So, erstwhile rock critic, former Ethicist for the NYTimes and kinda public intellectual Chuck Klosterman ponders how what we believe now will likely not endure. He frames his argument - Unknown Unknowns always change our perspective, our base of scientific grounding, our behavior - and then uses each chapter to apply it to something we think about. This includes pop culture stuff like Rock n’ Roll (Who will be remembered?) and books (What will Books be like?), to systems of power (Where is the US in its cycle?), economics and science (have most fundamental science discoveries been discovered?).
Ultimately the book is well-written and considered stoner insights ;). He is exploring the same concept explored in Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan. That is Epistemic Arrogance, i.e., humans believing we can know more than we can/do. Whereas Taleb uses it to explore Financial and other macro trends, Klosterman explores who will be remembered from Rock n’ Roll (he noodles it towards Chuck Berry for reasons obvious and insightful).
I really enjoyed it - Klosterman has a smart, affable tone that is overthinking and making broad connections, but articulating them in a follow-able way, and keeping his logic chain reasonable as he moves through points in his arguments. His view on politics and other issues come through, and he uses footnotes to make assertions he claims as fact, like the existence of clutch sports performance or the “truth” of some political positions.
With regards to that particular argument, no, but he provides more context for why a Chuck Berry type can win the day over an Elvis type. But that is how he approaches the rest of the book, but on more esoteric topics, too.
Klosterman touches on a question/issue I’ve been thinking about for years - why do historical events tend to turn away from the wants of those people who touched them off? A couple of examples…
Martin Luther wanted the Catholic Church reformed. He would have been horrified at a post peace of Westphalia Europe, when the leaders effectively said “You know, perhaps religion isn’t so important as to go to war over” coterminous with the birth of the scientific revolution and the beginnings of modern secular society. But this was a direct result of the Reformation.
WW1 - Monarchs decide to war with each other, but at the end of the war, three of the main actors (Russia, Austria, and Germany) lose their monarchies. Kaiser Wilhelm thought… well, he thought many things, but the one thing he never contemplated was that the idea of monarchy was on the table. But, as it turns out, it apparently was.
The Internet - a means to keep communications open during possible disruptive periods was never, ever intended to become the modern printing press, a communications device so radical it will take decades for the effects to shake themselves out (it’s not a coincidence that the Reformation began 60 years after the invention of the printing press, just like it’s not a coincidence that this age of fractured information and Trumpism occurred 60 years after the invention of Darpanet.)
So it’s interesting looking back at our times, wondering what the Big Lesson is, the one that we’re not seeing or debating, but is obviously happening. Could we eventually decide that democracy’s are inherently bad in a world of nuclear weapons? Could we be seeing the end of capitalism in its mega-corporate form? Could this resurgance of tribalism be the last gasp of ideologies that focus on the wrongness of others… or could it result in the triumph of the same?
Highly recommended, I’ll re-read it this weekend and post some more thoughts…
Nice. Yeah, it is amazing how Macro cultural changes and ongoing Technology innovations feed each other and take them to places we Humans couldn’t anticipate.
I also like how Klosterman discussed how artists that are less well known in their time can get “invested” with meaning and importance by a later generation who is not encumbered by the facts of an artist’s contemporary fame. His minor example of The Matrix is interesting: when it came out, it was simply cool. But as we have come to understand how the Wachowskis were struggling with their gender identities and ultimately both became MtF Trans, the Matrix could be “invested” with a deeper meaning about identity and how to exist in the world that had little/nothing to do with the movie’s initial popularity.
This feels similar to Philip K. Dick - his stuff was pulp when published, but our next generation has invested his explorations with far more resonance given the innovations we are seeing in our world.
This is the same thing that happened to Bach wasn’t it? When Mendholssen rediscovered him back in the 1820s, much of the fanfare came because of a growing sense of German identity and identifying a “forgotten genius” who was imbued with German attributes, regardless of whether or not poor old Johann actually had them.
That sounds about right from what I know. Bach was almost forgotten and his stuff was seen as basic, but then rediscovered and lauded for its harmonic richness and complexity.