Sometime ago i heard of a conspiracy theory that stated that the phenomenon of cool was an entirely artificial concept, engineered by shadowy groups and "enlightened" philosophers, for the sole purpose of breathing life to capitalism. The theory goes that in order for capitalism to work there needs to be a perpetual desire for humans to acquire money. This desire can only be achieved where there is enough reason to want to spend money, and bare neccesity products and services alone are incapable of generating such demand - sooner or later, man will become content and maintain that money is no longer important to him. In order to prevent this, humankind is psychologically conditioned to be at the mercy of external "movements" of cool, which has the effect of forcing the subject to never arrive at this feeling of contentment.

To be honest, I have big reservations that such a conspiracy exists in such a calculated form. Especially when you consider that the concept of cool occupies many other faculties of human emotion aside the capitalist domain of consumerism (e.g sex, status and security). However it did inspire me to re-evaluate my awareness of the concept of cool and it's profound role, along with other socialogical concepts. So I set up this website  http://www.kool-is-bollocks.com as a testing ground for articles, essays and comments for like-minded minds to come together, and I'm inviting all readers of IndyMedia who are interested to participate as actively as possible and post some articles and thoughts. I'm specifically interested in the realm of the "unwritten" laws that govern sub-cultures, along with an investigation into materialistic trends that maintain a negative effect of people external to the specific phenemenon (sweat shop workers for example).

 http://www.kool-is-bollocks.com

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