A review by alykat_reads
But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
The concept of this book is great - and there's certain things I do wholeheartedly agree with, such as how egotistical we are to think that we have it all figured out and that people will always think this way. To quote Phoebe Buffet when talking to Ross about evolution: "Ross, could you just open your mind like this much, okay? Wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the world was flat? And up until, like, what, 50 years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open, and this, like, whole mess of crap came out. Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's a teeny tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?" In general, I agree with the sentiment. As humans we are arrogant to believe that we finally reached the end of understanding but then someone comes along and completely disrupts that; so we need to have some humility and realize that we could be wrong about so many things.
I think I would have personally enjoyed this more had the focus been more on the universe, astrophysics, and philosophy instead of pop culture and the failing US political system. While I do agree that guys who lived 250 years ago have outdated ideas *gasp*, it just seems like such a no-brainer that this section of the book just felt long; and I personally don't have a huge interest in caring about how rock-n-roll is perceived by people 300 years from now (if we even survive that long as a species..) so those parts also felt long to me. And since those parts were 75% of the book, it just wasn't really something I was invested in.
I think I would have personally enjoyed this more had the focus been more on the universe, astrophysics, and philosophy instead of pop culture and the failing US political system. While I do agree that guys who lived 250 years ago have outdated ideas *gasp*, it just seems like such a no-brainer that this section of the book just felt long; and I personally don't have a huge interest in caring about how rock-n-roll is perceived by people 300 years from now (if we even survive that long as a species..) so those parts also felt long to me. And since those parts were 75% of the book, it just wasn't really something I was invested in.