22
Popular Culture Review
A quarter of a century in American culture is the blink of a
cosmic eye. The move from George Michael to dubstep is an
infinitesimal border crossing. Because the true change is the change from
being to non-being—the final change, the real change, the move from
life to death. This is a change even more terrifying than the great script
for Die Hard 1 morphing into the terrible script for Die Hard 5. Dying is
hard. But it is all part of the performance. This is the ultimate reality of
change, the telos toward which it all points. And we try to hold on, find
something that is permanent, and search for a forever. But those forevers
are illusion. And so we conclude as everything must conclude. With a
final change that ends all change. It is the story of the largest context for
change there is: the story of the death of the cosmos.
You will die. Everyone you love and everyone who loves you
will die. You know that this is true, though, if you are like most people,
you try not to think about it too much. To dwell on this truth is to live at
the edge of the abyss—^the point where metaphysics and values seem to
come together and be destroyed simultaneously. It is a tall order to
accept—^truly to accept—^that one is going to die. But the fact of the
matter is that this is change on a small scale. Our entire species, too, will
die. We humans have had a relatively good run. Most