Stress and Agency

When I get a therapist, I am going to walk in day 1 and tell them: "I have a challenge for you that you may deem impossible. Teach me to care only as much as I have agency to affect things."

A big problem with the modern age of internet is we have access to perhaps too much information. Every terrible thing happening anywhere on Earth, we can know about it within minutes. It can be supremely overwhelming. A good many people (myself very much included) will shut down at this, while others will react with vitriol at the thought of people not caring. I do not fault either group. It's good to care about making things better. Unfortunately, care too much for too long and you burn out. Furthermore, many problems in the world we simply have no control over.

This is why it frustrates me so much when people spread awareness of problems in the world for the sake of awareness itself. You are not helping to resolve the problem, as far as I am concerned, by contributing to the information overload and making everybody miserable. You're just burning out your allies. Much more preferable is when people spread awareness in the form of: "here's what's happening, here are some sources and context, and here is what you can do about it", with an optional "here's how what you can do about it will actually contribute to solving the problem".

I'm trying to stay away from social media for a bit partially for this reason (admittedly a lot of it is "every social media platform is either run by monsters or too tiny to actually connect with people"). Way too much information overload. I am perpetually burned out between my own problems I am struggling through and the endless "the world sucks and there's nothing we can do". But I want to get myself back to a place where I can do things to help make the world better.

On a very related note... I am exhausted of people saying "problem x is a systemic issue, there is unfortunately nothing individuals can do". I call bullshit on that. That's doomerism. Systems are made of people, and we are people. There must be something we can do, something better than "just sit around and wait for someone else to do it". Is it something we don't have direct power to influence? Fine, I can accept that. But I won't accept doing nothing. Who does have the power to influence it? How do we convince them to do something? Failing that, what are other things we can do, maybe not to fix the problem but mitigate it in the meantime?

All problems can be solved. I agree that sometimes it's out of our control. But that doesn't mean doing nothing. We need to care to the extent that we have the agency to affect things, and then utilize that agency for the greater good.