When the world’s a mess, as it often feels these days, I turn to “competency porn.”
This brand of fiction depicts hyper-talented people solving difficult problems, and of course, it could describe many classic works. Odysseus makes it home. Poirot finds the killer. Furiosa frees the Citadel.
But I only learned the term lately in discussions of The Pitt, a popular TV show about the busy staff of a Pittsburgh emergency room. Before watching it, I’d questioned how hourly doses of illness, gore, and death could soothe me when the real world offers plenty of the same.
Having now devoured its two seasons, I get it. These medical workers are good-hearted and great at what they do, a balm against the pessimism and dysfunction prevailing over the planet these days.
In one moment from the first season, as the hospital is flooded with patients from a nearby mass shooting, a young resident makes a quick but risky decision that saves one of them.
“OK, you never should have done that on your own. Ever. Do you understand?” a grizzled senior doctor says afterward. Then he whispers, “But that was pretty badass.”
Chef’s kiss.
My diet of well-intentioned competence hasn’t stopped there. Among other things, I recently consumed both the audiobook and movie versions of Project Hail Mary, a hopeful sci-fi tale about citizens of Earth and beyond working to stop a space-traveling microbe from destroying the sun.
Most movingly, I just read The Ministry for the Future, a utopian novel about humanity, in the wake of a cataclysmic drought, coming together to develop plausible solutions to climate change. By the end, a new financial system is promoting decarbonization while solar-powered airships and sailboats have become the main way to circle the globe.
Yet I do wonder about this fixation. Are these fictions inspiring me to make real change in the world, or just lulling me with false visions of progress? If I was tasked with saving a life, a planet, or a galaxy, how would I do?
To try to answer the second question, at least, I recently put myself to the test.
I work with plenty of folks who do know something about making real change, specifically in communities along Maine’s coast. So in late April, I joined some of them on a kind of tabletop exercise, in which participants were split into three teams—the nations of Island, Bayland, and Peninsuland—that each had to plan out the development of a shared body of water.
I was assigned to Bayland, taking on the role of energy industry representative while my three teammates handled planning, shipping, and natural resource management. We quickly got to work on a large game map, laying out tiles for ferries, ports, fishing sites, electric transmission, and more. We decided to orient our economy around crabbing and exports, while also trying to attract visitors and protect natural assets like kelp forests.
Perhaps I was not cut out for this, though, because when it came to energy matters, I largely took a backseat. Over the course of an hour, our planner handled the purchase of offshore wind power from another nation, then distributed new tiles for wave and tidal energy.
Late in the game, our natural resources manager made the controversial decision to place oil rigs close to the shores of the other two nations, turning them against us. They were soon discussing legal action or a flotilla.
In short, I felt like we were making a mess of the world. And our constituents, the citizens of Bayland, were surely seeking distraction in their own favorite films about competent leaders.
So, I can’t really say that my fondness for competency porn has trained me for a career in energy development.
But I was impressed by my colleagues in this exercise. Many of them do work on energy, climate, and economic issues, and while I was loafing around, they were getting things done.
It’ll take people like that to get us through this mess. It’ll takes badasses.
Charles Eichacker is the editor of The Working Waterfront and Island Journal. He may be contacted at ceichacker@islandinstitute.org.
