Human systems never read the Hollywood story line. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.cop:
I like a rousing story as much as anyone else, but systems aren’t stories, and confusing the two won’t actually fix what’s not sustainable in the current system’s configuration.
OK, I get it: we all like Hollywood endings: the superhero saves the world, the evil conspiracy is uncovered and the villains get their just desserts and the impossible romance overcomes all the odds. This is why there are Hollywood endings: we are hard-wired to thrill to happy endings and a successful conclusion to the Hero’s / Heroine’s Journey.
We will tolerate a Tragic Hero / Heroine or the occasional Anti-Hero / Heroine, but there is still a moral victory of some sort to cheer.
The real world doesn’t follow a storyline, it operates according to the dictates of systems: inputs are taken up by processes which then generate outputs. If the outputs and processes don’t change, the outputs don’t change either.
One prevalent manifestation of human hubris is the idea that getting someone to agree with us about something or other is some sort of victory, as if human opinions matter. They don’t, unless they change either inputs or processes in extremely consequential ways. Tweaking inputs or policies might make us feel warm and fuzzy (“I’m part of the solution!”) but they are too modest to change the system’s inputs and processes. The net result is the outputs remain the same.
Put another way: labeling something or other a hoax or an existential threat doesn’t change anything in the systems that generate consequences. Whatever is going to happen as output is going to happen regardless of what humans label it or their opinions about it (“El Nino really sucks!”).
