Avoiding Burnout - Is This A Movement?

I've been banging my head against a wall. My 'head' is the vision I have and share with others of a more skeptical and effective movement. And the 'wall' is the daunting task of working with people who may not agree on anything other than the movement's basic premises. This movement brings together people from very diverse ideological backgrounds. Within that spectrum my ideal may be positive or even important, but if my participation is depending on impractical expectations I'm walking into a wall.

But if I can have no expectations is this really a social movement at all?

With so little agreement among participants on certain principles of logic and strategy it seems at times that we might all be captains of our own vessel. I'm sure most would say they hoped for an impartial investigation. And there are media we can point to and definitively say are products of the movement. But we won't agree on which one's to promote. And we wouldn't agree on the top or bottom ten 9/11 facts. And very importantly, we might not agree on the intended outcome of all our actions.

We could say that the movement was defined by it's result. But that view ignores focus on the future and improvement. Could we all agree that we want the movement to be stronger, or reach more people in a positive way? What is stronger? Do we even agree on positive? I'm not sure we do.

There are certainly large and overlapping groups within the movement that subscribe to one of many approaches. There's the "Press For Truth" crowd, and the CD crowd, and the AJ crowd, and those who want all of them standing under one big tent. Each of these groups are sizable yet in many ways do not work well together. And who says they should? Some of what we find is total fallacy. Personally, I think that the "Press For Truth" approach is the most effective. But others disagree. And not all that disagreement is based on ignorance of strategy.

What is a social movement without agreed upon motivations, premises, and goals? That certainly presents a lot of problems if it's the case. We don't look unified and our difference can be used against us. The movement can be characterized by it's weakest links. We can become distracted trying to iron out those differences instead of addresses the issues.

Ignoring our differences also presents a lot of problems. As I've previously argued, the 'big tent' is not a viable option. We have no reason to include everything. But that implies some kind of process for exclusion that does not seem to exist. And that's a primary reason why I've been banging my head against a wall.

Just because there are many definitions of this movement doesn't mean that every definition is valid. But there is little anyone can do to exclude what is most damaging or counter-productive. I've personally spent as much time publicly promoting the truth as I have countering fallacy within the movement. There have been a few salient victories. But overall, one of the main reasons for my feeling burned out at times has been my feeling that it's not possible to change the behavior or thinking of people with very different and sometimes invalid views.

I have a clear picture in my head of what would work best, but feel ever more removed from any power to act on that understanding. And feeling that way I get closer to just throwing in the towel.

However, two key insights prevent my quitting in frustration. Central to both of them is the basic fact that those in power very obviously consider our efforts to be a threat.

First, those attempting to obscure the truth want us to feel frustrated and burnout. A good amount of the division I mentioned above is due to intentional disruption. I may not know exactly how much of it, but there is no doubt that divide and conquer gets the job done. This movement is highly subject to infiltration. Most of those involved remain fairly oblivious to that fact, and it's generally unproductive to speculate about the intentions of others. But that doesn't negate the fact that there are many among us who are either keeping track of our efforts or trying to steer us in unproductive directions.

Second, the extent to which those in power by way of their mainstream media attempt to undermine our efforts very clearly demonstrates that at least some of what we do is a threat to them. At times it seems that they consider us more a threat that we might think we are. On a regular basis, seemingly irrespective of movement progress, we find that the MSM launches into a coordinated attempt to malign those involved in this effort. If we were truly irrelevant, we wouldn't find ourselves so often the subject of attack.

And so in some sense, whether or not what we have here is cohesive social movement, the power structure we are trying to impact seems to think it is. That doesn't necessarily make me all that much less frustrated about all the problems I see in this movement. But it does provide a basis upon which I can feel that all these disparate interest groups are presenting a common challenge to those who maintain the secrets we work to uncover.

Avoiding Burnout - Start Your Own Group

No choice for me during my time participating in this movement has been more challenging and also more liberating than deciding to leave NY911Truth to found TruthMove with Max. For that reason I would like to share some thoughts about why group affiliation is so compelling and also why we must, under certain conditions, strike out on our own to promote what we consider most important in the manner we consider most responsible.

While I may dismiss the 'big tent' strategy, it's very important not to understate the significance of group affiliation in a counter-cultural social movement. Very few of us are able to do this alone. For that reason it can be particularly draining to face leaving a group to which we have dedicated a great deal of time. And yet at some point our priorities should exceed our sense of loyalty. This is after all not simply a personal hobby but an international social movement for transparency and justice.

From the moment we first arrived it was apparent that NY911Truth was having problems. Max and I, with the encouragement of Nick Levis, tried to help others in the group to focus on well founded facts, specific goals, promotional innovation, and responsible street action techniques. We came in trying to change things for the better, and looking back I'd say it's no surprise that we met some resistance.

9/11 truth groups are not merely activist meetups but also provide outgroup support. As our concern is met with a lot of distrust, anger, and ridicule from much of the public and even our friends and family, it is very important for us to have others in our lives that support our point of view and welcome our continued investment of time and energy. Unfortunately, along with the emotional benefits of that support comes an increasing sense of group loyalty that can become stifling if it exceeds our commitment to movement progress.

This is what we saw happening in NY911Truth. While it had become startlingly apparent to Max and I that Les Jamieson was dishonest and incompetent, many in the group were impervious to our concerns. Loyalty to the group leader seemed to preclude any logical critique of his methods. Our concerns were generally met with anger and paranoia or pessimism about the potential for change.

We started to talk about the possibility of founding a new group. There seemed to be many benefits to doing so, and yet the costs would also he high. We would be giving up our support group. We would be sacrificing use of the church in which meetings were held, some of them hosted by us. Street action would be far more challenging. And we'd have to develop and pay for a whole new set of promotional tools.

While it might be intimidating to go at it alone, or hopefully with a couple other people who agree with your concerns, and the rewards may seem distant and uncertain, I want to emphasize how rewarding it can be to do what you think is best for this movement and also that it's not as challenging as you might think.

First of all, while you might miss some of your peers, escaping from those who you feel have been stifling the groups progress can provide a good deal of motivation. It's a lot easier to maintain your enthusiasm when planning and action don't always involve some kind of fundamental compromise. No more entrenched authority figures. No more guy who always wants to monologue during group discussion. No more flyers with poorly founded information. No more covering for that guy who always makes the group look bad during street action.

Second, there are many online resources that make it easier than ever to discuss strategy, develop promotional materials, and coordinate group activities. In past decades planning had to happen over the phone or in person. With the advent of the internet we now have free resources that allow you to have group discussions, design promotional materials, create basic websites, and organize group activities. Appreciating the challenge people in the past faced to achieve their political goals, we should be encouraged by how much easier it has become.

Third, good promotion doesn't cost much. As I mentioned above, you can set up a free website with little knowledge of the web design. With that in place, spreading the word in the movement is as easy as posting to related forums and 9/11 truth group sites. You can have thousands of full color glossy flyers or tens of thousands of black and white leaflets printed up for only $100. And making a banner sign has always been more about time and inspiration than about the expense.

Finally, I'd like to suggest, based on my experience with TruthMove, that just a couple of thoughtful and concerned people can really have as big an impact as a much larger group of those with less focus or unity. We got started with just two people and together created an educational website, informative flyers, and a big banner sign. And with only a few more participants we have reached tens of thousands of people and certainly opened some of their eyes. It can be really surprising just how much a group of people can get done when they start out on the same page.

So rather than feeling burnt out by a group that seems incapable of adapting to new ideas or stifled by continuous disagreement, consider starting your own. It's not as challenging as you might have thought and it can be both beneficial to the movement and inspiring to others.

Avoiding Burnout - The "Big Tent"

"The 9/11 Truth Movement's Big Tent has functioned in a way that is antithetical to the process of science, as it does not recognize any process for invalidating theories." - Jim Hoffman

The big tent approach is one of the 9/11 truth movement's biggest pitfalls. This approach to activism is based on three basic premises: personal fallibility, the primacy of recruitment, and a disregard for the scientific method. In each case making people feel welcome in the movement is prioritized more highly than whether those people share core movement values, insights, and priorities.

Other social movement's such as the JFK assassination movement have been subject to the detrimental effects of this strategy and yet much of the 9/11 truth movement remains less than well informed about the present and potential problems caused by the adoption of this approach. There are even those who explicitly promote it, some of them knowing full well the detrimental effect it will have.

Many of us frustrated by the behavior of other activists and groups have dealt with those who passively or actively support the big tent strategy. Understanding a problem is the first step in dealing with it. So it's important for us to become familiar with why and how people justify their adherence to this approach.

"Everyone makes mistakes."

As 9/11 truth can take a significant psychological toll on us, we rely upon our movement peers not only for motivation but also for a certain level of emotional support. In the process we can develop feelings of affiliation and trust. No one likes to be criticized, and specifically not by people who we are turning to for a sense of shared purpose and optimism. For this reason it can be difficult to offer or accept constructive criticism.

And yet this movement requires critical thinking and a discerning approach to information and strategy. Progress is not achieved by advocating speculation or utilizing ineffective strategies. Everyone makes mistakes and so we should certainly be patient with those we trust, helping one another to develop a more nuanced understanding of the issues and more productive means of promoting our concerns.

Unfortunately, many are prone to limiting helpful critique in the interest of group solidarity. We might fear that our criticism will be viewed as disloyalty or cause a rift between people. We might feel that criticizing group leaders will undermine their authority. And yet without that criticism, factual and strategic errors will be repeated.

Our dedication to the movement must motivate us to speak up and make our concerns known. When we allow others to repeat mistakes we are participating in those mistakes. Respectful intervention is essential to movement progress.

"We need as many people as possible."

We all want the movement to grow. You can't have a movement without the people. And yet you also can't have a truth movement comprised of people who don't know what truth is, advocate concerns that greatly alienate others, or promote failing strategies. A great deal of unproductive behavior is tolerated because many believe that quantity is more important than quality when it comes to helping the movement grow.

The idea that we should have "civility & fraternal feeling towards all pro-truth voices" as Kevin Barrett has put it, is not practical or responsible. There are many reason for this, not the least of them being the fact that there are people trying to infiltrate and undermine the movement from within. When new people join our groups or discussion forums we should pay attention to their general level of sanity, their motivations, and the information they advocate. Without any sense of healthy motivations, practical strategies, and the boundary between fact and speculation we allow the movement to develop without any clear definition or boundary lines.

The idea here is not to purge the movement of those who disagree with us about specific facts or strategies. Those kinds of disagreements are healthy as they result in debate which tends to help the movement progress and adapt to changing circumstance and diverse audiences. But the movement has no need for bigots, extremists, or sociopaths. And only if we are paying attention to who we are working with will we be able to prevent these people from falsely or poorly representing the nature of our movement.

"Nothing can really be proven."

Whether due to ignorance or intentional disruption there are a number of people, websites, and groups in this movement that advocate speculation that is without logical merit or has been adequately disproven. And one of the primary methods used to maintain their inclusion in the movement is to blur the line between fact and speculation. As we can't prove that 9/11 was an inside job they suggest that anything unproven should be left on the table for public consideration.

This obscures an important fact. The primary basis for the movement's assertion of complicity or need for further investigation is very well founded documentary evidence. The movement also includes a lot of more ambiguous evidence that had not been effectively ruled out by some of the more flimsy aspects of the official story. But the assertion that we must continue to debate or worse yet promote speculation that has been effectively refuted by available facts is totally unacceptable.

The movement can't thrive without a definition. And central to the definition of this movement is an understanding and respect for empirical truth. The scientific method is key to the success of this movement as it is in our most logical reasoning that we are able to upend the official story and bypass the bias and skepticism of many of those who refute our claims. Central to the scientific method is attempting to disproves one's own hypotheses. That approach must inform movement strategy as it should be only the most well founded evidence that we put forward for public scrutiny.

I'll end as I began with a quote from Jim Hoffman.

"The fact that these values closely parallel the egalitarianism, tolerance of diversity, and coalition-building championed in populist and progressive social movements makes them difficult to criticize. However, unlike the application of these values to people in traditional social movements, the 9/11 Truth Movement's Big Tent applies them to ideas. Conflating the respect due people with the respect due ideas is a fundamental error at the heart of the Movement's failure to break into the mainstream thus far."

Avoiding Burnout - Principle Before Association

Coming to terms with the likelihood that our government was in any way complicit in the attacks of 9/11 is a highly challenging paradigm shift to undergo. In the process many basic assumptions about our society are called into question and once we jump down that rabbit hole it's nearly impossible to get back out. You can't really unlearn the truth.

For this reason the 9/11 truth movement engages people on a profoundly deep psychological level. Our concern for the issue and the work we do to promote it feel very personal. At a certain point we may have a difficult time separating our sense of self from our concern for the truth. As a result, any sense of failure, setback, or roadblock can seem particularly upsetting. And the more upset we become, the more likely we are to distance ourselves from involvement in promoting the issue.

As burnout is both likely and detrimental to the movement, it is important for people to learn about ways to avoid it. There are a number of resources that discuss the issue (link to the right), but not many directly related to the 9/11 truth movement. For that reason I have started this blog on the assumption that directly addressing the issue is an important part of dealing with it.

My approach is radical honesty. Certainly appropriate for a 'truth movement.' I believe that one of the primary reasons why people become incapacitated by frustration is that we are all too prone to political correctness. We don't want to step on anyone's toes and the result can be that we don't end up expressing important feelings and thoughts. Others may share our concerns and yet many of us choose solidarity and politeness over expressing what we really believe.

Along those lines I have a number of suggestions that I will express in a series of posts in order to avoid one long post that people might be less likely to read.

Principle before association

This is more easily understood than it is practiced. Basically, my commitment to the truth is stronger than my commitment to any person, group, or even movement. That might seem counter-intuitive in some ways. We have to support the movement in order to have one. And yet the big question is what movement are we supporting. Do we support a movement rife with disinformation? And at what point is the apple just too rotten?

Like the frog sitting in the pot of ever hotter water until it dies, it is very difficult for most of us to break from those around us and acknowledge when some person or group is being counter-productive. We don't want to cry wolf and we don't want to be ostracized from our group. And yet it is exactly this lack of responding to something that troubles us that leads to frustration and burnout.

We need to speak up and be honest about how we feel and what we think.

To draw upon my own experience, I risked a certain amount of ridicule for having challenged the promotion of Steve Alten's "The Shell Game." I got an advanced copy, read it, and simply felt that it didn't express movement values. It had some movement facts included between chapters, but that seemed to me an afterthought meant to capitalize on the movement. As Alten and many of the movement's most prominent participants advocated promoting the book during the "Week of Truth," I continued to criticize the book and question the wisdom of pushing a book that seemed to suggest that the movement advocated false-flag hysteria.

Here's the point. It felt good! I really felt a sense of liberty and commitment to my values in going against the prevailing winds and sticking to my guns. If I hadn't I would have silently stewed in my frustration and felt a sense of pessimism. Expressing myself reinforced my commitment to valid information and productive strategy and made me feel more committed to the movement and it's values.

So next time someone advocates ineffective strategy or poorly founded speculation, speak up! I've found that if you do so in a respectful manner that you are likely to discover that others share your feelings. Some may not understand. There may be some negative consequences. But the core values that got us into this movement in the first place are more important than whether we rub some of our peers the wrong way on occasion.