Other ages of high thought, high art, and high religion have of course believed the same about themselves. For purposes of brief discussion, I throw up a thumbnail definition of hip as the ability to do clever riffs on cultural artifacts, a kind of intellectual or artistic or scientific or religious omphaloskepsis. Self-irony, if you will. Think Robin Williams before he sold out to Hollywood. Think Oscar Wilde before being devoured by English hypocrisy.
Every age is hip to some degree, though some much less so than others.
It depends on how far the net is cast and how wide the mesh. For example, the medieval scholastics had a tiny net, with wide mesh, thrown near to shore. The Renaissance net was much bigger, with a finer mesh, and was thrown much farther. The catch was correspondingly richer and more varied, more stimulating. But even that net eventually proved boring, with repeated similar hauls, leading to the excesses of mannerism, the baroque, and the rococo .