2. Persistence

Summary

Resist attempts to sap your willpower and move forward with the understanding that it makes a difference.

Actions
  • When you encounter a social media post that sounds helpless or defeatist, try to suggest something that can be done about the situation. If you know someone else who can help, try to make a connection. If you have no idea how to help, consider asking around in your social networks for someone who can. Empty exhortations that encourage someone to just feel better are not helpful.
  • If you surmise that a piece of media is relentlessly hopeless, and its creator cannot be convinced to take a more proactive stance, ignore it and do not respond to it, pay attention to it, or share it with others.
  • Sharing
Principles

Media, especially social media, are replete with negative messaging. This doesn’t just take the form of media posts and articles that take a negative tone; organizing algorithms select for negative content, ensuring that good things are hidden from those that use them.

Much of this is an incidental outcome of systems of negativity reinforcing each other without an overarching goal; yet much is also intentional, a plan by those who furnish and support these social media networks to develop apathy within the general populace, because apathy is their most effective tool. In both cases, the solution is to act with intentional positivity.

This doesn’t mean merely choosing to be cheerful about what is happening around you. Indeed, it’s appropriate to be upset when situations call for it. But it’s also appropriate to be happy when life affords it to you, and to seek happiness even when others would deprive it of you.

Attempting positive action, such as the steps outlined elsewhere on this site, can be daunting, especially when they don’t have an immediate impact. In this, it’s helpful to remember that no one achieves by themselves, and all human activity is one of collective effort. Your attempts are part of a broader movement, and that movement is more likely to succeed than it would be if you did nothing.