Rather, it is that we can improve our current views by looking at them as if we were in the distant future, looking back. And people will eventually do that to us.”Įvaluation: The ultimate lesson of the book is not to despair over the fact that our current perceptions about many important issues eventually may be seen as wrong. The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget.

“History is a creative process (or as Napoleon Bonaparte once said, ‘A set of lies agreed upon’). This point has even greater importance lately, with influential “bots” actually driving the political discourse. Mostly, he just wants you to think about your preferences, instead of accepting them blindly, and think about how those preferences may have been shaped.

Similar points could be made with a lot of academic evidence backing them up, but then not as many people would read the book. Nevertheless, in spite of lapses in gravitas, Klosterman has a breezy, conversational style that is appealing. This is certainly an area of thought worth pondering, but Klosterman’s interest quickly turns from the important, like gravity, and the “sacrosanct,” like the Constitution, to the “who cares” realm: best writers, best architects, tv shows, how rock music has superseded marching music in popular culture, the centrality of football as a sport. Some ideas are so accepted and internalized, he writes, that “we’re not even in a position to question their fallibility.” But what if you do question them? Will they stay that way? Didn’t we used to think that stars hung in the heavens like lamps and the sun revolved around the earth? In each chapter, Klosterman applies to different topics “Klosterman’s Razor” i.e., “the philosophical belief that the best hypothesis is the one that reflexively accepts its potential wrongness to begin with.” He even questions gravity, which we now deem indisputable enough to be referred to as a “law” of physics. Klosterman asks us to reexamine a number of concepts that seem universally accepted. As an example of changing opinions, Klosterman cites the critical evaluation of Moby Dick, a book that was virtually ignored for several decades after its publication, but is much revered today, particularly by people who haven’t read it.Ī basic thesis of this book is that since perceptions change all the time, it might be helpful to think about our current perceptions in different ways, turning them on their heads, so to speak. But it is exceedingly difficult to predict in what way those perceptions will differ.

Chances are good that when people look back at the early 21st century 150 years from now their perceptions and characterizations of the present time will be quite different from our own.

Book review the chuck klosterman