“If you feel that everything is terrible and everyone lies, then people don’t want to engage in civic discourse…”

I got that quote from this newsletter (New York Times “On Tech”), and then also earlier today I received Mark Manson’s newsletter, which was about learned hopefulness. Pretty much all I do on Mondays is read newsletters and periodically do some work for people, but Mondays and Fridays tend to be less of the “work for people” variety.

First, consider the quote in the title of this post. If you have a job where the executives and decision-makers (“stakeholders”) are utterly two-faced, which is common, eventually you don’t care anymore. It just doesn’t really matter because it feels like nothing is going to change. That used to be called “learned helplessness,” and it’s a big factor in how the self-help movement came about and general psychological thinking of the past 40 years.

Martin Seligman, who came up with those theories, revised them 50 years on and came to a more nuanced place called “learned hopefulness.”

To quote Manson on that:

In that revision, Selgiman said neuroscience showed that learned helplessness had it backwards. We do not inherently have control of our lives and, once punished by the world, learn to become helpless.

It’s the other way around: we start out helpless and must learn to take control of our lives.

It’s not learned helplessness; it’s learned hopefulness. Feeling helpless and out of control is our default state. Taking control of our lives and developing hopeful feelings is something that we must learn and practice and protect within ourselves.

Pop back to that “On Tech” newsletter and you get this:

When our brains are overloaded, and we’re confronted constantly with upsetting or confusing information, it sends us into a state in which we’re less capable of processing information. We say things we probably shouldn’t. People get retweet happy. It’s not productive, even when people have good intentions and think they’re helping.

Indeed.

This is a weird, over-loaded, hopeless-to-many time in the United States — and as 538 has explained, most people don’t vote because they don’t think it will matter. (There are other reasons, but that’s a big umbrella reason for them.)

The advice of the moment, then?

If you’re a leader or have “influence:” Don’t lie. Be honest. Explain to people why things matter and why they should care. I know the framing will always be within your specific context and messaging — I do get that — but still, you should be making an effort here.

If you’re a regular old person: Realize that everything is chaos all the time anyway — the journey through life can be very challenging — and what you need to do is find ways to hope even when everything seems pointless, and everyone seems to be lying, and the powerful aren’t doing right by the plebs. Ranting on Twitter — guilty! — is not always the best approach. Join a club. Play chess. Volunteer. Call a friend. Not everything is hopeless, but we need to learn to be hopeful.

That, to me, is the lesson of tomorrow’s election. Not much will change for the average citizen and a lot of this is just ramped-up theater. (Ironically, one of the issues getting the least attention is housing, despite massive evictions and lawsuits about the ability to evict right now. Read something I wrote for a client on Trump vs. Biden on housing.)

Don’t be helpless. Be hopeful. Even when it’s chaotic — because it always is! And even when people seem to be lying — because they always will!