What does "cool" and "beauty" have to do with our lives?

Some time ago, I saw an article "Like = Familiar+Surprise" published by physicist Wan Weigang in his charging column "Elite Day Class". The article talks about an article published in Atlantic Monthly entitled "What can make things cool". The word "cool" has a long history, probably dating back to the last century.

Cool: Chinese means extreme and profound, such as torture, extreme heat, similarity and so on. Compared with Cool in English, "cool" in Chinese is much stronger in degree. Cool in English is often used by very young people and even children, and it is an informal but quite high-frequency usage. When they want to express something very advanced, great or great, they will say, "That's cool." . The explanation of this word in Ying Ying's dictionary can be summed up in this sentence: It looks very advanced, although the interface is not very friendly. First of all, it has the meaning of praising something that looks more advanced; At the same time, it means "unfriendly" and not "approachable". In a fashionable phrase, it is "high cold". There is a distance and gap between it and you, so it is not easy to get close. At the same time, you are attracted by it and can't help but want to get close. This is a curiosity-seeking mentality similar to "taboo is temptation". What makes us feel cool must have some attractive elements and some repulsive elements for us. Let's use a brand example to see what is cool.

Maybe you are dismissive of him, but in this entertainment circle where everyone is trying to maintain a perfect image and create a model couple, Mr. Chen is an alternative. Most people remember him only for his photography skills, not for his acting skills. When his privacy was exposed, he had to quit the entertainment circle. When he took $2.5 million from his father to make street clothes in the United States, he was sarcastically said by his father, "This money is also a waste, so you will lose." . However, he makes clothes in the way of treating art, and he knows the story behind every dress. CLOT, a clothing brand, was also recognized by the market in the following years. In the project of 3 125c in LA, there are no more than 75 T-shirts with traceable serial numbers. Moreover, every article will not be reproduced. In recent years, CLOT also has regular cross-border cooperation with some well-known brands, such as Nike and Levi's. CLOT's most classic yellow thorn items cost tens of thousands, and second-hand ones also sell thousands. We analyze CLOT from two elements of "cool": the attractive elements are its novel style and rare quantity; Of course, the high price makes most consumers flinch. Of course, Mr. Chen's personal image label also has these two elements.

When we talk about cool, we often think of another state that also has these two elements, that is "beauty". Good things often have both attractive and disgusting sides. Therefore, beauty is usually associated with "distance". We often hear the phrase "distance produces beauty". I looked it up on the Internet, and it was the British aesthete Bloch who first put forward this statement. He argues that if a thing or a person is beautiful, there must be a distance between it and you, at least you will feel a certain distance (gap).

About beauty, there is another aesthetician named Gao Ertai in China. In his definition of beauty, he thinks that beauty is a symbol of freedom and also a symbol of hard work. What is freedom? Freedom means fewer restrictions than usual. The reduction of restrictions is the result of personal efforts. The process of breaking free from bondage and restriction is called freedom, and freedom is not simple willfulness. While chatting with a good friend on the Internet, the author suddenly created a theory called "moving space". It can be said that freedom means having enough space for activities. For the vast majority of people, more precisely, the vast majority of adults in China, their mobility space is actually very limited. Taking work as an example, white-collar office workers are generally called "men/women in the cubicle", which is not so pleasing, but it is still quite realistic. Work in a cubicle and get paid accordingly. In order to have the funds to survive, we must continue to spend time and energy in the cubicle. With the accumulation of work experience and the same working years, there is a chance (not necessarily) to get higher returns. At this time, the room is limited to the cubicle. If you want to expand your space, you have to face competition, and of course there are risks. Either participate in some degree of competition (such as starting a business), or exchange some controllable resources for more activity space. No matter how to further expand the space, it must be the result of some kind of effort, that is, the result of participating in competition or resource exchange. At least compared with the cubicle, it is also a state that looks more beautiful. This is also the reason why we often hear "Man struggles upwards" and "The heights are too cold". The so-called "high" is the distance from the present stage and represents a higher degree of freedom. At the same time, it means getting this higher degree of freedom. Obtaining this freedom by subjective efforts is called "beauty", otherwise it will be negatively evaluated by public opinion. But from the sense, "high place" is really beautiful, otherwise people will not go to high places.

The difference between "cool" and "beauty" is that the former emphasizes the elements of exclusion, while the latter emphasizes the elements of attraction.

There are two important viewpoints in mainstream aesthetics. The first view holds that beauty exists objectively. In other words, a thing is beautiful because it contains a set of fixed data or conforms to a certain law. For example, the golden section, most things that meet the golden ratio are beautiful, and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Vitruvian Man are typical examples. Even technical analysts in the stock market will use the golden section line and Gann angle line to make trading decisions. The second view holds that beauty is a form of interaction. For example, painting is the interaction between painters and canvas pigments, while classical music is the interaction between fingers and strings. Of course, this must be the interaction between the audience and the object to be appreciated. Our senses collect some kind of signal or data, match it with the data in the brain, and then draw a "beautiful" conclusion, so it is also an interaction.

Of course, another conclusion can be drawn from the attraction and repulsion elements of "beauty" (including "cool" of course) and the distance attribute: beauty is a choice, and we choose the narrow door.

The concept of "narrow door" is mentioned in the New Testament. Al Pacino said this in the last paragraph of the movie "The Smell of Women":

The so-called "difficulty" is actually a subjective feeling and judgment, that is, feeling or judging that doing difficult things will inevitably encounter more restrictions than doing simple things. This restriction may come from the physical level or psychological level. Then, doing difficult things means meeting and trying to lift the restrictions, whether they come from the physical or psychological level. If you don't encounter any restrictions, you can't think it is a difficult thing.

Why "take the narrow door"? Because the road will get wider and wider. When choosing a narrow door, you will inevitably encounter restrictions. To continue, we must break through the restrictions. Then, if you want to continue walking after entering the narrow door, you must remove more restrictions than individuals who have not chosen the narrow door. Compared with an individual, the further you go, the more restrictions you remove, which means that the stronger your ability, the greater the room for mobility. Finally, the road gets wider and wider. People who don't choose narrow doors always do those simple things. Of course, there are few restrictions in this process. As time goes by, the restrictions are still there, never give up and make room, that's all.

Beauty is a choice, choose a narrow door. After entering the narrow door, you need to work hard to eliminate the restrictions you encounter. The restrictions have been lifted, and the bigger the room, the wider the road and the more freedom. So, in life, how to choose a narrow door?

Regardless of the physical level or the profound level, the individual's state has been swinging back and forth in three areas. The core layer is the comfort zone, the layer outside the comfort zone is called the learning zone, and the layer outside the learning zone is called the anxiety zone.

When we are in the comfort zone, there is no limit. When we are in the anxiety zone, we will feel at a loss because there are restrictions everywhere. When we are in the study room, we will have a certain degree of comfort and a certain degree of restrictions, which are within the acceptable range of individuals. Individuals can try to get rid of restrictions. Once the restrictions are lifted, the comfort zone will be expanded and the individual's freedom will be greater.

In game design, if the difficulty of each level is very low, then the player will give up the game because the game is not challenging; If the first level is an impossible task for the player, then the player will also give up the game to avoid sustained damage to his self-esteem. Generally speaking, the next level will be more difficult than the present level, so each level has certain challenges. At the same time, in the process of customs clearance or mission, killing monsters and Boss will get experience rewards. In this way, the process of improving ability is quantified and visualized. The more energy players put into the game, the less likely they are to give up the game.

In life, choosing a narrow door means going out of the comfort zone, entering the study zone and constantly meeting challenges, but we should pay attention to: try not to enter the panic zone. Many people actually have an idea that has nothing to do with themselves. When you meet something that looks troublesome, just say it has nothing to do with me. A proverb expresses this idea well: if you do more, you commit more, if you do less, you commit less, and you don't do well. Many times, we miss it because we think it has nothing to do with us; Many times, we just convince ourselves to avoid difficulties, which has nothing to do with us. Everyone generally has this experience: many things are really not our own business, maybe others asked us to help, and we agreed. Finally solved the problem through hard work. Although I didn't think it was useful at that time, I didn't know that one day, we would use our strategy to solve other people's problems to solve our very difficult problems. That's what the ancients meant when they said "no donation". .

The world is changing, so is your comfort zone. If you don't actively expand the comfort zone and take the narrow door, you can only be forced into the narrow door and may suffocate.