I'm not going to talk about the risk of being assassinated, or sent to jail on trumped-up charges, or even being subjected to IRS scrutiny. I think those risks are quite small...up to the point where you gain large audiences, and even then may be lower than you may expect.

No, I'm going to talk about the mental and emotional risks that you face in this endeavor.

STFU Cassandra

Cassandra was a daughter of Priam, the King of Troy. Struck by her beauty, Apollo provided her with the gift of prophecy, but when Cassandra refused Apollo's romantic advances, he placed a curse ensuring that nobody would believe her warnings. Cassandra was left with the knowledge of future events, but could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions.

The Cassandra metaphor is applied by some psychologists to individuals who experience physical and emotional suffering as a result of distressing personal perceptions, and who are disbelieved when they attempt to share the cause of their suffering with others.
/so says Wiki

Wiki's description runs in parallel with the things I'm going to discuss; it's an apt description. Loneliness, anger, tunnel-vision, frustration. I won't talk about these in any order of occurrence, as they are all related to each other. In fact, there is a great deal of repetition in this discussion as we return to the interplay between the factors.

You chose this path. Hell, maybe you just can't keep yourself from speaking out...If I could make a choice and have the discipline to stick with it, I might just settle for wage-slavery, keeping the boat from rocking, and the comfortable life that can bring. The sad thing for me is that I can't STFU.

Isolation and Loneliness

@lifeworship made a great point in Part Five's discussion

I think the majority of the anger comes from continually having to toss people overboard when their denial becomes dangerous to me.

You may also cut people from your life; it took too much out of my life energy to deal with liberal friends who attempted to use groupherd emotional tactics on me, and who never admitted to even the most obvious of facts that countered their own Narrative.

Yes, Virginia, mishandling classified data is a felony. Hillary should have been charged
Yes, Virginia, Oblahblahcare threw people off life insurance they already had
etcetera ad infinitum

Maybe you had friends that dropped you when you didn't join in the cult chant and didn't allow yourself to be be groupherded.

Maybe you cut people out of your life to protect them from what you are doing.

Maybe with the general "stupidity" of the human race, you just don't want to be around other people.

Maybe you are putting all your energy and time into research and information war operations.

And just maybe, with all the other emotional problems we are going to discuss, you are just a pain in the ass to be around, you sulky, angry bastard ;>

Whatever the cause of the isolation, social detachment is an emotional problem itself. Even for introverted and other antisocial folks, we still need some human company from time to time.

Anger

Why won't these fucking retards listen to me?

Why won't these fucking retards see the cliff they are just about to walk off? For fuck's sake it's right IN FRONT of them?

Why are people so stupid????? Honestly, why?

Go read that link series right after you finish this post. It explains so much. It is already in my links, but it fits right here.

When people can't agree on Common Truths with you, it sets off an emotional responses in you. See Blind men and the elephant: Objective truth versus subjective truth.

When that failure to agree on Common Truth affects you personally, you get even angrier.

Tunnel Vision

Charge those giants, Don. Drive the lance right through their throats

The first problem with tunnel vision is that you are looking at what you have already decided to see!

Sancho can yell in your ear, Those are fucking windmills, jackass, but since you have already decided to play hero by killing giants, giants the windmills MUST be.

The second problem is that we are looking at the outliers most of the time in fighting the Information War. Most people are not affected by corruption in a direct personal way. (for what I mean about outliers, see Norms and Outliers - Some thoughts on creating policy or responses.

Because we are focusing on outliers (which do demonstrate the corruption we seek to defeat), we will tend to see things in more urgent timeframes for action, which makes us focus at that light at the end of the tunnel more fervently.

I think we have all seen the example of the guy with a great cause, who sabotages his own position by going into flying rages at people who disagree with them on minor points, including their own allies. Sometimes we are that guy.

In Information War, disinformation feeds tunnel vision. Tunnel vision leads to failure of mission.

Uncertainty

If you have the slightest bit of honesty in your work, you have to worry about being wrong. Due to what Information War IS, you may be relying on wrong information in your judgement and your actions based on that judgement.

When you decide that you are "dispensing wisdom and truth" to the "masses", and then they don't agree with you, even on inconsequential points, you get angry with them.

The flip side of THIS is that you may hesitate in taking an action because you are uncertain of the underlying judgement. And while that may be the correct decision, sometimes decisions must be made immediately, which heightens the stress associated with uncertainty.

Finally, you may wonder if you are a coward for failing to take a certain action. This is compounded if you find out after the act that your judgement was correct, but that you failed to act.

Frustration

You cant disagree with the adopted values of a bunch of people without they get pissed off at you. When people tie their lives to some screwy idea or other and you attempt to point out to them that for you (not for them, mind you, just for you personally) that this idea is screwy, then serious results can always and will always come out of it for you. Because as far as they care you are the same as saying their lives are nothing and this always bothers people, because people prefer anything to being nothing, look at the Nazis, and that is why they tie their lives to things.
/Prewitt, From Here To Eternity

You aren't going to change a lot of minds. You may be lucky and change a mind here and there. You can lead a jackass to water, but you can't make him think.

Buried in all the background links are essays on why people don't change their minds; cognitive biases are strong..and they are the flip side of heuristics, which do benefit people by reducing the energy required to think.

But the effort you put in to change minds without tangible effects is frustrating without a doubt.

Despair

I watched this documentary, Narco Cultura, on Netflix a couple of years ago. I was thinking to myself
My g!d, I am shoveling sand against the tide with child's bucket and scoop!

I just downloaded another 50-60 references regarding the concept of Information War and the Deep State. I am never going to read all that. By the time, I have read 10 of these, I will have added another 50 things to read. Hell, I haven't even finished entering another 150 refs to the database.

The database I refer to is here:
https://www.zotero.org/stevedisme/items
It's focused on subjects like COINTELPRO, domestic security/intelligence, the security vs liberty balance, Constitutional (American) law re:security, leftism, islamism, propaganda, police intelligence, morality, neoconservatism, globalism, information war, propaganda, and the Deep State

I despair of ever having made full effort in the war. The foreknowledge of insurmountable goal and impossible action makes me hesitate to start.

What to do about these problems

What's the first thing you notice about these problems I talked about?

I didn't give you any solutions to them

I can't. I don't know your situation. All I can tell you is what I do.

I grit my teeth and go on as far as I can. I take faith in eventual victory, to which I will take credit for assisting even if my assistance is minimal or even non-existent. When I fail, I rest and recover strength, and then I pick up the bit again.

What I tell people who are going through harsh conditions is to fix bayonets and slog it across the killing field. You can't win if you won't keep moving...of course taking cover when necessary.

@richq11 adds this, and I think it is worth editing the post to add:

doing the right thing is its own reward. Be satisfied with having done the right thing.

Image Sources:

Evelyn De Morgan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
By Barneto, Vicente, il. [Public domain or CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

ReSteemed

This post has been reSteemed from three months ago. The original posting was at https://steemit.com/informationwar/@stevescoins/how-to-be-an-informationwar-activist-part-six-the-personal-price. There have some minor changes, including the addition of my reference database.

This series index:

So you want to be an InformationWar Activist? - Part One (UPDATED)
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Two, Morality (UPDATED)
How to be an InformationWar Activist, Part Three: Is the Information War Winnable?(UPDATED)
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Four: What the heck IS Information War? (UPDATED)
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Five: The American Deep State (RESTEEMED)
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Six: The Personal Price (UPDATED)
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Seven: Who Might The Players be?
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Eight: Making Sense of Multiple Levels of Corruption
How to be an InformationWar Activist, Part Nine: The Power of Decentralization As A Tool
How to be an InformationWar Activist - Part Ten: Committees of Correspondence, The first American Information War?

Steemit writers contributing to understanding the Information War

@dragon40
@lifeworship
@shayne
@phibetaiota - Information War, OSINT
@fortified
@krnel - Critical Thinking/Cognitive Bias
@richq11
@dwinblood - Critical Thinking
@rebelskum - http://pizzagate.wiki
@aggroed
@ausbitbank
@titusfrost
@canadian-coconut

Study Resources

• Some Resources for Studying Propaganda
• Index of Critical Thinking and Fighting the Information War
• Journal of Information Warfare
• INFORMATION WARFARE AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS (IW/IO): A BIBLIOGRAPHY