Author William Deresiewicz at the July 2012 CreativeMornings/Portland.

Ever since Deresiewicz moved from Connecticut to Portland, he’s been fascinated by and thinking about Millennial culture. In 2011, he wrote “Generation Sell”, an op-ed for The New York Times, as a reflection on the social form this post-emotional generation has begun to embody.

You need to watch the entire video—it’s fascinating. Here’s a nice primer:

[Paraphrasing Creative Mornings organizer Tsili Pines] Artists and salespeople are fundamentally different kinds of people. It’s the nature of being an artist to be consumed always with doubt. That’s what fuels your exploration. And it’s the nature of being a salesperson to suppress all doubt and to speak in exclamation points. Now those functions have to coexist in the same person.