Kurt Vonnegut explains drama

by lucumo • 17 years ago

78 24 17 years ago

redorb• 17 years ago

after a rough day at the office (drama) seems - like his assumptions are at least in the zone of 'right'.

Mongoose• 17 years ago

This would explain the effectiveness of marketing. If you can increase the perceived glamour (or ability to generate drama) of a product, people will be more likely to buy it.

foulmouthboy• 17 years ago

Vonnegut's book A Man Without a Country has his full analysis (with drawings) including his thoughts on Kafka and Hamlet.

jeremymims• 17 years ago

Personal anecdote:

About 6 years ago, I saw him do these and the full timeline drawing of Hamlet at Washington and Lee University. In his very understated way he wowed the audience, but at this point he had the audience in stitches.

_pius• 17 years ago

Not sure I buy it, but I like hearing Vonnegut's thoughts on the subject

wsprague2• 17 years ago

I think that there is a problem with scale in Vonnegut's analysis: sure, most weeks things go up or down a little bit but remain basically even and boring. But on the scale of years, there are turning points at which there is a HUGE amount of drama and VERY high stakes for the ensuing years. Cinderella probably had her boring days once she was "living happily ever after", but the week or so it took to get hitched by the prince WAS just as dramatic as all that, and the outcome was worthy of the drama.

I think because high stakes and high drama processes DO happen in real life, we simulate them with vicarious experiences of narrative so we can be ready mentally. If we don't digest stories beforehand, we won't have a model for when we discover we have cancer, risk losing a job or a deal, court a loved one, try to get accepted to an ivy league school, etc.

And if there isn't SOME drama in your life with real stakes and real risks, you probably need to go out and take on some challenges. Such a desire for drama is hardly pathetic or dysfunctional. That is, unless you stay at home and only satisfy it vicariously with HBO, or create needless challenges without any real stakes like driving too fast...

ilyak• 17 years ago

I second down: I have some huge ups and some noticeable downs in my life, and everybody does, who's not a robot.

oldgregg2• 17 years ago

Excellent stuff. Two things come to mind:

1) The loss of God probably plays a large role here. Faith provides a meta-narrative that gives the humdrum of life context and a story arc. Without that you just have a random collection of sensations without meaning.

2) We can't look at the last 30 years as normative. Pop culture (eg MTV) has dramatically increased the amount of drama we feel like we need. My Generation Y has an increasing emphasis on disconnected experiences -- and we have a whole new set of cultural artifacts to show for it -- Seinfeld, Improv Everywhere, Garden State, Juno, etc.

thaumaturgy2• 17 years ago

I'm not about to thread-jack here, but I did think it prudent to mention that, as an atheist, I disagree with #1. There can be plenty of non-religious meaning behind those random sensations; it just depends on your perspective.

gjm11• 17 years ago

I think oldgregg already threadjacked the discussion, actually.

wsprague2• 17 years ago

Just a quick couple comments:

1) There are lots of unifying themes and grounds of meaning besides God -- the motherland, the continuity of the family, evolution, personal actualization, etc.

2) I disagree with most statements to the effect that "everything is different now", though the OP has a couple of interesting points. First -- disconnectedness has been a theme in the arts since the turn of the century (Dada, Sartre, etc). Second, I think that folks sitting around the campfire in the Kalahari probably like drama just as much as we do, they just that their media are different -- stories, songs, and low tech ritual versus TV; but I think the charge of meaning is the same, even if the amount of color and noise is vastly different.

oldgregg2• 17 years ago

I would say we've even lost that. A hundred years ago people might have hung their hat on any of those things you mentioned -- or more often than not, moralistic religion -- but at least they were part of some kind of grand story. Now it feels like we're all kind of floating out there. We're the middle children of history as Tyler Durden so eloquently said.

We're certainly all hard-wired for a narrative, I just had too many experiences in college, where I was like "Are you serious?! You're re-enacting last weeks episode of the Real World!" :)

hristov• 17 years ago

The loss of God???? What in the world are you talking about? The majority of people in the US are religious. Religious institutions are all over the place and have huge influence on society.

When we get an openly atheist president, then you can complain about the loss of God.

andrewljohnson• 17 years ago

I highly recommend you follow @kurt_vonnegut on twitter. He's a bot run by one of my friends that quotes Kurt daily. He's by far my favorite tweeter.

matthias• 17 years ago

and he resisted kurt_vonnebot. shame!

blhack• 17 years ago

Please tell me he reads the replies, because otherwise it means that I have been replying for no reason.

Or would it still mean that I am replying for no reason if he WAS reading them, but not responding!?

mrshoe• 17 years ago

Is this, at some level, why we all want to do startups? To make our lives like fairy tales? It certainly is a roller coaster.

ccarpenterg• 17 years ago

What a lack of empathy! I completely disagree.

GavinB• 17 years ago

This is an explanation of why people like fairy tales--but he has the causation in the wrong direction.

We like fairy tales because they appeal to our natural sense of drama--they aren't the cause of it.

kijiki• 17 years ago

I think we're going to need some partial differential equations to work through this one...

10ren• 17 years ago

You're right, but his has a more memorable take-home: "We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale."

For convincing reason X, we create drama and problems for ourselves unnecessarily. We shouldn't do that. It's silly and childish. The truthfulness of reason X is irrelevant for the truthfulness of his primary point. I smile at his disingenuousness, and take home his message. I don't think he's actually trying to fool anyone - it's just a way of making a point.

Personally, I like demanding tasks, because then people on the team have less time for politics. United against a common enemy/for a common purpose and all that.

dangoldin• 17 years ago

Another interesting post on the same subject: http://www.austinkleon.com/2005/12/17/graph-a-story-with-mr-...

fnid• 17 years ago

This opinion from Vonnegut, someone who has lived one of the most dramatic lives anyone could ever possibly live and still be alive.

Kurt Vonnegut explains drama

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