I have a theory about drama

Technically, I suppose, the title should be that I have a hypothesis about drama. It's based on my experience of the world around me, not on a rigorous examination of a wide range of evidence. I'm completely aware that one person talking about their experience is an anecdote, and many experiences is actual data.

There's a saying that a movie maker told a writer, "I want a movie that starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax." It's considered apocryphal, but seems to be the basis for a lot of movies and books. The idea is that if you hook the reader, they'll stay with you for the entire book. (Not!) Or if the movie starts big, you'll hook the audience in, and once they've paid you don't much care if they stick around.

But I'm wondering if decades of fictional over the top drama have poisoned our everyday lives. It seems that everywhere we look, and I do mean everywhere except this humble blog, we see drama. If it isn't actual drama, it's made up drama. Pandemics and wars and natural disasters are actual real life drama. Sports and celebrities are made up drama. Politics are somewhere in between.

Movies are all explosions and chase scenes and emotional superhero children doing their super-emoting, all so much so it's become boring. Youtube clips are all click bait titles. Even the news; a politician who does a minor gaffe will make the news ahead of a politician announcing a momentous and important policy.

Book editors want more action. I once showed a pro editor the first chapter of a book. In the very first sentence a man on a bike is struck by a truck, and in the next his friends scramble to save his life. The editor said the action needed to start sooner and needed to be more dramatic. My conclusion was that I was never going to be a published author.

We seldom see people going about their ordinary lives in an orderly fashion, getting along with the people around them while at least trying to get something done. Why? It's considered boring. That nobody who was anybody would want to do that.

Many people are so hooked on drama they expect it all the time now. Everybody thinks they are the star of their own show, and fair enough. It's when they want to be the star of everyone else's show as well, that it becomes a problem.

What prompted this, you ask? Yesterday's swim. It was moderately busy in the pool. I started by sharing a lane with a guy swimming almost exactly the same speed as me. We happily went around and around, till he finished. Then two others joined the lane, standing right by the lane rope as I came in to turn, so I'd know they were joining in. I pretty quickly figured out the younger one was a swim club kid gone slumming, swimming much quicker than me, followed by his dad, using fins and not keeping up. We happily went around and around, me stopping at the end periodically to let them by, then drafting like mad. 

On my last lap a guy joined the lane half way down the pool, doing a poor butterfly. I'm standing right by the lane rope, stretching a bit watching this guy thrash his way down the middle part of the lane, with the kid catching up. The thrasher is all set to push off in front of the kid, but had the thought, correctly, that it's bad form to push off in front of a faster swimmer. So he dives over into the next lane, cutting off a woman coming in to do her turn. She pops up, wondering where this guy came from. The three people in that lane huddle at the end, watching this guy thrash up and down the pool, taking up far more space than necessary. We're all looking at each other and shaking our heads. 

When he gets back and stands up, he sees that we're all looking at him with puzzled expressions. "What," he said loudly, "I'm doing you guys a favour trying to even out lane traffic." Then the discussion started trying to explain why we were puzzled and how we had no clue what he'd do next. He was yelling over us, not listening. He tried to drag in the lifeguard to take his side, but he wasn't having any of it. He just pointed to a laminated page on the wall titled "Swim Etiquette" and suggested he read it. Eventually we got him calmed down enough to understand where he had goofed. Later in the shower, I heard him out on the pool deck yelling at someone else, but I couldn't make out the story, and didn't want to. 

A bit of flair to stand out from the crowd is one thing. Making a spectacle of yourself and trying to drag in others is quite another. It used to be that most people lived in small communities where everyone knew everyone, or knew of everyone. Mostly people had to go along to get along, and your freak flag kept a low profile. Now with social media, it's easy to find other people like yourself, no matter what the yourself is. Are you a left-handed albino welder from Illinois looking for same for related activities? Five minutes on Facebook and you've got buddies, and nobody else will ever care.

The problem comes when the freak flag is actually dangerous. The gun nuts in USA are but one example. They've convinced themselves that carrying guns is a right, and that everybody ought to, and children getting shot in school isn't a reason to change anything. They've created an echo chamber where all they hear is that and related opinions, and to get noticed you have to say something more extreme. And it gets said, over and over, moving the discussion from a place that might be tangentially related to reality out to complete la la land.

Too many people are all about the drama in asserting their 'rights.' The recent pandemic was really bad for that. To me it seems evident that if the right to swing your fist stops just in front of someone else's face, then the right to spread your virus laden breath ends just in front of your face. Wearing the mask is hardly much of an imposition, and yet you'd think it was the end of the world for some people. 

The anti-vaccine crowd at least starts from a place related to reality. This is something actually going into our body to trigger a response, and there's been occasions where big pharma has goofed in the past by releasing products that are later shown to be harmful. Thalidomide comes to mind. Having some concerns about the testing process is not unreasonable. There are people with conditions limiting what they eat or inject, or need to take the potential side effects more seriously, or have concerns about how a vaccine might interact with other medication. All that is fair play, and you typically don't hear those people saying everybody else shouldn't get the vaccine.

And then it spins out into drama central, where perfectly healthy people with none of these concerns previously evident, start claiming it's them, so they don't have to get an injection. For all this crowd normally spouts that actions have consequences when it comes to sending other people to jail, they don't like it when the consequence of having their movements restricted is applied to them. Then it spins out into la la land, claiming there is a micro chip in the vaccine that blah blah blah, which is just stupid.

Here's the four oldest unblogged photos from the past three months. This is the start of our vacation in Sooke in February. Our airbnb reflected in the hot tub cover.

The view from the house.

Linda on the way to Muir Creek Beach.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Which is actually a serendipity with the daffodil.

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Flower (this year)

Tombstone

Same view you've seen before, different weather. We got a lot of different weather on the last trip.

Film (new)

One film camera catching another doing a long exposure.

Film (old)

Linda and Sebastian.

And another serendipity. A street scene from Omaru.