Pre-Order BUT WHAT IF WE'RE WRONG? here (Official release on June 7, 2016)
Other books by Chuck Klosterman
To matter forever, you need to matter to those who don't care. And if that strikes you as sad, be sad.
The great George Orwell once said : "Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." The scope of his wisdom and foresight is still misunderstood today. Scroll through your Facebook newsfeed for a couple minutes and you'll find all your friends berating older generations for being racist or whatever and ridiculing younger people's taste in music. Our generation, like every generation that came before, believes it has figured out the important stuff about everything.
So what are future generations going to think when looking back on our culture? I always thought I was the only person to ever wonder about such things, but it turned out pop culture guru and patron saint of this blog Chuck Klosterman wrote an entire book about the idea called: But What if We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present as if it Were the Past which will be released in June. If anyone has the ability to map out what our culture would look like objectively in the distant future, it's him. So, what if we're wrong about everything?
But What if We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present as if it Were the Past is not a collection of essays with an overarching theme and emerging conclusion. It's an investigation in the style of Killing Yourself to Live, structured around interviews with experts in the different fields Chuck Klosterman is scrutinizing. For example, the first notion he tests is our understanding of gravity which he seeks the input of theoretical physicist Brian Greene on. Turns out the common perception of gravity is not exactly up to date and that physicists are currently debating whether it is a phenomenon in itself or an emergent force, the symptom of something else.
That introduction serves as a baseline for the rest of the book. Whatever we take for granted is very much up for debate. Klosterman uses a lot of concept I really love to support his point: naive realism. The idea that the information available to us is all the information there is. The first half of But What if We're Wrong? is a little underwhelming because it doesn't really offer new ideas. Literature and especially music are in Chuck Klosterman's comfort zone and the ambition of finding the single most defining artists of our generation seems impossible to achieve. Turns out it was merely a warm-up for what lied ahead.
When I see a quote from Plato that condescendingly classifies democracy as "charming" and suggests democracy dispenses "a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike," my knee-jerk reaction is to see this as troubling and unenlightened. But Plato is merely arguing that democracy is a nice idea that tries to impose the fantasy of fairness upon and organically unfair social order. I'm not sure how anyone could disagree with that, myself included. But if you're really into the idea of democracy, this is something you reject out of hand.
But What if We're Wrong? kicks into gear when Chuck Klosterman starts questioning contemporary science and politics. There's a reason for that shift in tempo. We have deferred as a society the task of knowing the important stuff to these two fields. Not only we expect them to have all the answers we seek, but scientists and politicians are also convinced their answers are right. One of the best and most Klostermanesque about this book is an interview with revered pop culture figure Neil DeGrasse Tyson that doesn't seem to go over so well. I don't know what happened there or if Tyson is fairly portrayed * but his answers Klosterman's questions came off as surprisingly narrow-minded. It's going to be divisive.
Faithful to himself, Chuck Klosterman kept his best material for the end of the book where he examines the merits of American culture and politics, from the declaration of independence to contemporary foreign policy. Klosterman notably investigates the pertinence of the constitutions in our day and age and the place it takes in our society, which he cleverly juxtaposed to a history of presidential revisionism. He notably uses Ronald Reagan for example, who's regime is responsible for lots of issues American society faces today. It's brilliant, courageous and it will make the internet explode at some point because it's being released during the American presidential campaign.
But What if We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present as if it Were the Past definitely is some of the boldest material Chuck Klosterman has written in his career. It's also some of the more "serious" and challenging material he's ever written. He's still a blast to read. Some parts are going to anger a lot of people. I don't think he says anything that's going to jeopardize his status. He doesn't say neurotic, outlandish stuff like "murder is the objective solution to everything" for example. Everyone is entitled to their political opinions, but I'm pretty sure Klosterman's going to take heat for his inquisitive and unwavering examination of our generation because we sincerely believe that we are the heroes of our story and his hypothesis is that it's not for us to decide.
BADASS
* I assume so. I also assume that Tyson, like most public figures, has a carefully groomed public image and that Klosterman might've caught him off guard. Not that he's not allowed to be a little arrogant. It would only make him more human and lovable.
