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

by Chuck Klosterman

We live in an age where virtually no content is lost and virtually all content is shared. The sheer amount of information about every current idea makes those concepts difficult to contradict, particularly in a framework where public consensus has become the ultimate arbiter of validity.

In other words, we’re starting to behave as if we’ve reached the end of human knowledge. And while that notion is undoubtedly false, the sensation of certitude it generates is paralyzing.

It’s impossible to understand the world of today until today has become tomorrow.

A book becomes popular because of its text, but it’s the subtext that makes it live forever.

The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget. And people will eventually do that to us, too.

History is defined by people who don’t really understand what they are defining.

To matter forever, you need to matter to those who don’t care. And if that strikes you as sad, be sad.

Conflicting conceptions of “reality” have no impact on reality. And this does not apply exclusively to conspiracy theorists. It applies to everyone, all the time.

The ultimate failure of the United States will probably not derive from the problems we see or the conflicts we wage. It will more likely derive from our uncompromising belief in the things we consider unimpeachable and idealized and beautiful. Because every strength is a weakness, if given enough time.

If a problem is irreversible, is there still an ethical obligation to try to reverse it?