But What If We're Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman

“Full of intelligence and insights, as the author gleefully turns ideas upside down to better understand them. . . Replete with lots of nifty, whimsical footnotes, this clever, speculative book challenges our beliefs with jocularity and perspicacity.” —Kirkus (starred review) “Klosterman’s trademark humor and unique curiosity propel the reader through the book. He remains one of the most insightful critics of pop culture writing today and this is his most thought-provoking and memorable book yet.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) The tremendously well-received New York Times bestseller by cultural critic Chuck Klosterman, exploring the possibility that our currently held beliefs and assumptions about the world will eventually be proven wrong—now in paperback. But What If We're Wrong? is a book of original, reported, interconnected pieces, which speculate on the likelihood that many universally accepted, deeply ingrained cultural and scientific beliefs will someday seem absurd. Covering a spectrum of objective and subjective topics, the book attempts to visualize present-day society the way it will be viewed in a distant future. Klosterman cites original interviews with a wide variety of thinkers and experts—including George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Alex Ross, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Dan Carlin, Nick Bostrom, and Richard Linklater. Klosterman asks straightforward questions that are profound in their simplicity, and the answers he explores and integrates with his own analysis generate the most thought-provoking and propulsive book of his career.

I typically describe Klosterman as the authorial equivalent of “fridge logic” - really interesting stuff in the moment that starts to logarithmically decay the moment you close the book until it settles in around 50 percent of where it started from. But, given that Klosterman often succeeds in nimbly managing previously less-explored areas of your mind, this is not at all a bad thing.

BWWW is a series of thought experiments that attempts to examine modern life through the same lens we view the distant past: What is likely to survive, what artist or author will emerge to represent his or her medium as Platonic ideal (for example, were we in Ancient Greece Klosterman might be telling you that this Plato guy that no one's heard of [at the time] might make it big because he's not as popular now).

As thought experiments, they're mostly interesting but even more so than traditional futurology, it suffers by virtue of being unprovable and contrarian. I don't even think most of them are wrong - all at the very least have inner threads of logic that seem more or less resilient when you tug at them. But my mind can only be so elastic, and building up one brain-stretcher upon another leaves me weary, and accepting of arguments if only to prevent defeat by them - not out of any real consideration or judgment.

Then again, I'm not sure the specific arguments were the point, anyway. The main takeaway seems to center around the idea of being open to new ideas - not in the traditional sense of “maybe I should do something different” but “maybe ideas or formulations I possess that are central to my understanding of reality might be completely wrong.” The point is not to run screaming in the streets, tearing out your hair and warning everyone you meet of their inevitable doom. It's to leave space in the your mind (and in the world) for possibility, to not let things go unexamined simply because they're familiar or widely accepted. Interrogate reality, so that you might make sure there's no unreality simply cloaking itself in the veil of normality.

But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong, too.

i can't believe i'm saying this about a book which had an entire section on american foodtball but. i loved this i adored this i ate this up

there's something about how klosterman writes that is so engrossing and bingeable for me. these books FLY by. i'm like how was this 10hrs. i want to read it again. i felt the exact same way about the nineties ... i need to read even more of his stuff lol. i don't know if this is for EVERYONE but i just feel so connected to klosterman's brain like wtf dude

“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.”