Head to Head: Cynicism

A negative outlook doesn’t accomplish anything.

The word “cynicism” has many different definitions depending on where you search, but a common thread between nearly all of them is a general contempt for or distrust of the motives of others. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t often in this mindset.

We live in an age where citizens fear the police that are supposed to protect them and where women are hard-pressed to speak out without having the word “feminist” spat at them as if it were a racial slur. People have good reason to be distrustful of others; human nature is more terrifying than any Stephen King tale.

The issue here is that the thin line between justifiable frustration with the world and pedantic whining is an easy one to blur. Without a doubt, humanity in general could stand for a few improvements.

What the world doesn’t need is more keyboard warriors and coffee shop heroes who believe they’re doing the rest of us a favor by picking apart the work of others.

They believe nothing is adequate, everything is too commercialized, and that without their butter knife-sharp wit, the general population of plebeians would have no idea what to be outraged about.

I have always valued criticism, as do most who take their craft seriously, but there is a monumental difference between necessary criticism and negativity for negativity’s sake.

The quintessential cynical a-hole believes he and his ilk are the only ones who see the world for what it truly is. To them, the rest of the world is still sleeping, and their supposedly scathing social commentaries are part of the greater good.

It rings true that throughout history society sometimes needs someone to pull the curtain back on real issues. Considering everyone who doesn’t share your narrow worldview an idiot is not the same thing.

Those with real clarity recognize that, at least in the social media age, the cynical a-hole is little more than a parasite, leeching the morale of those who actually intend on making a difference.

Society fetishizes ideas. They enjoy promises of change and a bright future, but often do little to contribute besides offer moral support via a shared picture on Facebook. The world over eats TED Talks like candy, riding high on waves of temporary, meaningless inspiration.

Cynics, supposedly far too enlightened for that, instead fetishize pessimism. Some argue that a cynical outlook arises naturally out of the abysmal state society is in, which I consider to be an excuse.

Don’t like the state of something? Be an agent of change. Words can be powerful, but if you believe that your edgy slam poetry about society is somehow any less vapid than someone’s New Year’s Resolution, you need to get a clue.

Has it ever occurred to most cynics that they might hate themselves and the world around them because they don’t feel satisfied with the direction their lives are taking?

Negativity is a mindset that we love to wallow in. It feels good to be angry, it feels good to blame others, and it’s a hell of a lot easier than taking any personal responsibility.

If one doesn’t do anything to contribute to society, he can’t rightfully call himself part of it, and it’s easy to hate something you view as separate from yourself.

But nothing could possibly be wrong with cynics, because they have it all figured out.

They’re stuck at a 9 to 5 they hate because that’s the card this crappy society dealt them. They always wanted to be in a band but never had the time because those revolutionary blog posts aren’t going to write themselves.

I’m as guilty as anyone of a cynical outlook. I believe right now we’re all on a proverbial Titanic, and the lifeboats are filling up fast.

Still, I would rather help someone aboard than sneer about how they should have learned to swim.

Sycophantic praise does little to effect change.

As a society, we pay a lot of lip service to self-expression. However, when someone expresses something we perceive to be “negative,” how do we react?

We rise on our high-horse and engage in the quixotic crusade; we either blame the critic for their acute observations, or we choose to pity whatever happened that turned them cynical. Rather than put forward the work and attempt to see things from a critical perspective, it’s so much easier to ignore protests and brand suffering as self-imposed.

This, to me, is an indication that we’ve become cynical about cynicism. We engage in the idolatry of “the man in the arena,” not because that ideal is more important, but because it is more palatable to root for the gladiator. That is nothing new; rather, it’s a relic of the limited binary thought that defined the modern age, and it’s high time we moved past that way of thinking.

It’s been said that cynicism is intellectually lazy because you limit your perspective. You are seen as narrow-minded if you discount the entire human race as villians who strategically game for their own personal benefit. But selfishness has been demonstrated throughout human history, so to me it seems far lazier to don rose-tinted glasses and paint one’s world view with transcendental platitudes. What can be gained from ignoring the fact that people, by their very nature, are selfish pricks?

The crowds who engage in the positivity-centric approach prefer to place their bets on the future and ignore the problems of the present. Rather than confronting the harsh immediacy and problems of today, they prefer to fantasize about some nonexistent utopic future and naively believe that things will work themselves out. If you can just close your eyes and dream hard enough, the problem will go away on its own. That ideal seems narrow to me.

But the thing that’s important to look at is that Theodore Roosevelt gave his “man in the arena” speech in Paris in 1910; a century and five years short of a score ago. His words are not timeless, nor are they enduring; they don’t bear particular reverence to any larger “truth.” Again, we only worship “the man in the arena,” because the ideals are more palatable, not because they are necessarily correct.

The thought is that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” However, here’s where the disconnect is: no one invites the cheerleader to come watch game footage and offer feedback. There’s a gap between positive thought and positive action and a common complaint can be found in the “everyone gets a trophy,” trope; the mentality that rewards mediocrity, rather than fostering excellence. We would rather sit on the sidelines and cheer, rather than get on the field and demonstrate what winning looks like.

So I think what we really need is to start paying more attention to the critics and learn to foster our own skeptical and critical senses. The more we are saturated by TED talks and sappy inspirational share- worthy nonsense, the more we put our cart before the horse and do ourselves a greater disservice by being content.

In reality, no matter how fastidious or polemic or sardonic I might be, I don’t think you should ever stop questioning. If you give up your ability to inquire about your surroundings, you will never grow, and you will never progress. That’s where I see disservice being done by paving over problems with sycophantic praise; you don’t congratulate someone for a “job well done” if they didn’t do a good job in the first place. Just being the doer of deeds no longer suffices in this day and age.

Rather than continuing our needless idolization of “the man in the arena,” perhaps we should recognize the facts of our ideals; selfless acts are rarely demonstrated by the mob that sip champagne and cheer on as the ship sets sail from port.

Perhaps the extraordinary character isn’t even exercised by the man who helps others on to those proverbial lifeboats; rather, virtue has always been the prerogative of the captain who sacrifices everything to go down with his ship.