The real sting here isn't about moral corruption—it's about perspective shifting beneath our feet while we stand still. We assume our younger selves possessed clarity we've since lost, but Nolan suggests something more unsettling: that consistency itself becomes the villain. A civil rights activist who refuses to adapt their 1960s tactics to a changed world, a parent whose protective rules curdle into control, a whistleblower whose crusade hardens into dogmatism—each might be repeating the same script, wondering when the audience stopped cheering. The wisdom lies in recognizing that staying true to our principles sometimes means reimagining what those principles actually require of us now.