Cool or Creative? Make your choice.

Much of today’s writing comes from writers more interested in maintaining their own sophisticated image,  and a reputation for being cool, rather than in expressing themselves with freedom and creativity.  

 Often they think of themselves as clever rebels. Instead, they are talented, but careful conformists.  Reading what their friends read, watching what their friends watch,  thinking what their friends think and writing only what their friends and colleagues will approve. 

What they write must pass a strict inner censor, (I imagine David Letterman) who gives a quick “thumbs down” should the writer stray too far from the realm of coolness.  This level of coolness covers all thought, and human behavior. It has a top ten list that is closely adhered to or else the writer may become an object of derision, and will be cast into darkness, away from the culture of cool, and out of the stylish set that  he is desperately trying to  be part of.   

Like teens, striving  for acceptance by the  elite high school clique, many adults in our society are trapped. They are  frozen into certain tastes, beliefs, and behavior.  They have accepted the rules of  the Culture of Cool without ever giving them much thought.  And, they have thrown away their innate right to freedom of thought, and action,  in order to belong.  

And, just as the highschool clique leads people within it to deride and exclude all who do not hold the elite’s point of view, those opposed to: The Culture of Cool, are also derided and discarded.

 For the writer, the self-censoring of all that is not cool from his work is destructive because it takes away anything that is unusual, or creative.  It removes all that is unrehearsed, impulsive, real, passionate, sweet,  true, and unique in him; it limits what he will think and what he will write because it eliminates his courage. 

 Such limitations are intolerable.  Cool or not, a writer must choose freedom.