I’m with Cliffy on this one. I don’t even get the question. Cynical, to me, just means “sensible.” If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out. Trust, but verify. Don’t take any wooden nickels. It just seems common-sensical to me not to take the word of someone you don’t know for sure to be worthy of your deep and abiding trust (i.e., anyone), but to question and investigate. Is that being cynical? It seems to me that NOT to be at least a little cynical is to be naive and lazy.
I try not to be rude, but “Would you mind showing me how you reach that conclusion?” seems much more sensible than “Huh, I have no idea why you think so but I’ll think so too”–is that a cynical position?
Do you mean being cynical WRT things like the Iraq war? In that case, I think it’s just because I have a brain.
Do you mean things like rah-rah corporate meetings with managers who’ve drunk the kool-aid? Again, I have a brain, but I think the motivation is that this is so not me I don’t know why I’m being bothered.
Sometimes, though, I revert to a cynical posture as a reflection of my own self-doubt. It isn’t exactly sour grapes, though it’s close; it’s more like “I recognize the grapes are probably sweet, but I don’t think I can get them, so I’m going to say something nasty about them anyway.”
Count me in as saying being cynical is necessary for survival. I think you have an unnecessarily negative view of cynicism. It doesn’t mean I reject everything first sight, it just means I look at most things twice, hesitate, look before leaping, and often save my heart and my sanity.
Do I still get hurt? Sure. But it’s not such a shock.
Do I still fall? Hell yeah. But you know, I expected it, so I can pick myself up again.
And do I still do things without thought, and enjoy my life? Yeah, occasionally. I miss the innocent naive me sometimes but when I think of the cost of being like that…
cynicism for me. :dubious:
What happens to the cynic’s credibility when he cries wolf 364 days a year, and there’s no wolf? How does the cynic convince people when there really is a wolf on the 365th day?
I’m looking out for myself and those I love. If you want to blithely walk into a hole in the floor, no skin off my back.
And if I am careful 365 times out of the year and there is only one wolf but you’re not…who gets eaten by the wolf?
Why is it the cynic’s responsibility to make people believe him? It’s other people’s lookout, not mine. This is not to say I never warn people, but this is exactly what I get. “You’re overreacting.” So I shrug, and hope for the best, but often the worst happens to them - even though I predicted it!
I’m not being cynical so I can tell people what to do.
I fully realize the fact that I am but a peon on this earth with is a peon in the galaxy which is beyond infinitesimal in this universe.
I fully realize that I WILL die someday as will my wife and children. One of my children already died tragically. Those stories about deaths you read in newspapers and elsewhere aren’t something that happens to other people. You are in the line for the inevitable as well and you will appear in them in a short amount of time all things considered. Things could go out of order too and that will be more horrific than your own death.
Your life could turn around at an instant at any time. One year ago today I had recently suffered a job loss, my colonial era house had been half destroyed by a 250 year old oak tree strike a few weeks earlier and (I mean this to the day and hour), my baby daughter went into spontaneous seizures that left her comatose and mostly brain dead to die 6 weeks later. We could all be dead of a nuclear war starting at any time. A version of the influenza virus of 1918 could return at any time and wipe at 100 million people or more.
Even trustworthy people are still guilty of looking out for their own benefit. That salesperson wants you to buy that shirt even if it looks terrible on you. Your boss might go to bat for you if their is something unjust going on but if his or her livelihood is at stake, your boss is going to bail on you. So will friends, neighbors, and most family. You have to assume that every single telemarketer and e-mail spammer is out to screw you. If you don’t, you are a fool. 100% distrust of every and I mean every marketing contact should be taught in schools.
Being cynical is a core part of a healthy worldview and it irritates the crap out of me for the people that cannot see falsehoods at an instant like my Ph.D. mother). It is also bad not to have disaster plan in place including what to do with attempted violent crimes (5 attempted in my family including me up to attempted murder, armed robbery, carjacking, hostage situation and assault: none were successful because we all knew it was do or die. I turned the situation from defense to offense with my 2 armed attackers with full knowledge that I might die that moment. They went back to prison. I was fine. My father’s was the worst with a 12 hour kidnapping and attempted murder and he was cynical also so he just fought back and won)
The world is incredibly evil and I don’t like how sheltered most people seem to be. At the same time, I operate under a different set of assumptions and probabilities and I am very optimistic in a cynical kind of way.
It seems to me that people are discussing a wide range of traits that I would not call cynicism here. Let me give some examples.
Saying “Let’s leave early because I assume traffic will be bad” is pessimism, not cynicism.
Reflecting on the lack of an Ultimate Purpose To Existence In General is nihilism, not cynicism (though I would guess that most nihilists are cynics, the reverse is not necessarily true).
Cynicism is when you see somebody going through a subway car in a tattered set of Army fatigues, with one arm missing and the other holding a cup, proclaiming that he is a disabled and deeply ill veteran whose pension has been screwed up by the Government and to please help him scrape together $20 to stay at the Y “which is much safer than a homeless shelter”, that you assume he is full of shit, has an arm hidden inside his shirt and is going to spend it on drugs.
Cynicism is to always be looking for the Catches In The Fine Print of Life. There are no free lunches, unless you’re willing to buy.
Cynicism is assuming that real-world events are ultimately driven by motives that are concrete and not abstract and idealistic.
Cynicism means to “look at what they do, not what they say” when judging someone’s actions or character.
Have you not seen a “disabled and deeply ill vet that just needs $20 bucks to get some food (“god bless”)” on every street corner?
Do you honestly expect someone to buy you lunch with no catches?
Do you sign contracts without reading them because the nice man says the last few pages are just standard lawyer talk?
Can you look around at the world we live in and believe what “they” say?
I’m only a cynic when people are involved, nothing in the history of the human race has convinced me to do otherwise.
Sure, my family, pets and friends are ok, with the rest of the world I watch my wallet.
Interesting juxtaposition of post and username.
I think there may be two or three kinds of “cynics,” and this could be causing some confusion in this thread.
By a cynic, do you mean someone who takes into account the possibility that there’s a catch; that the “disabled vet” is scamming you, that people aren’t being honest with you, that there are hidden agendas and selfish motives? This, I’d say, is a good attitude to have: realistic, pragmatic, healthy.
Or do you mean someone who is sure the “disabled vet” must be scamming you, that there must be a catch, that no one is ever trustworthy, that no one ever does anything unselfish, and that people—all people—are no damn good? This thorough cynicism I definitely disagree with: it’s not healthy and not (according to my personal experience) realistic. Plus, a person holding such an attitude must himself never have done anything selfless or noble, since if he had, he’d have a counterexample to his own theory.
A third, middle possibility is the type of cynic who assumes the worst until, but only until, they learn otherwise. For such a person, the attitude I described in the previous paragraph is the default, but it can be overridden whenever there’s good reason to. Such people may miss some of the good in the world, but they won’t get hurt or taken advantage of as often—though I wonder if that’s even entirely true, or if their attitude could act as something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as they repel the sincere, guileless people whom they have trouble believing in.
This is the sort of cynicism I’m talking about the most. The kind of people who assume that people are always trying to screw others over. However, they often don’t have any evidence. How would this kind of cynic KNOW that this “disabled vet” is a fraud without even knowing him?
Well, you see, only a small percentage of veterans in need are walking the streets, but a huge percentage of the scammers. OK, I don’t “know” he’s not legit. But if I routinely gave money to people like him, I do “know” that I would be contributing to a fake artist more often than not.
I give to charities (such as Coalition for the Homeless and or food distribution agencies). I don’t give to panhandlers.
There was an article in the NY Times a few years back profiling some very successful panhandlers with different MOs, all of them involving fake sob stories. The most successful one was a guy who dressed up well (in a business suit) and would approach people at Grand Central Station or Penn Station during rush hour, saying he had been pickpocketed or mugged, lost his monthly train pass, cash and credit cards, and needed to borrow the one-way fare to take the next train to Connecticut, and promising to mail back the money the next day if the person would give him the address. Many people gave him the money and said “don’t worry about it” regarding the address.