Joined at the hip.

Last night I described hipsters to my parents. We live in a small town, and my parents don't get out much, but eventually they got the picture. I told them about the tight jeans and striped shirts, the moustaches that somehow detract from the wearers' masculinity rather than supplementing it, the reliance on mom and dad for money, the artsy nonsense that passes for deep or meaningful, all the stereotypes and signs of a true hipster.

Two things struck me.

Thing One: It wasn't just hipsters I had to describe; my parents needed the whole backstory. What is indie music? they wanted to know, so I told them. I told them how shopping at Goodwill is a mark of coolness, not a reflection of good money management skills. Or the way hipsters swill PBR in cans because a lower-class ethos is supposed to be way more cool than their parents' gentrified suburban attitudes, despite the fact that upper-middle-class or wealthy mom and dad foot the bill for everything, including the Goodwill hoodies and the cheap PBR.

The most ironic element of my parents' lack of knowledge about hipsters is that we live in Oregon, one of the hipster-est states in the Union. Granted, ours is a farming and logging community where plenty of people still fly Confederate flags from their jacked-up pickup trucks, but an Oregonian who can't define "hipster" is like an Eskimo who has no concept of snow. My folks' ignorance kind of made me happy, though.

Thing Two: Our culture isn't as homogeneous as many claim. Which is really the more important of the two observations. It's taken for granted by many that every movement within American society is known by all, that media disseminates the same information to everybody and levels the field, creating a monolithic society of similar people. That's probably true to some extent, but guess what? if you conscientiously reject the media most Americans think they can't live without, you'll escape the faceless sameness to which they all seem doomed.

I'm not making an argument for rugged individualism here. I'm just saying that Christians are called to look, act and think differently than other people, and that not immersing oneself in the broader popular culture is a significant step toward that goal. Knowing about hipsters certainly doesn't make you sinful, but it might be easier to avoid certain worldly attitudes if you don't.

Not knowing about them probably isn't the key; it's not caring. If a bunch of young people with poor hygiene and too much of mom and dad's money want to strut around self-importantly and be elitist, let 'em. If they aren't Christians, they need to hear the Gospel; if they are, they need to be told that identity or image isn't their primary concern, the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ are the only important things.

I'm glad my parents aren't hip to the ways of the hipster. I'm also glad they devoted themselves to teaching me what's important and what's not. I hope it's a lesson they never stop teaching, and that I never stop learning. I also hope I never see my dad in skinny jeans.