Protecting the cause from noise and spiraling gloom

Written by watermelonpunch

I don’t fight for the good cause because I know I’m going to win. I FIGHT FOR THE GOOD CAUSE BECAUSE IT’S IMMORAL NOT TO DO SO. Fatalism is irrelevant.

Adversaries will try to confuse you into inaction… into doing nothing. As Carl von Clausewitz pointed out, the aggressor “would prefer to take over a country unopposed” — if possible. If you are bombarded with disinformation and chaos, it works as a cognitive attack and can put you into a state of inaction — or even erroneous disruptive action, such as dooming and spreading fatalism for example — and you unwittingly harm your own cause and your own movement.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The impairment of cognitive processes has two harmful consequences: i) Contextual maladaptation, resulting in errors, missed gestures or temporary inhibition; and ii) Lasting disorder, which affects the personality and transforms its victim by locking him or her into a form of behavioral strangeness or inability to understand the world. In the first case, it is a question of causing transitory consequences, circumscribed by a particular critical environment (cf. Figure 4-1 Figure 4-1 is a drawing that could be reversible a rabbit or a duck depending on how you look at it. ). The second concerns the transformation of the decision-making principles of individuals who then become disruptors or responsible for erroneous actions, or even non-action (cf. Figure 4-2 Figure 4-2 is A soldier sitting on a stump thinking with hand on chin and rifle at side, and the caption says A Thinker: what about the inhibition of action due to indecision or cognitive overload.). First NATO scientific meeting on Cognitive Warfare (France) — 21 June 2021
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The impairment of cognitive processes has two harmful consequences: i) Contextual maladaptation, resulting in errors, missed gestures or temporary inhibition; and ii) Lasting disorder, which affects the personality and transforms its victim by locking him or her into a form of behavioral strangeness or inability to understand the world. In the first case, it is a question of causing transitory consequences, circumscribed by a particular critical environment (cf. Figure 4-1 Figure 4-1 is a drawing that could be reversible a rabbit or a duck depending on how you look at it. ). The second concerns the transformation of the decision-making principles of individuals who then become disruptors or responsible for erroneous actions, or even non-action (cf. Figure 4-2 Figure 4-2 is A soldier sitting on a stump thinking with hand on chin and rifle at side, and the caption says A Thinker: what about the inhibition of action due to indecision or cognitive overload.). First NATO scientific meeting on Cognitive Warfare (France) — 21 June 2021

Psychology Today: Giving Up: Informational Learned Helplessness. It’s exhausting when it’s hard to figure out what is true and what is false. By Susan A. Nolan, Ph.D., and Michael Kimball, Reviewed by Jessica Schrader Posted December 23, 2021

  • Learned helplessness can explain why some people become depressed; when we don’t perceive we have an effect on our own lives, we can give up.
  • Informational learned helplessness expands this concept to our online lives, explaining why we may become overwhelmed by a quest for truth.
  • Better practices by media organizations might make it easier for us to discern truth from fiction and reduce our cognitive exhaustion.
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: NOISE & SPIRALING Caused by being exposed to various influence sources. The Roiling News Cycle Targeted Advertising Hype and Manufactured Controversy FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) Rumours and Gossip Hot Takes and Sick Burns Just Asking Questions Proving Debunking Chops Miscellaneous Social Media Hotshotting Groupthink & Crowd Psychology Cults of Personality The addictive nature of social media makes these things hard to resist and our reliance on social media makes them hard to avoid. The landscape of influence media is marred by disinformation campaigns and attention seeking incentives in a FOMO inducing environment. Next to the text is a cartoon meme picture of someone someone at a crossroads one leads to a shining castle and is labeled activists, the other lane leads to a dark place with storm clouds & lightning and it is labeled influencers, and the bottom caption reads There’s a difference!

If you feel like things are spiraling into despair or gloom, get off social media, and get involved in some type of activism or advocacy. Even if it’s just writing your elected representatives letters about what’s important to you — that’s a big something that actually could contribute to real change. So no, you don’t have to swing wildly from doom to toxic positivity like some wellness influencer.

Conspirituality Podcast — 136: Virtual Strongmen (w/Ruth Ben-Ghiat)

“They don’t express political aspirations because the industry is narcissistic. It doesn’t really point itself toward any kind of collective action or the difficult work of party politics. None of these people are interested in building coalitions. They want to have affiliate networks, but they’re not going to do deep canvassing and try to convince people to vote. They want people to buy their shit.”

“They’re part of a depoliticization project.”

— Matthew Remski

People ask if writing letters to elected representatives matters. Of course it does. What doesn’t matter too much is gripe-tweeting into the void or doomscrolling viral feeds into infinity.

Hypernormalisation Documentary, 2016, by Adam Curtis.

”The liberals were outraged at Trump. But they expressed their outrage in cyberspace so it had no effect. Because the algorithms made sure that they only spoke to people who already agreed with them. Instead ironically their waves of angry messages and tweets benefitted the large corporations who ran the social media platforms. one online analyst put it simply — angry people click. It meant that the radical fury that came like waves across the internet no longer had the power to change the world. Instead it became a fuel that fed the systems of power making them ever more powerful.”

Anyone who tells you writing representatives doesn’t matter is attempting to deactivate you for whatever reason. Don’t let anyone dissuade you from civic engagement, it’s your community too!

Chloe Humbert (Outside My Cylinder) – Writing Letters to Elected Representatives

Letters to politicians are some of the easiest and most effective actions many neglect. I write to my representatives a lot, and I often get asked about it. Why? What effect does it have? How do you go about it? So here’s what I’ve learned… When we write to our representatives, we are not just writing for ourselves. Your representative’s office receives your letter and considers your position and interest in the issue as representative of some number of constituents who feel the same as you do, but did not have the inclination to write at present. They often keep tallies in spreadsheets and track issues. So it’s not just your lonely voice, each person who writes really makes a larger difference than you might expect from one person.

Indivisible Guide: How Your Member of Congress Thinks, and How to Use That to Save Democracy
This constant reelection pressure means that MoCs are enormously sensitive to their image in the district or state, and they will work very hard to avoid signs of public dissent or disapproval.
Thought Co: Tips for Writing Effective Letters to Congress
People who think members of the U.S. Congress pay little or no attention to constituent mail are simply wrong. Concise, well thought out personal letters are one of the most effective ways Americans have of influencing their elected lawmakers. 

There may be no instant gratification in writing your reps, no soothing dopamine hits. And no, nobody can guarantee the side of right will win or that your cause will prevail. But if we do nothing, the cause is definitely lost. So we have to press on in doing what is right.

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