Are We There Yet?

Why do we say that great thinkers like Nietsche were "ahead of their time"? Isn't it more accurate to say our interest in them is reactionary? Would we even bother with Fred if it hadn't been for two world wars? Or, even better, would we turn to him if we didn't first think we could still make a go of it without acknowledging how truly corrupt our natural condition is?

In American society—or maybe it's more generally western—we think we can fashion some kind of Eden. We think we can think without distortion. We think at base everything will be alright. Our optimism is founded on this falsehood of "the enduring human spirit". Of course, history constantly frustrates this delusion, so the "intellects" run to the great pessimists as a last ditch effort to steal meaning. We are not postmodern—if postmodern means beyond the modernist's mindset. We are in the last days of a Neo-Romantic revival and nobody knows where to go from here.

Help me out. How should we live now?