Our World Is Driven by “Dramatic Reactionism”

As I continue to observe the happenings around me, I’ve realized that our society has a few characteristics that don’t really help matters.  We only live on this planet for 70’ish years so each of us has a time frame of reference that is not so big in the grand scheme of things.  Collectively though, we seem to respond mainly to dramatic happenings in a reactionary way thinking only of the short term.  Great examples include 9/11, the Great Recession of 2008, and Toyota’s accelerator pedal recalls.  Instead of thinking ahead and preventing bad things from happening, we let things slide for a while until something terrible and dramatic happens.  Then we overreact and institute changes that sometimes help, often don’t, and usually do little more than make us feel better.

Policemen keeping cars moving in front of airport terminals is one feel-good “solution.  I didn’t know that suicide bombers will only detonate car bombs once their vehicle has stopped completely in front of an airline terminal and that any velocity above 0 mph will prevent it from working.  The people at Homeland Security must know something I don’t. The airport security Terror Threat level has been at orange for about 8 years now.  I can pretty much guarantee that the threat level, (and caution that goes with it), will only go up if and after another incident happens.  When it comes to investing, we tend to jump on board when the stock market is hot and bail when it has gone cold.  It’s exactly the opposite of what we should do.  We can’t prevent natural catastrophes, but we can take measures to make them affect us less severely, like not live in coastal areas that are prone to flooding and erosion.  But we do anyway and ask for help and insurance when the surprise catastrophe happens.

Even personal well-being is an area that is usually overtaken by “Dramatic Reactionism.”  We let ourselves go with bad diet and a lack of exercise until one day we end up going to the hospital and to find out (after much expense and hassle) that we need to do something drastic or one of our lives might end soon.  Only then, do we take action.  Smokers are even worse with this phenomenon.  Just don’t light up the first time and you never have to quit.

It’s not just the expense and ineffectiveness of this strategy to tackle societal and life challenges that are annoying, but the things we entertain ourselves with are usually dramatic.  There is no show about a preventative medicine health clinic.  That would be boring.  Instead, there are 5 shows about the emergency room.  We like drama.  Maybe we want our lives to be more like TV shows; not the reality kind but the dramatic kind.  Perhaps we’re subconsciously trying to make our lives more exciting by not planning ahead, enduring major negative occurrences, and by reacting severely.

We should probably stop with this strategy.  It’s time we start planning ahead.  Look at what’s happened to our planet.  We’ve neglected it for so long and now we have to take drastic measures, but those are difficult for people and economies to swallow and now we’re in trouble.  If we just had controls in place to prevent the creation of toxic financial instruments, the economy might be better off and never would have gone through such a crisis.  Companies lay off employees to increase shareholder returns for the next quarter without regard to how hard and expensive it is to find good employees.  Don’t forget all the company knowledge in their minds that they take without transferring it to anybody else at the company.

The other problem with drama is that it gets our emotions going.  Emotions don’t usually help us make the right decisions for the good of the general public.  Drama and reactionary behavior prevent us from taking a step back to look at the whole situation and to determine how our actions could impact the long term. A lot of violent crimes could be considered “Over-Dramatic Reactionism.”

 Of course we are humans and not psychic robots.  We can’t plan for every problem with foresight and a cool mind but any movement in that direction would help us all.

+ Atul

Comments

[Dave P]

I agree with just about everything you said.

[L. Haldane]

I think all your points are correct. We don't like to take preventative measures, because we are too lazy to do a little bit every day to fix something. We would rather let it blow up into a huge disaster that we then have to start repairing in one sitting. This applies to taking care of the earth, too. People say climate change is a bunch of scientific lies, but if everyone took small steps to reduce their carbon footprints, the environment would be a lot better off. Instead, we are setting ourselves up for an ecological disaster in the near future.

[Alexandra F]

Great post! I feel the same way you do about many over dramatic actions we have taken over the years. As you know, 9-11 was a tragic event that changed the way we feel about many things including security, love, and even trust. However, we cannot take it over board by directing our anger and fear in the wrong direction. This will only hurt others and ourselves and keep us from growing as a Nation. Another point I would like to bring up is the entertainment that people are watching and engaging in everyday. "The Jersey Shore" and Soap operas are not real, they are fake and filled with drama so others may be entertained. However, many take this one step further and begin to copy behaviors of these actors. I believe everyone, especially the younger generation, needs to start opening their eyes and seeing the big picture. We DO have a recession, we ARE contributing to global warming, and we need to help this planet and each other before it is too late.

[Ashley Stachurski]

I couldn’t have said that any better myself, so many people only pay attention to the negative things in life, they don’t see of think about the positive. People never really think but all the drama on T.V and the news consumes our lives. We are so dependent on something bad happening, we don’t think about how we can make our lives better. We are not concerned about how to we need to stop the economies plunge to great darkness, we are only concerned about how we are going keep our TiVo paid for so we can watch the drama filled shows, and the news that tells us usually nothing but bitterness. On top of that, we are going through a recession that means that the government doesn’t need to bail out other countries, they need to bail us out first, and you can not fix someone else until you have fixed yourself. I’m so glad that someone can finally see the things that people are to blind to realize and notice. If everyone just helped out a little more, we could change the world and the way we live on it.

[UH2L]

Thanks for the supportive words. I think you all see how this overdramatic reactionism applies to so many things in life. It's just who we are I guess.

[bwinn]

I agree with much of your topic. We has a Americans are a reactionary peoples.We tend to fix things when they break or just before they break. I use to work at a major automotive company, I question a group of engineers that was discussing a produce problem, the product had a major flaw mid-way through production. the topic was weather to fix the rest of vehicles or to recall, or just leave alone, well the answer was in the statical data of vehicle produced/ cost of repairs in long run. how about fix the problem and correct the pre/found problem.

Second; I am glad you even know the terrorist color code, be happy that we have not gone up. It means our homeland security and Special Operation Groups are doing the jobs and doing it well.