd say it's interesting to debate, but not easy to pin down as these things are almost always defined by their subculture - which often arise to oppose another subculture. I think it's through that process we reveal that there is no "objective cool" and does in fact distill down to the individual level

I agree to a point, especially when you're trying to give a definition for what's cool now (forest for the trees and all that). But historically, the picture, on the large scale, becomes clearer. Surfing was cool in the 80s. Bell bottoms were cool in the 70s. Green Day was cool in the 90s. Whether I as an individual ascribed to it as cool at the time isn't important on that scale.

It will never be definitive, and even in hindsight it's a moving target depending on how large of a segment of society you're looking at. But it's kinda like quantum physics. It's true that once you filter down to the level of an individual atom, the physics of Mr. Newton no longer apply. But that discovery has not invalidated classical mechanics in the least, it's still a valuable tool for working on the scale that most of us work most of the time. They're both referred to as "physics", and they both share some characteristics, but they are distinct concepts. Not very different than what I see as two distinct definitions of cool.