[atoav]

> Telling people at the coal face to stay cheerful seems unlikely to help.

That isn't what they said tho. They said you have to do something, not that you should just be happy. Doing something can involve things that historically had a big impact in improving working conditions, like collective action and forming unions.

The opposite advice would be: "Everything's fucked, nothing you can do will change it, so just give up." Needless to say that is bad advice unless you are a targeted individual in a murderous regime or similar.