3.      Emerging adults and (post)modernism II

On the issue of facts vs. opinion emerging adults clearly side with the postmodernists.  In their lives nothing is true no matter what any more.  What they miss in life is a sure-fire way to solve problems that works for everybody.  They are faced with the fact (!) that the way they try to solve their problems often differs totally from the way the others they meet in the world try to solve theirs.  And, in the absence of objective criteria, who is to say that their way of solving problems is better than that of the others?   So, they feel that the best they can do is to decide what is best for them, and allow others to do the same for themselves.  Their motto seems to be, “You in your small corner and I in mine.”  Of all the generations in the past the emerging adults seem to be most keenly aware of the plurality and relativity of human opinions.  On that point they seem to be indistinguishable from the postmodernists.  

It will have become clear, I hope, that emerging adults have an aversion to absolutes and a penchant for tolerance.  They are typically tentative about their own opinions, while at the same time fiercely defensive of the right of others to freely voice the truth as they see it.  In this they are like the postmodernists who hold similar sentiments.  An anecdote may illustrate this characteristic more clearly.

A young friend who is enrolled in a PhD program of studies in Canadian university recently complained to me that she found it so difficult to complete her Masters thesis.  She had by now accumulated more than enough information but found it hard to compile it all into one coherent document.  I could commiserate with her because I had had similar problems when I was enrolled in a PhD program years ago.  When I asked her what she found so hard about that her answer surprised me.  She said that in order to complete her thesis she would have to state her opinion in absolute terms, as if it were the only truth.  “And that,” she said, “would make liars out of all those people who do not agree with my version of the truth.”  The reason she had trouble completing her Masters thesis was she was reluctant to do this.   

This anecdote betrays an ethical concern for others that I have also found in other emerging adults.  Quite possibly the reason why they are so uncertain about their own lives is their fear that by being more sure of who they are and what they can do, they disqualify the certainty that others may have about their identity and their capabilities.  This concern echoes nearly verbatim postmodernism’s concern about meta-narratives.

2.     Emerging adults and (post) modernism I[i]

A cultural shift from the worldview of modernism to the worldview of postmodernism has taken place in the last half century, which is in no small measure responsible for the difference between older adults and the emerging adults of today.  Older people and today’s emerging adults think and feel from out of different paradigms.  (A paradigm, like a worldview, is the way a group of people generally looks at, or thinks, or feels about the world in which they live.)  Older adults and emerging adults don’t think alike.  They process information differently and that may be what makes emerging adults such an enigma to older adults.

Older people tend to think like modernists, emerging adults like post-modernists.  For modernists there are such things as facts.  For post-modernists there are only opinions.   When faced with a problem to be solved or an issue to be settled modernists tend to use the so-called “scientific” method.  They start with an unproven opinion, or hypothesis, then they test that hypothesis against “reality” and when that hypothesis proves to be correct, i.e. corresponds to this reality, it no longer is an opinion but a fact.  And that then definitively settles the matter.  It is the truth.

This approach presupposes that we have a direct, unmediated and error-free access to reality as an objective given outside ourselves against which we can test our hunches.  Postmodernists deny that.  They say that we only have access to our interpretation of that reality.  “Reality” is always constructed and it is never more than a construct we think up.  So, to test an opinion for its truth-value never means more than comparing one opinion with another.  Some opinions may indeed be clearer or more profound and therefore have more truth-value than others, but we can never escape the circle of conjecture.   As someone recently stated, “Truth can only be spoken of within quotation marks.” 

Our present world is still very much influenced by modernism but it is haunted by postmodernism’s suspicion and critique of science’s claim to be the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not true.  Post-modernists argue that science itself is based on an unexamined paradigm, and determined by an unproven worldview.  They state that in our culture science has unfairly co-opted a place of privilege for itself by proclaiming that its story is the only true one and by relegating all other stories to the realm of fables.  In reality (!) science is just one story among many with no more claim to the truth than any other.  It is just another story masquerading as the story above all other stories.  So, for postmodernists it is imperative to deconstruct, i.e. to question the validity of any story (or meta-narrative) that claims to be the truth.

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[i] Three sources I found helpful in understanding postmodernism:

Smith, J.K.A. 2006 Who is Afraid of PostModernism? Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic.

Middleton R. & B.J. Walsh 1995 Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be. Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press.

Prickett, S. Narrative Religion and Science, Fundamentalism versus Irony 1700-1999.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press chapters 1,6

CHAPTER FIVE:

Emerging Adults and Post-Modernism

1.  Distinguishing the influence of development and of history in the lives of emerging adults

It is a longstanding maxim in developmental psychology that you cannot adequately describe the lives of a given generation without taking note of both the developmental and historical factors influencing their lives.[i]  A developmental approach classifies people in terms of the age group to which they belong or in terms of the stage of life in which they are living.  School-aged children have experiences that differ from those of middle-aged adults and therefore they behave differently.  The life experiences and behaviour of teenagers is quite different from the experiences and behaviour of seniors. In the developmental approach the criteria for distinguishing people from one another are age and stage of life.

Historical factors concern the reality that the experiences and behaviours of a group of people are codetermined by the time in history in which they were born and raised.  People who were born and raised during the Great Depression have a clearly discernable different lifestyle from those of the post-war boomers because they grew up under different historical circumstances.  The same can be said, of course, for all the other cohorts variously labeled post-boomers, hippies, yuppies, generation X, Y, Z and now the generation of emerging adults.

The fact that the current generation of emerging adults can be defined as a cohort, i.e. as an age group born and raised at the same time in history, is a reality very much worth noting.  If we were to describe them in purely developmental terms as some commentators are doing, then their behaviour could be seen as an aberration of normal adult behavior.  Then parents and other older adults could say: “They are just going through a phase, they are taking their time at it but they will grow out of it when they hit thirty.  Sooner or later they will act just like us.”  However, if their behaviour is also historically determined, then they may exhibit some of the behaviours peculiar to their age group even after they have turned thirty.

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[i] See, for example,

Kimmel, D.C. 1974 Adulthood and Aging. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.26 ff.

5.  Reverse mentoring and reciprocal renegotiation vs. socialization/acculturation[i]

Relationships in mentoring communities, even though they involve the same individuals, differ from parent-child relations and teacher-student relations in that they are more egalitarian and also include some aspects of reverse mentoring in which older adults are mentored by emerging adults.

 A common definition of the relationship between members of the older and younger generation is that it is characterized by socialization and acculturation.  In this relationship according to this definition, older people like parents and teachers introduce younger people into an existing society or culture.  The influence flows in one direction, from older to younger. 

 One may wonder whether this definition of the relationship is still valid in today’s world.  In this world parents and teachers are no longer the only ones socializing young people.  They are not even the most important socializers.  Increasingly, mass media personalities, fashion style trendsetters and recording artists have a much greater impact on the life choices and styles of emerging adults.  In addition, the influence of peers via social network technologies is pervasive in their lives. Moreover, the reach of all these influences is worldwide, cross cultural and global in its impact.    

In addition, given the fact that we live in an age of rapid social and cultural change, young people are often more aware of the direction in which the world is going than their parents or teachers.  All this argues for the proposition that mentorship should be augmented by reverse mentorship.  Young people also have things they can teach older people, for instance about the future of information technology.

So, the relationship between the older and the younger generations should be interactive, mutually supportive and mutually influencing. In short, it should be one of ongoing reciprocal renegotiation about the shape of a common culture and society.  However, no amount of talking with young people will by itself promote intergenerational concord unless we are willing to include twenty-something young people in the running of the world, either in a leadership, or in an apprenticeship role.  My long-standing motto about young people has been: “Don’t do anything for them.  Give them something to do!”

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[i] Creps, E.G. 2008 Reverse Mentoring, How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and why we should let them.  San Francisco, Ca.: Jossey-Bass.

4.  The importance of mentoring relationships and communities for emerging adults[i]

In my experience the best way to promote intergenerational communication in society is through mentoring relationships.  In such relationships an older person cultivates a close friendship relationship with a younger person to the mutual benefit of both.  A mentoring relationship is more egalitarian than a parent-child, or a teacher-student relationship.  In such relationships both learn from one another and both are changed by the other.

There is a general consensus in the literature that emerging adults benefit greatly from a mentoring relationship with a member of the older generation.  A mentorship relationship is one, which provides company for emerging adults, which shows respect and caring towards them, and which supports, challenges and inspires them in a context of ongoing dialogue with them.  Older adults in these mentoring relationships relate to emerging adults in such a way that both their strengths and their vulnerabilities are acknowledged.

Mentoring relationships between older and younger people are made possible by the fact that older and younger generations need each other and complement one another.  This is evident from parent-child relations and teacher-student relations.  Children cannot grow up unless parents nurture them and students don’t learn unless teachers teach them.  But the converse is also true: parents cannot be parents unless they have children to raise, and teachers cannot teach if there are no students to educate.  Generations complement each other and that is an important fact to note when dealing with intergenerational communication.

When enough of these relationships have been established, a society takes on the character of what Daloz-Parks calls a mentoring community.  Mentoring communities such as families, schools, places of work and churches provide much the same mentoring services to these young people in a communal fashion.  The tasks of mentoring communities toward emerging adults, mentioned in the literature are manifold, but they all appear to come down to encouraging them to grow up with foresight and vision.  In an ongoing authentic dialogue with them mentoring communities are to show hospitality to their potential of becoming.  Older adults in these communities are expected to recognize and honour the strengths of emerging adults but also to challenge them to face their problems.  Mentoring communities give emerging adults practical support and a place to belong.  Most of all they are expected to anchor the promise of their future by providing them with an inspiration for the long haul.  In the main, mentoring communities offer emerging adults security for the time being and a viable hope and vision for the years to come.    

Mentoring relationships and communities envelop emerging adults into a network of belonging in which they feel safe to wrestle with the big questions of life and in which they feel free to explore worthy dreams about their future.  In these communities they can come to terms with the paradoxical nature of human life, where things are hardly ever as they ought to be and in which they can practice some of the skills they need to function as contributing adults in the society in which they live.  

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[i] Daloz-Parks, S. 2000 Big Questions, Worthy Dreams. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

3.  Factors hampering and factors fostering intergenerational communication[i]

What does it take to bring these two worlds into a more relevant contact with one another?  In every form of interhuman contact between friends, marriage partners, parents and children and also between the generations, a creative tension exists between identity and relationship, between individuality and communality, between who we are inourselves and what we have in common with others.  What we want for ourselves at times runs counter to what we have in common with others. 

When this happens and for the sake of a relationship, we are sometimes willing to sacrifice part of our identity, to become like the others want us to be.  We are also ready at times to give up our relationship to others in the interest of safeguarding our right to self-expression.  What we need to learn is that to be secure in our self-identity we actually need to be related to others and that to be intimately related to others we need to be secure in our identity.  We need to master the difficult dance between identity and relationship.

What most often happens instead is that we communicate solely with those who think and feel like we do and we denigrate the views and life style of those who differ from us.  We consider our own chosen way of living normal and we label the lifestyle of those with whom we disagree as strange or absurd.  We neglect to consider the possibility that there may be more than one kind of normal in the world.

           

Intergenerationally this form of miscommunication revolves around the notion of “reality”.  Instead of acknowledging that the emerging adult lifestyle of their children is different from their own but equally valid, parents may tend to label their views and behaviour as unrealistic and immature.  The underlying assumption is that once they settle down and become more serious about being adults the choices they will make will also become more realistic, and like the choices their parents have made.

Instead of respecting the views and lifestyle of their parents as different but equally valid as their own, emerging adults may tend to view the way their parents live as unrealistically outdated and out of touch with the world of today.  Regardless of the truth content of these views by one generation of the other, such evaluations hamper the process of communication between the generations.

To preserve or restart intergenerational communication a change in attitude is required first of all.  This entails the mutual recognition and acceptance by the generations that the experience and outlook on life of the other, while different from one’s own, is equally valid and needs to be respected. The generations need the support of each other’s difference.  A society of only younger people or only older people is not a good society.

Furthermore, the key to fostering intergenerational communication lies in appreciating each other’s otherness.  Society is of necessity made up of different generations and age groups.  A society of only old people or only young people is neither possible nor desirable. Generational diversity is good for society.  Acknowledging and appreciating this fact enhances communication between the generations and it, in turn, strengthens the bonds of society.

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[i] Van Belle, H.A. Persisting Themata and Changing Paradigms, explorations in the history of psychology.  Pp. 6- 8. (Unpublished manuscript. For access google Harry Van Belle)

2.     Differences between emerging adults and their parents of the boomer generation[i]

There are major differences today between emerging adults and their boomer parents that transcend normal differences as a result of education.  These differences can become obstacles within intergenerational communication.  A description of few of the more obvious differences follows below.

As compared to their parents, emerging adults tend to:

·       settle down into marriage and start a family about a decade later

·       spend a longer time in school and have more education

·       be more invested and proficient in information technology

·       be future oriented and have less interest in history

·       be collaborative rather than competitive

·       be given to indirect/ironic communication styles

·       be pluralistic in their outlook on life

·       have a tinkering, cut-and paste, remix attitude toward the world

·       surf the net rather than read books

·       scroll, skim, scan for information

·       multitask and range widely rather than focus

·       value diversity, dialogue, tolerance, interaction and inclusion

·       favour unimpeded personal expression over privacy 

·       be relationship rather than task oriented

·       be committed to virtual, rather than face-to-face communication

·       spend much of their time social networking (texting, tweeting, blogging) their peers

·       send and read only instantaneous, interactive, and brief communication items, (TL;DR: Too long; Didn’t read)  

·       value personal authenticity and relational transparency in interaction with others

·       be progressive and democratic in their outlook on life

·       distrust established institutions and persons in power

Perhaps the most fundamental way in which emerging adults differ from their parents is that their lives are by and large characterized by the integrity of questioning rather than by the certainty of knowing.  They are voracious researchers.  Theirs is a probing generation.  They view testing as an authentic place to stand.  They like to live on the edge, to try new things, to walk in a space of not knowing, to believe something tentatively for the time being to see where it leads them.  They are receptive to otherness, welcoming of diversity, open to dialogue, and willing to change their minds.  They believe that all points of view are inevitably subject to revision and doubt that there are many prefabricated truths worthy to live by.  To them almost everything is (still) up for grabs.  

By way of contrast, their parents have a stake in maintaining that some things must be true no matter what.  They feel uncomfortable with so much openness and uncertainty.  It has taken them years to craft a credible way of living of their own and they feel that their life style is currently under attack.  They secretly want their children to adopt their values and their lifestyle, to accept their worldview and follow in their footsteps but see very little evidence that this is happening.  It is troubling for many parents to watch their children’s lives go in a direction that is quite different from their own. 

However, it appears that most parents keep these worries to themselves and that they generally give their children a great deal of latitude in shaping their own destiny.  Moreover, there actually is much that these children admire about the lifestyle of their parents, such as their work ethic and their willingness to sacrifice.  Notwithstanding their concerns, their parents also continue to support their children during their twenties, especially when they are still in school.

As for the way today’s emerging adults view their parents, they may disagree with elements in their lifestyle, but most of them see no need to openly voice their criticisms. Thus, the relationship between today’s emerging adults and their parents is surprisingly close and relatively free from conflict.  All this entails, however, that there is little dialogue happening between today’s emerging adults and their parents about life’s most fundamental issues.  The best they can come up with, it seems, is a peaceful co-existence between two solitudes.

It is said that today the lifestyles of the younger and the older generations differ so widely from one another that they might as well be living in different worlds.  Yet, as a matter of fact these generations populate the same planet, belong to the same society, live in each other’s homes or neighbourhoods and actually are meant to complement each other.  How are they to relate to and to communicate with one another?

1.   Normal Generational differences[i]

There always have been, and always will be differences between older and younger people.  These are differences in any culture and at any time of history that normally and necessarily exist between younger and older people because of an educational relationship between the two.   In this relationship the young learn the ways of the old but also change the culturally established ways of the old and in this way effect cultural change and renewal.

One generation introduces the next to a given culture by transmitting its experience, its expertise, its competence, and its insight into that culture to the younger generation. Without such an educational, culture-transmitting process from one generation to another, no culture can exist for long.  In addition to inculcating the next genera­tion into a given culture, the successful transmission of that culture also entails a transfer of responsibility for that culture.  Learning involves more than gaining com­petence in the ways of the old. Insofar as one is able, the learner is also expected to take respon­sibility for the ways of the old.  The success of the educational process can be gauged in terms of whether or not the behavior of the new generation manifests the ways of the old.  From this vantage point learners have rightly learned the right things to the extent that they mimic the behavior of their teachers.

However, in being educated into the ways of the old every new generation also changes the ways of the old more or less drastically.  During our period of history in particular, this process of change appears to have accelerated to such an extent that generational differences appear to be taking on the characteristics of a genera­tion chasm.  Why in learning the ways of the old do the young change the ways of the old?  Education is more than teaching new dogs old tricks.  It does not only change persons but cultures (i.e., commonly accepted ways of doing things) as well.  Education offers a culture the opportunity to change itself, to do things in a different way.  Next to providing cultural continuity, education is also a process of cultural renewal.  In this process it is the learner rather than the teacher who changes culture.

Both individual change and cultural change are products of education.  As a result of education learners change themselves to suit existing culture or change existing culture to suit themselves.  By means of this process they give their stamp of approval or critique on the culture in which they live.

Cultural renewal can be a positive result of education.  The older peo­ple become, the more they are inclined to miss-identify the way they do things with the way they ought to do things.  After decades of working at constructing a certain way of living, people can become so committed to the way things are done that they can hardly distinguish it any longer from the way things ought to be done.  Their way becomes the way to be taught and lived.

However, the next generation is not so committed to what is taught.  Because the old teach the new generation, it stands on the shoulders of the old and can thus be expected to see farther.  But also, because young people are not committed to the old generation’s way, they can stand back from its culture and see more clearly where the way things are done deviates from the way things ought to be done.  Thus, a new generation has the opportunity to be properly critical of the cultural products that are taught. It is the responsibility of each new generation to bend the ways of the old into the right direc­tion.  The task of reforming culture to make it conform to what ought to be done is intrinsic to learn­ing.

The faithful exercise of this task can renew a culture.  Whether cultural change becomes cultural renewal (in the sense of the Greek New Testament word kainos, which means "fresh, improved," rather than the word neos, which only means "different from before”) depends on whether as a result of learning the learner’s actions increase the opportunity for humanitarian function­ing in a culture.

CHAPTER FOUR

Intergeneration

 

Between the generations

In this chapter we will explore how emerging adults and previous generations differ from one another and how they can profitably communicate with one another.  Of course, one can argue that there is nothing to explore since people, whether young or old, are first and foremost human beings who all struggle with the same problems of humanity and, as a matter of fact, regularly communicate with one another about these problems.

Furthermore, one can always point to older adults who act like the emerging adults and to emerging adults who act like older adults.  So, where does one draw the line?  Developmentally speaking, when does a younger generation end and an older generation start?   The literature generally pegs the time frame for emerging adulthood between 18 and 30.   That would make age 30 the start of the older generation!  So, lots of problems exist in defining the precise boundaries of the generations. 

Yet, generational differences do exist.  Many of the parents of emerging adults find the views and behaviour of their children more than a bit puzzling and quite different from their lives when they were growing up.  On the surface then, there seems to be a decided difference, or even a disconnect between the older generations and the younger ones.  All this entails that today the generations tend to live along side one another with very little dialogue between them about life’s most fundamental issues.

8.  Irony as a lifestyle: from nothing fits to nothing should fit

Hipsters are postmodern to the core.  Postmodernism is the worldview that moves from the experience that nothing fits to the prescription that nothing should fit.  When one starts from the conviction that nothing should fit, then trying to identify even pockets of order in an otherwise absurd world or attempting to fit things together that in themselves are absurd is seen as a form of selling out.  Irony as a lifestyle is not only a recognition that nothing fits but also a lifestyle that must respond to any forms of order, be they philosophies, religions, institutions, organizations, or convictions with critique and disavowal.  

7.     Hipsters, emerging adults and mainstream North America

When asking how hipsters view themselves what strikes me is how similar they are to emerging young adults in general.  In the main, they just want to be themselves, live their own life and at their own pace.  As we saw also, like so many other young people they are deeply invested in a remix culture in response to a digital world.  But there is one characteristic about their lifestyle that is not found as much among emerging young adults and this factor, I think, explains much of their quirky, ironic, esoteric behaviour. 

The distinctiveness of the hipster lifestyle may be found in the answer to the question why they live the way they live.  What seems to motivate them, more than anything else I can think of, is their fear of being co-opted by mainstream North American culture.  All of the efforts of hipsters appear to be governed by a deeply rooted desire to exclude themselves from that mainstream culture.

What is ironic is that in all their efforts to opt out, they actually resemble mainstream North American culture more than any other contemporary youth group.[i] For, a case can be made that the strength of this culture does not lie in the originality of its ideas nor in its capacity to innovate.  Rather, its power derives from its unique ability to forage, digest and package big ideas and novel inventions originating in cultures other than their own.  So, like the lifestyle of the hipsters, North American culture does not ever produce anything new but merely remixes elements found elsewhere?   If so, then hipster culture is to be located at the centre of Mainstream America rather than at its margins.

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[i] Heath J. & A. Potter 2004 The Rebel Sell. Toronto: Harper Perennial.

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[i] Heath J. & A. Potter 2004 The Rebel Sell. Toronto: Harper Perennial.

6.  Hipster view of hipsters

These are some of the issues that arise when one consults the outsider’s view of the hipster lifestyle.  But how do hipsters view themselves?  On that score I have very little data.  What little I have comes from a series of interviews I did recently with members of the hipster colony in the Mission District of San Francisco.  These interview data represent their response to the questions I put to them.

When I asked the question: “Who or what is a hipster?”  they gave the following answers:

“Hipster” is a general term for many different kinds of young people.  It is a term that “the outside” puts on us young people.  We don’t call ourselves hipsters, but if asked point blank whether we are, we don’t mind being called that.  “Hipster” is mainly a fashion style statement, (e.g. retro clothes from thrift stores), that depicts a life style marked by irony.  Hipsterism is a deeply personal life style, i.e. each of us hipsters follows his/her own individual approach to life, a style of living that cannot be characterized as group behaviour.  We do not join groups for social action of any kind.  We tend to congregate together with other like-minded young people in groups for support, as here in the Delores Park in Mission.  But each of us just wants to be him or herself.

When asked what motivates them to live this hipster life style they did not want to disclose what is inside of them.  That belongs to each of us alone, they said.  On the other hand, they were willing to state that hipsters are mostly young people who are socially progressive and anti-mainline culture.  Furthermore, they stressed that they are serious about becoming adults, but they insist on taking time to sort things out before they settle down.  They also wanted to lay to rest the myth as if hipster young people are just a bunch of dummies.  All young people in the park here, they said, are highly educated, even over educated for the work they are doing.  Finally, they think that the reason why older people cannot understand younger people is because of a communication problem that exists between the generations due to age differences.  So, they appreciate it very much when an older person takes the time to try to understand them.

5.  Clowns or court jesters?

The whole of this deliberately creates an appearance of inauthenticity, as if nothing matters.  All of this raises the suspicion that hipsters actually “protest too much,” and I am left with a number of questions.

a)      By not even taking themselves serious are they essentially playing the class clown?  Clowns of any kind, we all know, are essentially sad individuals who wish to be accepted and respected.  But, instead of being taken seriously, judging by what is written about them, the behaviour of these hipster clowns only seems to evoke laughter and derision.

b)     Or, have they adopted the role of Court Jester to 21^St. Century North American culture?  In league with Wikileak, are they aiming to show up the hidden agenda of mainstream America?  Are they reminding us of the joke that this culture has become?  Contemporary North America has by and large become a mall-centered culture governed by the modern marketing forces of late-capitalism in which the value of everything is reduced to its price and people are treated primarily as consumers.  Is the behaviour of hipsters an artfully constructed caricature of this culture to show up this situation?

The chief aim of the hipster lifestyle appears to be to reduce to kitsch anything that is dear to mainstream culture.  That culture has by and large become governed by advertising.  The nature of advertising is essentially that it lies, or more to the point, the truth or falsehood of its statements is incidental to its purpose of selling us something.  Moreover, in mainstream North American (and also European) culture one can no longer say heartfelt, sincere things outright publicly because all genuine utterances inevitably will be stolen and repeated as sound bites or slogans in advertising and in politics.

By way of defense hipsters have taken refuge in irony.  Everything about them, the way they act, the way they look and what they say is characterized by double-speak, as if they deliberately aim to outdo advertising.  If so, by doing this and more than any other emerging adult age group, they have become poster boys and girls for Post-modernism.

4.  Hipsters as seen by outsiders

In fact, much of what is written about this way of living describes hipsters in pejorative terms.  The reaction of commentators on the hipster lifestyle is overwhelmingly critical even to the point of loathing.  What evokes such strong negative emotions on the part of these commentators is that, in their judgment, hipsters contribute nothing new or praise worthy to contemporary culture. 

Hipsters are said to have produced nothing original.  Their style is entirely made up of elements foraged from other cultural groups, with whom they do not identify in solidarity but from whom they appropriate/cannibalize only bits and pieces indiscriminately.  They then combine these elements/symbols/icons of qualitatively different/distinct/disparate styles (working class, counterculture/revolutionary, gay, upper class intellectual cultures) and juxtapose them unchanged into a mashup of their own, thereby reducing these cultural elements to kitsch, i.e. render them irrelevant and meaningless for contemporary living.

Furthermore, they are accused of being snobbish and elitist.  They consider their own mashup style of living to be superior to non-hipster mainstream styles.  They sneer at Mainstream styles and poke fun at them. Ironically they even go so far as to deride their own life style and poke fun at their tendency to poke fun at other people.  So, while reducing non-hipster styles to kitsch, they present their own style of living without conviction, as a joke, as a fashion statement only, wearing it as a costume, parading it on stage as if they are just playing a role in a comedy, rather than expressing their personal individuality.  They are in short playing Mr. and Mrs. Dress up to an audience for the effect.  They consider themselves to be beyond taking themselves seriously.  Or so outsiders tell us.  

They pretend that all of this is only a game.  They routinely tend to treat serious subjects in a playful, humorous manner.  They are especially masters at irony.  When asked, they flatly deny that they are hipsters or are living a hipster life style.  You can have two hipsters angrily accusing each other of being a hipster!  They deny that they are making a statement with their fashion style when it is obvious that they are, and they consistently profess not to be committed to anything when it is clear from the outside that they are very much invested in their style of living.  Hipsters pointedly (!) refuse to take a stand on anything or to say anything with a straight face.  They refuse to take responsibility for anything.  Furthermore, they are working too diligently at showing that they do not care to be believed. 

.    Attitudes

It will be clear that hipsters are a remix culture par excellence in the sense that they love to hunt for tidbits of Internet information and to collect them in an ever-changing hybrid aggregate of lifestyles.  Like the behaviour of emerging adults in general hipster culture betrays a Pac-Man mentality.  They do not read or look but skim, scan, scroll, and surf.   They collect, consume and regurgitate experiences.  It will also be clear that the lifestyles they assemble and reassemble are deemed to be esoteric by conventional standards. 

2.     Behaviour and interests

What probably marks them as much as anything as a visibly identifiable group is their preferred simplified mode of transportation and esoteric tastes.  They ride fixed-brake- bikes, (bikes that have no gears or brakes).  They drink cheap beer (Pabs, Blue Ribbon, or occasionally, Budweiser), and smoke cigarettes that no one else smokes anymore (Parliament, Lucky Strike or hard to get foreign cigarettes like Galouises).  They tend to have elitist tastes in film, music and literature.  They enjoy watching indie flicks or foreign films with sub-titles.  They listen to indie rock, especially to unknown local start-up bands and they enjoy reading books that no one else reads.  They spend much of their time googling for information about these topics and like to talk with fellow hipsters about their knowledge at parties.

1.   Fashion

Hipsters can be easily spotted by the way they dress.  A hipster is someone who looks like a hipster.  Their fashion style is a deliberate pastiche, a hodgepodge, jumble, collage, mash up or melting pot of style items borrowed from surrounding ethnic cultures and from fashion styles that were once popular, but now are no longer en vogue.  They reject the, in their eyes culturally ignorant, attitudes of mainstream consumers and are often seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions.  Male hipsters dress in tight fitting “skinny” jeans and t-shirts advertising obscure bands or b-movies, covered by flannel shirts or v-neck sweaters, with accessories of painted old school sneakers, thick non-prescription horn-rimmed glasses, truckers hats and big belt buckles, while sporting a conspicuously prominent mustache.  Female hipsters tend to wear retro-style dresses and racer back tank tops without bras.  In addition, both have a penchant for androgynous hairstyles like messy shag cuts and asymmetric side swiped bangs.  Finally, and in spite of misconceptions based on their aesthetic tastes and looks, hipsters tend to be educated, often have university degrees and not infrequently come from relatively well to do middle class families.