"Feeling cool produces lots of psychic/mental pleasure. Practicing cool is also a form of "networking." It sustains contacts with other upwardly-mobile people, who may offer you jobs, fun, and/or clues on how to morph your coolness to stay ahead of the rabble. Lather, rinse, repeat..."
Academicians can be quite honest about this. The year before I went on the job market, NOBODY from U. C. Berkeley got a job. The Profs heading the placement committee were Stephen Greenblatt and another pomo guy whose name I forget. When asked by the distressed grad students how a top-notch English department could fail to place any students, the profs pulled on their silk ties, cleared their throats, and said that the problem was that the candidates had not bee "sexy enough." (They meant theory sexy, not sexually sexy.) Nobody objected to this; nobody said a word.
Joanna