Who decides what is in?
In our current age of wall to wall You Tubers, bloggers and all sorts of folks expressing ideas in a personal way, it is not easy to tell the difference between bourgeois and bohemian values. Does this mean we’ve arrived in an era where these terms of reference are no longer as relevant as they used to be? Or does it mean that the bourgeois impulse within most cultures has succeeded in “having its cake and eating it”?
For a very long time, being regarded as “bourgie” was equivalent to being seen to be uncool. It is obvious that most intelligent people don’t regard that as a good look and everyone is mindful of taking care of self esteem. Why would anyone want to wake up in the morning and accept that there are others who might have more of a finger on the pulse of things than one’s self?
Most people with access to online information have opportunities to constantly assess and reassess their values and worldviews, in ways that only those from privileged backgrounds would have done in the past. We can morph into a wide variety of physical and psychological shapes and forms nowadays (within reason, of course).
Do labels such as “bourgie” or “bohemian” even matter anymore? Can we even trust any information that we come across in the media? What are these categories useful for?
Are new terms of reference needed for making choices in the marketplace of ideas?
