Toxic Optimism: How to use realism in campaign messaging
As a political organizer who works to get toxic chemicals out of Americans’ daily lives, my morning newsfeed can seem pretty bleak. Recent headlines include: “Thousands of toxic sites located in flood zones,” “EPA Chief proposes to defund Chemical Safety Board,” “Bees are dying at unprecedented rates,” and, perhaps most distressingly, “Monsanto’s Roundup found in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.”
When your job is to worry about what’s in your favorite ice cream, you tend to lose your sunny disposition.
Optimism fades. But I would argue that can be a good thing.
One refrain that we repeat in the social change movement is that we need to show our members, our supporters, and our staff an optimistic vision for the future. Hope and change are possible. We do have the right answers, and we can make a difference. But we have to do that with a clear-eyed sense of urgency.
I’ve been thinking about pessimism v. optimism after finding out that optimistic people are more at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals. For example, homeowners who underestimate their chances of radon exposure are less likely to buy radon test kits than are those with a more realistic sense of risk — their optimism leaves them vulnerable.
And this applies to other aspects of our health. National Cancer Institute researchers found that people who lowballed their risk of heart disease were more likely to show early signs of it.
So what does this have to do with campaign work? A 2014 study that found that Americans were more likely to describe their day as “particularly good” than people in any rich European country. Americans are known for optimism and the belief that things will work out. As campaigners, we have to learn how to appeal to that optimistic nature while simultaneously opening people’s eyes to reality.
Throwing in a dash of pessimism makes us better communicators: people with a pessimistic mindset tend to use more effective language, and people listening to bad news tend to pay more detailed attention to the message. Giving people bad news opens them up to listening to our campaigns with nuance.
Still, this isn’t always an easy tone to strike. We have to convince people that the problems in our world are persistent and urgent — while still making it clear that there’s a way forward. Hope is a powerful motivator.
We are living at a watershed moment in American politics. We are at a crisis point when it comes to global warming, getting big money out of politics, and reining in corporations that are currently poisoning people with toxic chemicals. With so much happening, people generally respond in two ways: 1) they are so overwhelmed that they shut out the news; or, 2) they are so optimistic about the future that they fail to see that our country faces huge problems.
As campaigners, we don’t have the luxury of either choice. We have to act. We have get everyone else to act with us. In this time of crisis, we have a real chance to galvanize political action.
But I will leave you with a slightly hopeful note for the future: Ben & Jerry’s has recently taken steps to get rid of the Roundup residue in its ice cream.
Dig in.
