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Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills…

We laugh at Napoleon’s misguided appraisal of what women find appealing, but there are certainly guys who feel that way. I certainly know many incredibly intelligent guys with expansive repertoires of abilities, but who can never break into the popular stratum of “cool.” Today, for reasons that shall remain undisclosed, I started to wonder about the tacit cultural hierarchy of “skills” and why having certain abilities tends to push one into the realm of “cool,” even though those abilities may have nowhere near the objective utility that others do in terms of our day-to-day. For example, why is something like being able to express oneself effectively through music typically considered more desirable than say, knowing how to repair a computer? How about being able to write poetry? Why is that usually more appealing to folks than say, being able to manage one’s money effectively or repairing a car? They both involve arguably the same amount of mental capability. So where’s the rub? Why the popular fascination with tortured rock stars and not hardworking executives or research scientists? In Napoleon Dynamite terms, what “skills” make us “cool,” and why?

I think the answer lies in what, within the scope of our lives, those “skills” touch upon. First of all, we need to separate our realm of experience into two areas: Circumstances and attitudes. Circumstances are what’s swirling around us at any given moment–our workload at our job, the fact that our car broke down earlier in the week or that we’re going on vacation in three months. They encompass our actions, what we have to do in our day-to-day and the status of the ever-changing grid of relationships in which we find ourselves. Attitudes are more transient and abstract. Examples of them include how we feel about that workload at our job, or that our car broke down, or that we’re going to Bermuda next week.

The two areas of experience may seem to be directly related, i.e. good circumstances produce good attitudes, or vice versa. But they’re not. Our emotions and the viewpoints they influence are far too fickle to be constrained by a set of circumstances. For example, I might be having a particularly bad day in terms of my circumstances. Let’s say I burnt the toast in the morning, locked my keys in my car over lunch break, and got yelled at by my boss added to an overwhelming workload in the afternoon. On top of it all, let’s say my long-term goals and desires aren’t well-defined or in the midst of being realized; in other words, I’m drifting a bit, and this knowledge permeates my day. At this point it’s fair to assume that my attitude will largely reflect the circumstances of my day: I’ll be in a bad mood. But on the way home from work I might hear a great, upbeat song on the radio, have a good conversation with a friend, or just choose out of my own volition to be in a good mood. My circumstances haven’t altered; they’re still “bad.” But there’s been a disconnect–my attitude has changed for the better. The converse can certainly occur as well–I can be in the midst of stereotypically “good” circumstances and be, for whatever reason (sometimes no reason at all), in a black mood. I’ve experienced the whole gamut.

And I think the interface between the spectrum of “skills” that each of us possess and those two sides of our lives are what give rise to the notion of “cool.” If I think about those abilities I feel that if I only had I’d be “cool,” the one overwhelming constant between them is that they influence others’ attitudes above and beyond their circumstances. I can fix your car so you can get to work tomorrow and improve your circumstances and your attitude could improve indirectly as a result, but I could also write a song for you and play it for you on my guitar and hopefully positively affect your attitude in a direct manner. And so on and so forth… Think about the abilities of someone you admire and examine them in the light of which side of your life they influence. It will almost never be wholly in one camp or the other, but I’ll wager those “skills” which you find “cool” dwell predominantly in the side that impresses upon your attitude.

Do I consider myself cool? Anything but. Is this little treatise full of massive generalizations? To once again paraphrase Napoleon, “Heck yes it is.” Take it with a grain of salt. But I feel better for having got it out of my system, so if you’ve made it this far, thank you for indulging me. Cheers.