But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking about the Present as If It Were the Past

by Chuck Klosterman

Only Richard Brody of The New Yorker came close to saying this directly: “To justify his methods,” he writes, “[Simmons] tells [Teller] that the worst thing you can tell a young artist is ‘Good job,’ because self-satisfaction and complacency are the enemies of artistic progress . . . and it’s utter, despicable nonsense. There’s nothing wrong with ‘Good job,’ because a real artist won’t be gulled or lulled into self-satisfaction by it: real artists are hard on themselves, curious to learn what they don’t know and to push themselves ahead.” Socially, this is absolutely the way we have been conditioned to think. The idea that greatness is generated through pain and adversity and fear is not just an unpopular position—when applied to the lives of young people, it’s practically a criminal act. The modern goal is to remove those things from whatever extracurricular pursuit any young person is pursuing. Now, the logic behind this is hard to criticize: What is the value of a hobby that makes a kid unhappy? The response, I suppose, is that someday that kid will be an adult (and scenarios involving adversity and fear won’t be optional). But I’m not interested in the argument over whether this is positive or negative. I’m simply wondering if the overall state of society is—very slowly, and almost imperceptibly—moving toward a collective condition where team sports don’t have a place.