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Isn't it Ironic...
Every Tuesday, The Productive Disruptive delivers storytelling science, message makeovers, cultural commentary, and a little rebellious hope for anyone still stubborn enough to believe communication can change the world.
Dorian Johnson
December 23, 2025
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Humans love a win.
A glow-up.
A comeback.
A neat little arc where effort meets reward and the lesson feels earned.
Public health loves these stories.
Probably because we’re tired.
Probably because funders love a “promising results” slide.
Probably because sitting with unresolved harm feels like staring into the sun with no sunglasses.
But here’s the thing we don’t say out loud enough:
Some of the most accurate stories in public health are Greek Tragedies.
And we keep misdiagnosing them.
In a Greek Tragedy, the protagonist gets neither what they want nor what they need.
Not because they didn’t try.
Not because they didn’t care.
Not because they lacked education, motivation, or “readiness.”
But because the conditions made resolution impossible.
That part matters.
A lot.
Now, when people hear “Greek Tragedy,” they think ancient plays, sandals, maybe someone dramatically yelling at a cloud.
But modern Greek Tragedies don’t involve prophecies.
They involve systems.
And they all hinge on one concept: hamartia.
Traditionally, hamartia is called a “tragic flaw.”
But that translation does us dirty.
It’s not a personality defect.
It’s an error in judgment.
And in modern public health stories, the error is quiet and common…
Believing that if you just try hard enough, the system will meet you halfway.
That belief is the hamartia.
Let’s zoom in.
When communities are the protagonist(and they should be in their stories), the tragic flaw often looks like this:
They blame themselves.
They internalize failure.
They assume they didn’t do enough.
Not because they’re naïve.
Because they’re adapting inside an unfair world.
Communities advocate.
They organize.
They protest.
They do the thing.
They stay doing the thing.
And still:
The policy stalls.
The funding dries up.
The environment stays unsafe.
The burden compounds.
They don’t get what they want.
They don’t get what they need.
So the cycle tightens.
Yeah, I really do think.
That’s not failure.
That’s a tragic loop.
🧠 Story Science Side Note: So there’s this cognitive bias known as fundamental attribution error where humans tend to over-explain outcomes by pointing to individual behavior and under-explain them by pointing to context or structure.
In Public Health this matters because misattributing cause leads to bad strategy, or emerging narratives, like individualism.
Research on perspective taking suggested that fundamental attribution error signifcantly reduces if taking other’s perspectives. Which, to me, shows the power of empathy.
When stories center individual action without structural context, audiences are more likely to:
-blame individuals for outcomes, and
-underestimate systemic responsbility
In other words, stories don’t just have the power to explain outcomes, they can also quietly teach who is responsible for fixing them.
And if stories keep centering on individual effort and deficit instead of conditions, the tragedy repeats
In classical tragedy, the protagonist cannot escape fate.
But modern systems work has an interruption point.
And it’s narrative.
The moment communities or practitioners stop saying:
“We failed.”
And start saying:
“The conditions failed us.”
The tragic loop cracks.
Not everything resolves.
The harm doesn’t magically disappear.
But responsibility shifts to where it belongs.
It repositions leverage.
This is where storytelling stops being decorative and starts being diagnostic.
Because if you misread a Greek Tragedy as a failure of effort, you don’t just tell the wrong story.
You design the wrong solutions.
You ask the wrong questions.
You burn out the people who were already doing the most.
For storytellers in public health and social change, identifying a Greek Tragedy is a responsibility.
It means resisting the urge to force a redemption arc where one doesn’t belong.
That’s how the loop gets interrupted.
When we name the tragedy for what it is, something shifts.
We stop asking communities to fix what they didn’t break.
We start telling stories that point power in the right direction.
📝 Message Makeover:
Before:
“Despite significant effort, the community did not achieve the desired outcomes.”
After:
“This community did the work. The unchanged outcome reveals conditions, not a lack of effort.”
Now the story does something different.
By moving past Fundamental Attribution Error, it stops scanning people for what went wrong and starts scanning the system for what was missing.
🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner:
Interrupting the Tragic Loop
Here’s a simple practice you can use the next time a program, policy, or community effort doesn’t “work.”
Step 1: Name the default story
Write down or say the first explanation you hear.
It’s usually something like:
“They didn’t engage.”
“People aren’t motivated.”
“The messaging didn’t land.”
That’s Fundamental Attribution Error talking.
Step 2: Flip the question
Instead of asking What didn’t they do? ask:
What conditions made success unlikely, even with effort?
Be specific. We can’t rewrite new narratives without naming what’s getting in the way.
