Why We Create Stinkers
Towards the end, pretty much everyone involved, including Patricia, knew it was a stinker. It could have been a publisher or theatrical producer or opera composer, but in this instance it was a film. Even the Producer thought the script shallow and derivative, but there was enough money to turn it into a movie. Yet Patricia was acting in it, a major role in a building which should never be built.
A war which should never have been fought. A disastrous company policy. A doomed marriage.
The movie’s essential problem? Patricia knew it was meaningless, her role was meaningless. It was meaningless. There was a clear anti-corporate theme because it was popular, without any corporation identified. The actors acting with no one against green screens. Everyone involved believed it was doomed. But they were well paid, there were mortgages and vacations.
Human endeavours are rather involved. Many folks work on project they know are doomed. This is how wars begin, how climate change erupted, how the effort of many is wasted for the benefit of the few.
Patricia sat on her apartment deck in a wobbly plastic armchair which should never have been built, thinking about all this. Stinkers seemed cosmic to her, eternal. She thought it fitting she should pray for an answer.
She was surprised when God appeared, in a shimmering glowing haze. “I see you are concerned, my child. Every one hundred millionth troubled person, I visit with reassurance.”
“Reassurance? Why do we kept wasting our lives?”
“Practice. Each failure you learn more, although rarely as much as I hoped. I’m new at this and I created your world and, from the start, I knew something was wrong but I kept going. Yes, your world is a bit of a stinker. Always wars, now damaging the planet. I should have shut you down long ago, but here I still am, millennium later, fiddling. Hoping it will turn out all right.
“Remember, I created you in My image. Shall I turn some water into wine? No, it did not work well did it? Intoxication, alcohol poisoning.
“Do not fret, it will turn out all right.”