Cynicism is a word with heavy negative connotations. "You're being cynical" is never intended as a compliment. But there is something of a disconnect between this perception of cynicism and its role in reality. Most of the interesting people are cynics. Without cynicism we don't get great sarcasm or satire or stand-up comedy. Cynicism is associated with bitterness or eternal negativity; with those who can never be pleased. And yes, many are like that, but there is another side of cynicism. The dictionary defines the term with the negative connotations. But what of positive cynicism? Perhaps I'm not familiar with the proper term here, or it is missing from the language. A free-thinking person with high expectations will be lumped in with negative cynics, even though they are cut of entirely different cloth. These are the kinds of people we will be referring to here.
There is a world of difference between the man who can never be pleased and the man (or woman) who is waiting to be pleased. Imagine a ballet aficionado who loves that mode of art more than anything, but lives in some isolated country with only terrible ballet companies. He would be constantly displeased with every performance. To most people, he would be indistinguishable from the negative cynic. The ballerinas would dismiss his harsh reviews since he seems incapable of saying anything nice. And yet, if a wonderful company finally emerged, he would become their most loyal patron, would sing their praises, and would experience immense satisfaction. The cynic doesn't exist for the purpose of spreading negativity. To the contrary, he lives to share his love with the exquisite, the inspired, and the divine, but he is too principled to give undeserved praise. When the artist is a master, no one is more moved than the cynic.
To really know the cynic, we must compare him to his opposite. The opposite of a cynic merely adopts the values of whatever social entity they belong to and champions those values with incessant optimism. Most ambitious people are these kinds of anti-cynics, and they dominate leadership in government, in corporation, and even in the military, where they are called careerists. Careerists are people who's only goal is rank acquisition, so they wrap themselves in a shiny coat woven from the core values of their institutions. Their whole life becomes an act to portray a character who exhibits the traits most likely to be promoted. They are hypersocialized. They acquire all the values and behaviors they think society wants them to have. Their innate characters and intellects are squashed.
Such people acquire great benefit in the material world. In fact, it would be perfectly advisable for a cynic to adopt the role of the anti-cynic, just so long as they don't lose grasp of their own identity and values. Stoics knew that, even if they were held as slaves, the essence of their being was eternal and could never be altered or destroyed. There is much to risk in cynicism. Cynics are rarely powerful. Power requires latching onto a group identity, which requires a cynic to either forgo their free-thinking and high expectations, or to at least pretend to. Most of human social dynamics consists in picking sides. The true cynic says, "I have deep reservations with both sides."
I have found it interesting that, upon giving open support to Trump, I was quickly dismissed by most of my liberal friends as just a narrow-sighted Republican partisan, despite no additional supporting evidence. In fact, I have longed loathed the Republicans, and never voted for Bush, McCain, or Romney. I'm well aware that I couldn't be elected dogcatcher as a Republican because I don't pretend to be religious or strongly opposed to abortion. Conversely, I couldn't be elected as a Democrat, as I'm not a 3rd wave feminist or an Islamophiliac. The only path to power, if I was so-inclined and capable, would be to adopt one of the roles and run with it, which they all do. (Yes, even Trump.)
Despite the significant costs of cynicism, the rewards are the sanity and satisfaction that can only be acquired by living life in accordance to one's values, innate character, and observations of reality. Ultimately everything the anti-cynic is doing is to play pretend. They pretend they have values and qualities where they don't. They pretend to give optimistic praise where it supports the illusion they are crafting. They pretend that their adopted side is without flaw. One of the strongest recurring themes in this blog is a disgust with people who discard their human traits of observation, reasoning, and logic. The anti-cynic does all this. They trade in their precious and sacred gifts for the chance to ride of the waves of social circumstance. They are, by their actions, less human. Cynicism is the key to personal salvation. Jesus was quite the cynic, was he not?
Brett Stevens wrote an excellent piece a couple weeks ago called Entropy and Heat Death. Entropy is the effect of nature that drives systems to change states, and always in the direction of greater disorder. We can think of the entirety of our physical existence as harnessing available energy to maintain order in the face of the constant eroding force of entropy. We make the choices most likely to aid us in our eternal battle against disorder. Social dynamics are analogous. We are compelled constantly towards social disorder. Only through effective harnessing of energy can we maintain civilization. We make the choices that seem most likely to aid in that goal, usually based on experience and intuition. The point that Stevens was making was that, because post-modernists (fancy word for liberal) want us to pretend all choices are morally equivalent, we completely neuter our ability to fight entropy. It's like saying that it doesn't matter whether or not you insulate the walls of your home because no life choice is better than another. Of course we know better because we quickly pay the price for the mistake. But the costs of societal mistakes are paid out in the scale of human lifetimes. We can run seriously off the tracks before the inevitable corrective forces have their way with us.
The anti-cynic is our enemy. They don't give preference to the best ideas and solutions. They don't make the necessary distinctions between good and bad. Thus, they are just as useless as the liberals. But they're even worse, because they act from the state of pure self-interest. Many liberals have great desire to sustain civilization, they are just misguided in approach. The anti-cynic is only interested in their status. They'll gladly sink the ship so long as they get to play captain as it dips under. Only the cynic is fully dedicated to the task of keeping the boat righted and on the proper course. Without cynics civilization would implode within a generation.
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