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

The cultural recession of rock is intertwined with its increased cultural absorption, which seems backward. But this is a product of its design.

cultural recession of rock and the cultural ascension of hip-hop.

In order to overcome such impossible odds and defeat the unrelenting ravages of time, the book has to offer more. It has to offer a window into a world that can no longer be accessed, insulated by a sense that this particular work is the best way to do so. It must do what Vonnegut requests—reflect reality. And this is done by writing about the thin

In Western culture, pretty much everything is understood through the process of storytelling, often to the detriment of reality.

Right now, rock music still projects the illusion of a universe containing multitudes. But it won’t seem that way in three hundred years, because nothing in the culture ever does. It will eventually be explained by one artist.

There is no intellectual room for the third rail, even if that rail is probably closer to what most people quietly assume: that this is happening, but we’re slightly overestimating—or dramatically underestimating—the real consequence.

Consumed today, Beowulf is mostly about what isn’t there. And that will be the same for whatever 2016 text survives into 3016.

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.

History is defined by people who don’t really

“Someone like Mozart or Bach remains relevant because they either contradict or embody the idea of the hero’s