One of the defining qualities of a hipster is the cutting through the crap. The historical root of this is from the Beatnik era. To understand the revolution of the Beatnik you have to picture the grayness of the homogenous culture of the 1950s. Repression of the complications of life was at an all time high. The whiteness of the popular cultural beliefs and the darkness of all that was repressed made a very gray society. This may give a better appreciation for the color the beatniks brought to the culture of America. They did it with poetry, grunge nonconsumeristic style, love of black American music, and the telling of truth. They named the repressed demons. When the demons come to the light they become angels of inspiration, compassion, and understanding.

Even today this struggle continues of what kind of America we want to live in; the counterculture- integrated, interracial, tattoo, piercings, crazy cloths, and complicated or a 1950s America- suburban, clean cut, wholesome, segregated, and simple minded. So here we are divided America. Each side thinks America will be great when more people think like them. Now is time to get a grasp on what being hip really is.

It is time to move beyond wearing the tie-dye or tattooing your face or smoking pot. Hipness is about mind expansion. We must give up the paradigm of the 1950s for good. We are never going to fit in that box again. You can create it in gated communities, church groups, and government agencies but over all American culture is beyond that. This is the truth. By speaking the truth we dissipate lies. We don’t have to argue with relatives at Christmas dinner gatherings. We just need to say the truth and then be quiet. The truth will eat away at the lies.

Truth gives you a headache at first but eventually you will be miserable knowing too much. Truth is truth hurts. It’s not fun but it is sure funny. You laugh a lot more.

Being honest doesn’t mean that you tell just your one-sided truth. It means being courageous when looking at your self. When you can be compassionate with your own hidden foibles, it opens you to listening to others confessions of weakness and confusion. You stop judging and begin to understand, deeply understand another’s struggles. You know this within yourself. Hence when you are truly hip you understand institutional racism, deceitful politics, and complicated personnel relationships. These things don’t scare you anymore because you have accepted them as part of humanities struggles therefore your mind is as colorful and diverse as the orange mandala tee shirt and purple pants you wear.

Being Ok with complexity is also understanding the conservative American although they will never understand you.  Yes we see the desire for simplicity…mowed trim lawn with square bushes, white square house with white picket fence, church groups on Sunday, blue jeans with ball cap, cheep big box stores, artificially flavored apple pie. It’s so clean. A nice uncomplicated surface but we all know that people are more complicated than that. There is a cracks in the facade and any hipster knows there is a lot more underneath. So the Hipsters don’t trust the Squares because they know they are deluded and the Squares are confounded and scared of the Hipsters because they can’t see their own delutions.

Where will it all lead. Heck if I know but seems to me that if the truth were told, it is only a matter of time before the truth will prevail.