Light On Dark Water

The Origins of Occupy Wall Street

In The New Yorker, by far the most fascinating thing I've read about OWS. Speaking of the movement a few days ago, I said "After all,  if you want people to buy your product, you have to advertise." And I thought I was pointing out an irony. Not at all: it was from the very beginning very deliberately a marketing effort. 

“It’s easy to generate cool if you have the bucks, the celebrities, the right ideas, the right slogans,” he says. “You can throw ideas into the culture that then have a life of their own.”

"Cool" has had a lot more to do with the would-be revolutionary youth movements of post-World-War-II U.S. and Europe than is generally recognized. 

Maclin Horton

3 responses to “The Origins of Occupy Wall Street”

  1. ex pat

    ‘Generate cool’ is such a perfect expression for the way in which moral, political and social judgements are formed.

    Reply
  2. Mac

    One really can’t be too vigilant about it in one’s own thinking. “Cool” is really another word for “fashionable,” and I think fashion is underestimated as an influence among intellectuals. What’s that line from Orwell or somebody about the harm done by “fear of seeming insufficiently progressive”? I think it’s really broader than that–fear of seeming unfashionable/uncool.

    Reply
  3. Louise

    ‘Generate cool’ is such a perfect expression for the way in which moral, political and social judgements are formed.
    Indeed.
    One really can’t be too vigilant about it in one’s own thinking.
    I agree.

    Reply

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