An aside: I am one of the ancients, myself, but I can still remember something of that fear; wanting to prove I was smart, fit to participate, things like this. Nervous that I might not really be as worthy as I hoped, no matter how hard I worked. A common paradox, I think: it’s a strange thing, but as an ancient I feel far less informed, less well-read than I did at eighteen, when I thought it was such a big deal to have read (a tiny bit of) Dostoevsky (in English.) Maybe this is partly a question of making friends with your own inescapable ignorance? So that you go in the library and can fully, absolutely realize that you’re only ever going to absorb the tiniest particle of what there is. I can remember, too, how liberating it was to be able to admit freely and even with pleasure, “I don’t know!” and to view saying so as an opportunity to learn something, rather than as an admission of inferiority. Ignorance is Liberty! Haha, God, now I sound like Orwell, whatever.

The other and equally good reason for encouraging the hipsters is that bohemian values of inventiveness and not-so-much-materialism are particularly helpful to have just now in the U.S. Because there has been way too much materialism over the last fifty years, new ways of looking at “success” and so on are badly needed. It would be great if, instead of excoriating the hipsters, people took a serious look at how they like to live, and maybe tried some of the things they like, for example riding a bicycle instead of driving a fancy car, or trying a vegan diet, or learning to play music. If we could broaden the idea of excellence to include more than wealth and power-to include cultural fluency, invention and new experiences—it could be such a good thing.

So obviously, linking to The Awl puts me in either the hipster or poseur category, and I don’t know which. But in either case, I am (like the author) one of the ancients, so it really doesn’t matter.