Mark Meek's Ideas: The Beginning Of Being Cool

This is being reposted because more has been added to it.

I first heard of people, trends or, cars being described as "cool" when I landed in America at age 8. The word was very often used then and now it has spread everywhere, although it is not as often used. There was also "groovy", which I thought was superior even to being "cool", but that seems to have gotten left in the Sixties.

There is no exact definition of what "cool" means, and it certainly changes over time. In the Sixties, bright colors were cool especially in clothes. Bright bell-bottom pants and tie-dyed t-shirts were popular. The Chevrolet Corvette and the Ford Mustang were cool cars.

Pollution and the Vietnam War were not cool, but wearing a peace sign and protesting against the war was. Leftward politics was cooler than rightward. Many people thought that LSD was the cool drug, at least until their friends began dying because of it. The "establishment" generally wasn't cool but being anti-establishment often was.

Nothing was more cool than going to the music festival at Woodstock, in 1969. We do have to admire their philosophy of peace. About 400,000 young people got together for three days, and there was not a single reported act of violence.

Surreal psychedelic art was cool, and there was psychedelic rock music to go with it. The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Psychedelic Art".

What I now don't like about being cool is that it has a strong "fit in" element to it. The majority decides what is "cool", and what is not. Another term, which was a little bit before my time, was "with it". There was one person who used to say whether or not something was "in".

I don't like the idea of being a follower. I am glad to learn from people but never just "follow" them. When you blindly follow someone you deserve whatever you get.

The Bible does not tell us to "fit in", or to follow the crowd, or to be "with it". It tells us to "Come out from among them and be separate", Second Book of Corinthians 6:17. Going with the crowd is generally the way to Hell, not to Heaven.

Although it wasn't a major part of the Sixties, there was a "Jesus Movement" within it. Some Hippies saw Jesus as having been pretty cool. A lot of people had given up their uncool lives and followed Him. He told the establishment and the religious authorities how corrupt they were and how meaningless their empty rituals were. He got himself crucified basically because they resented His popularity. There was actually a Christian version of Woodstock, Explo 72 in Dallas.

Where did being "cool" get started? What happened in the Sixties was that the older generation had been the generation of world wars, genocide, terrible new weapons and, an economic collapse. The end of the Second World War had brought the Baby Boom, and the youth culture that the Sixties was about. But being "cool" is nothing new, even if the word itself wasn't used.

THE EASTERN ORTHODOX ORIGIN OF BEING COOL

I have concluded that being cool actually began with religion, specifically cathedrals. Brightness and brilliant light is part of being cool and the original cathedrals and churches are of what is now known as the Romanesque style. The stone walls had to be thick, and window space very limited, so that the walls could support the weight of the roof.

In the year 1054 came the monumental split of the Eastern Orthodox Church from the Catholic Church, and the world has never been quite the same ever since. The split was primarily over the authority of the Pope. The new Eastern Orthodox Church had to do something to differentiate itself from the Catholics. What they did is to come up with their own form of colorful architecture. This made it "cool" to be Eastern Orthodox.

The center of the Eastern Orthodox Church eventually moved from Constantinople to Kyiv to Moscow. Constantinople was eventually conquered by the Ottomans and Kyiv was still recovering from an attack by the Mongols. This is what made Moscow into a great city.

What resulted in the architectural incarnation of cool. It is the unique and colorful St. Basil's Cathedral, next to the Kremlin. This could be described as the birthplace of cool. The following image is from Google Street View.

Well before the split in 1054, the eastern areas of the Catholic Church already had different rites from the west. They used the Byzantine Rites, as opposed to the Latin Rites. Vladimir the Great, the Grand Prince of the Kievan Rus, chose the Byzantine Rites when his country converted to Christianity allegedly because his emissaries were so impressed with the Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople. Kievan Rus was the medieval predecessor state of Russia, Ukraine and, Belarus.

These Byzantine Rites were the beginning of the Eastern Orthodox Church, before the formal split, so the Hagia Sophia had a role in the beginning of being cool.

The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Hagia Sophia".

We saw the Hagia Sophia in detail in the posting "The House Of Holy Wisdom, Where The Modern World Began", January 2016.

The eastern Catholics already had their own architecture before the split with the West. This can be seen in the St. Sophia Cathedral, in Kyiv, which was begun before the split with the West. The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv".

THE CATHOLIC RESPONSE TO THE ORTHODOX SPLIT

The western, or Latin, Catholic Church responded to the split by coming up with something to make it cool to be Catholic, even if the word wasn't used. Like the easterners, their approach would be architectural.

The idea arose of supporting the weight of the roof of a cathedral in other ways so that the walls could have a lot of window space. This idea led to the Gothic style and made possible elaborate stained glass windows. The first fully Gothic cathedral is generally considered to be the Basilica of St. Denis, in Paris.

In the following image of Reims Cathedral, from Google Earth, you can see the buttresses outside the cathedral that support most of the weight of the roof.

This makes possible the stained glass windows associated with Gothic cathedrals. The following image is from Google Street View.

In the following image of Mont St. Michel, from Google Earth, you can see both styles. On the left and in the foreground is the Romanesque style, with thick walls and very limited window space. On the upper right is the Gothic style, where large stained glass windows are possible because the buttresses support most of the weight of the roof.

THE MODERN WESTERN VERSION OF BEING COOL

That set the historical precedent for being cool, the modern western version of which actually began with the Reformation. First, the Reformation had the anti-establishment and counterculture element of being cool going for it. The new Protestant philosophy was to break away from this corrupt, greedy and overarching establishment so that you can be free.

But I believe that it was the Catholic Church that really began the modern western version of cool, even if it was long before the word was used. After the Protestants had broken away in the Reformation, the Catholics launched the Counter-Reformation.

The Counter-Reformation included the Catholic Church's new version of cool. It was the new Baroque style. Just as the Catholic Church had earlier launched the Gothic style when the Eastern Orthodox Church broke away, now it launched the Baroque style when the Protestants broke away.

Northern Europe, which had broken away in the Reformation, had the old Gothic cathedrals. Medieval Europeans built magnificent Gothic cathedrals but the knowledge of how to build large domes had been lost. It was rediscovered during the Renaissance and large domes became the central feature of Baroque cathedrals.

Even if the word wasn't used yet, Baroque was the beginning of the modern western version of cool. St. Peter's Basilica, in Rome, was built in the Baroque style. Image from Google Earth.

The Protestants soon copied the Baroque style and built new cathedrals that were characterized by great domes, such as St. Paul's in London in this image from Google Earth.

St. Petersburg, in Russia, was especially built as the capital of the Romanov Dynasty and is known for it's Baroque cathedrals, having been built after the end of the Gothic era. Images from Google Street View.

By the Sixties, when there was the special emphasis on being cool, times had become more secular. We can see how secularized religion affected the Sixties counterculture in the resemblance between rock songs and biblical Psalms, except that the rock music was usually about romance instead of God, and the resemblance between the pilgrimage to Woodstock and the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Notice how the bright colors of this tie-dyed t-shirt, that was popular in the Sixties from the Wikipedia article "Tie-dye", compare with the bright artistry of Baroque, looking up at the inside of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral in this image from Google Street View.

Can the brightly colored bell bottom pants from the Sixties be traced back to domes, such as the Duomo in Florence in this image from Google Earth, as well as the fit-in element of being cool with all roofs being of the same color?

The Catholic Church had begun the modern western version of what it meant to be "cool", but then times had secularized and cool was exemplified by the counter-culture of the 1960s. The next thing we know is that the Church takes back the definition of cool.

Why couldn't the Pope be a celebrity like a rock or movie star? Pope Paul died in 1978 and the Archbishop of Venice was chosen as the next Pope. He took the name of John Paul, after his two predecessors. But he died in a month.

Then came the shocker. The new Pope chosen was the first non-Italian one in 450 years. He was from Poland and took the name John Paul II, after his predecessor. John Paul II would become a greater global celebrity than any rock or movie star. This shouldn't be surprising as it was the Catholic Church that invented the modern western version of cool.

My observation is that another "being cool" technique of Catholicism is the emphasis on smiling. A religious person should walk around smiling. Protestants are a little bit more stern and Eastern Orthodox Christians don't seem to have this emphasis. This can be deceptive as many serial killers, con artists and cult leaders have had great smiles. Following anyone who is smiling is surely a way to trouble.

THE ISLAMIC VERSION OF BEING COOL

The Islamic religion split into two major branches, over who should succeed Muhammad as the leader of the religion, or Caliph. Some said that the succession should be hereditary and that Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law, should be Caliph. Others said that the next leader should be chosen by consensus. The consensus side got their way and Abu Baker, Muhammad's father-in-law, became the next Caliph. Ali eventually became the fourth Caliph but by then the split had become permanent.

The consensus side became known as Sunni Moslems and the hereditary side as Shia, or Shiite, Moslems. This was far from the only split and both sides would further subdivide. Today the vast majority of Moslems are Sunni. The Shia proportion is 15% at most.

But what Shiites can do is to be colorful and cool, with architecture and especially when electric lighting came along. When Ali became the fourth Caliph he moved the capital from Medina to Najaf, in what is now Iraq, and it is still considered as the most holy city of the Shiites. The following six images are of the Shrine of Imam Ali and the Mosque of Kufa, both in Najaf.

The following colorful images are from Qom, in Iran, another Shia holy city.

This is the Imamzadeh Saleh Shrine, in Tehran.

This is the colorful Shrine of Imam Reza, in Mashad in Iran.

THE MODERN ARCHITECTURAL VERSION OF BEING COOL

Just as with the colorful counterculture of the Sixties, there is another modern secular version of being cool and, like the original cathedrals, it is about architecture. In the modern era of skyscrapers, it is cool to have the tallest building in the world. It is up-and-coming countries that tend to have the tallest buildings in the world today. Countries that are really secure in their place in the world don't seem to need to have the tallest building.

When I was a boy the Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world, and I have a souvenir model of it here. It was built in 1929, when America was still an up-and-coming country. First image from Google Earth.