Here we are just past the crest of The Oil Age. It'll have been about 180 years when the book is written by a person who isn't even born yet. It's been a hell of a ride, producing the most new technology, the most music and art and new art forms, the biggest boost (for some) in standard of living, the most people, the most poisons, the biggest profits, the most dangerous weapons and the most efficient death and destruction of any period in our history.

When compared to other periods, The Oil Age has produced transformations at a dizzying speed. You barely got used to motorized ground transportation, and you're flying off to some new job in a modern city, later losing that job to someone half your age who knows not so much but who'll do the gig for one third your pay, and who then loses their job to a person in a faraway land where the pay is one twentieth what it is here. And you look around at the toxic dump that used to be the woods, and the crime and suffering, the almost pointlessness of things and Oh, for that happy little tire swing and walking to school barefoot.

Hipsters have found a way not merely to survive all of this, but to actually thrive on it. Like surfers, hipsters are always riding that wave. Ideally, they're a bit ahead of it, but not too far ahead so that they fall off and look stupid and greenhorn. Hipsterism is a state of mind wherein certain newest is the bestest, and you don't want to savor the moment too long, else you'll get stale with it, develop a skin like pudding, and be left behind by others who know that the secret to life in Modern Times is constant disposability, and that it's best being the one who disposes, not the one who is disposed of.

Who can blame them? Every period has its fashion sense, born of an understanding of and reaction to the changes and reality of that time. The reality and more, the underlying meaning. The subtext of the ongoing human activity. One of the most significant subtextual meanings of The Oil Age is: "Out with the old, in with the new!" at an ever-faster, ever more inclusive rate. Rather than be the old junk that gets tossed, hipsters seek to be the ones who do the tossing, even to define what should be tossed, when possible, and to make sure they're on the right side of the street when the garbage truck huffs by.

One problem with wanting to be always on the cutting edge of the Disposal Movement is that reality has a way of changing the game on us, and has the ultimate say on what is necessary and what is outmoded.

The time will come when computers, sports cars and hot nightspots will lie still for lack of power and support systems, and the Hot New Thing will be feeding yourself and not getting killed. The idea of "being hip" will seem as peculiar and as bamboozlingly irrelevant as an electric space heater in downtown Baghdad.

So here may be an opportunity for those who aspire to be not merely hip about things that don't have lasting value, but to be Visionary in a way that can transcend what will probably be a difficult time in the near future. It will be necessary to focus less on the subtext of the times, and more on what's creating it. To decide to make fundamental changes which won't be fun in current language. To tangle with unforgiving circumstances in which there is no "Undo." To decide on a way of living not based on snotty indifference to things out of style. Not to wage a constant battle against unbearable ennui. But to try to form something new based on being constructive, creative, adaptable, sustainable and harmonious.

Hipsterism has had its run. Time to set it out for trash collection, along with all the other things which are so last week. --(C) 2007 John A. Johnson