Homework 34 - The Cool Pose and Various Approaches to Life Rooted in Class, Race, Gender, Age, etc.

With every rung we climb, we either push ourselves up or lower ourselves down on our social ladders. With every move we make, we are constantly being watched and/or criticized by the people surrounding us. With every path we decide to travel on, we are either following our cultural maps for being cool or defying the unspoken rules. But throughout all of this we are always trying to decide just who we are, and how cool we are.

In each culture and sub-culture, people alike are following their “Cultural maps to being cool.” In each culture and sub-culture, we have our elders or others telling us how we should behave and how we should conduct ourselves. We try to combine their personal maps with ours, try to incorporate all ideas into one, and try to set a direction for our lives. We want to be different from all the others, but then again we want to be the same. Let’s take the Asian culture for example. Being of Asian descent myself, I can speak comfortably about my experience with my map to being “cool”. Every since I was young, it was hammered into my brain that I must succeed in school, always push myself to get the best grades possible, and hang out with only the right people. Once I started getting older, the word “College” got hammered into my head. My mother was not the best student in school, nor did she go to one of the best colleges in America. She attended night classes in college, and her mom couldn’t care less if she went because she didn’t believe college mattered. But for me, college mattered more than anything in the world. My mom wanted me to go to a good college, so I can get a good job, and be able to support my family in the future. If I wanted to go take a year off and travel the world after high school, I’d get shunned. After all, why travel the world instead of going to college? A college education is more important anyways…or so I’m told. To my family, being “cool” means following the path created for me from birth…be nice to your elders, get good grades, get into a good college, get a good job, and have a family. No questions asked. Not that I would have bothered to question my cultural map.

To reiterate what was said in class (in no way is this my opinion), a typical cultural map for African-Americans living in our society is to not really care about school, rather caring about surviving in the streets and impressing their friends. Your grades don’t matter, but your clothing does. Your intellectual level does not matter, but the way you walk and talk does. Let’s say there is a teenager who wants to succeed in school, of African-American descent. He tries hard in school, and wants to get into college. But his friends make fun of him for it. They question his desire to do well in school, and ask him why he feels the need to go to college. With the constant bantering and criticizing, he will soon give in and reform to their ways. With no one backing him up and giving him the power to stand up to his friends, he feels weak and alone. Of course he is going to give up, what choice does he have? But is it our right to make fun of him for not going to college? No of course not. He tried, and admittedly failed in the end, but all because he was following a cultural map provided for him. Instead of creating his own for his life, he decided to follow what people in the past have done. Why the need to be different, when being the same is so much easier? If following a generic cultural map is what makes him cool in his friend’s eyes, he is going to follow it. It’s not fair to any extent, considering he had potential to be different. But what can you do when the person you want to change is not willing? Absolutely nothing.

So should we just follow our culture maps provided or should we create our own? To each their own, is my opinion. I believe that it is one’s decision whether they want to follow a generic map or create their own. You can’t tell someone to follow a certain map; you have to let them pick their own. And you can’t judge one’s choice. I think culture maps create stability in one’s life, because they know they have a back-up map if anything goes wrong. They know they can fall back into their old ways, and won’t get criticized for it. If one was to veer from their culture map, they have to create their own path, which might scare some people. People who don’t have the direction and determination to continue on their own path will become scared and result to old ways. It’s all in how you look at it.