The Curse of Cynicism

A few days ago, as I was scanning through X, I ran across this depressing Tweet from former professional MMA fighter Jon Fitch, whose tweets I generally like:

That sentiment actually echoes a book I read (and disagreed with) a few months back from a smart guy named Aaron Clarey:

The theme of the book is basically that things are so screwed up that there’s nothing we can possibly do to fix them, so why not just stop trying to and enjoy life the best you can in a country doomed to go into the toilet?

As a group, conservatives tend to have an ideological tendency to be cynical which is perhaps understandable given that we pay a lot of attention to what makes for a functional society. It’s very difficult to watch our government, our people and our country go down what we know are incredibly destructive paths.

It’s actually amazing how many times conservatives correctly warned people about the problems associated with things like Obamacare or gay marriage, only to be ignored and then have the problems we predicted (and often worse) come to pass. In a sense, it’s easy to understand being a cynic about people when you tell them not to hit themselves in the face with frying pans, they do it anyway, they get hurt badly and then they KEEP ON DOING IT. OVER AND OVER FOR YEARS.

It’s particularly frustrating now because our country is so obviously off the right path in so many ways. Our spending has gotten so out of control that it’s hard to figure out a practical way it could even be fixed. Inflation seems likely to become much worse in the coming years. It seems to be a matter of time until we lose our reserve currency status. The vast majority of our politicians are hopelessly corrupt, incompetent liars who don’t care about anything other than their cushy jobs. Christianity is in decline Our culture is increasingly degenerate. Our military competence seems to be going in the wrong direction quickly. Our border is wide open. The media, big business, schools, and Hollywood are all working against getting America back on the right track. We could go on and on with this. The bad news is endless.

Furthermore, there’s no obvious way to make Americans care about spending, become less degenerate, or get liberals to do the right thing. While certainly we shouldn’t root for secession, revolution, or civil war, it’s certainly easy enough to see how those things could potentially happen over the next few decades. Our country is in a deepening hole, there’s no practical way out of it and even the theoretical fixes for it are being deliberately blocked at every turn.

So, what now? Why shouldn’t we be cynical under these circumstances?

Well, because as a starting point, whether you are talking about a nation or an individual, giving in to cynicism is always a mistake.

Cynicism is essentially saying, “The game’s over, we lost and it’s all downhill from here.”

Except people are wrong about the game being lost all the time. Comebacks happen. In 2022, the Minnesota Vikings were down 33-0 at halftime to the Colts. Every player, every fan, and even every person who actually hasn’t watched the NFL in years (raises hand) would have had every reason to be cynical about the Vikings’ chances. Even after they were well into the comeback, with two and a half minutes left in the game, they supposedly only had a 12.6% chance of winning. Yet, they pulled off the greatest comeback in NFL history and won 39-36 in overtime.

You might say, “A nation isn’t football!” That’s true. Football has a definitive set of rules and a time limit. Nations don’t. Nations can go on long after disasters that would obliterate a human being or a football team happen. Germany lost WW2 and they’re still here. Japan lost WW2 and was nuked, but it’s still a nice place to visit. The Roman Empire might have fallen, but Rome is one of the world’s best vacation spots. The British may have lost America and their Empire, but they still have one of the best countries in the world. Even America has gone through a Revolutionary War, a Civil War, a Depression, two world wars, a Cold War with the threat of nuclear annihilation hovering over us, and 9/11. Yet, here we are. Cynics are sometimes right, but even the history of our own country proves them wrong.

Part of that is because very seldom are a group of people mostly good or mostly evil. Different pockets of humanity tend to have small groups of truly good people, small groups of truly evil people, and a large, ever-shifting majority that goes along to get along and follows the crowd. It’s easy to be cynical these days about the government, pharmaceutical industry, and media, but are most of them truly bad people? No, they’re going with the flow. When that flow changes, they’ll change, too.

Human beings also go through cycles, just like the famous saying goes:

We’re definitely in the back half of the cycle, but eventually, we’re going to cycle back to the top.

On the human level, nobody likes a cynic, not even cynics. Setting aside the fact that nobody needs a drag, cynicism makes people bored, miserable, and weak. How could it do otherwise in a world where there really is no standing still, there’s only getting better or getting comparatively farther behind? Your happiness depends on not being cynical and so does your future. When you give in to cynicism, you become an irrelevance at best to the people trying to make a positive difference and a hindrance at worst.

What has a better chance to make your life and the world better?

“Everything’s screwed up and everyone’s corrupt. Might as well just accept failure and enjoy things as much as possible because there’s no point in even trying.”

Or:

Even if it doesn’t work out, go out swinging for the fences. That’s the attitude that got human beings through thousands of situations worse than the one we’re in. Hell, that’s the attitude that made human civilization thrive:

At the end of the day, I don’t have any special knowledge that tells me exactly how my life, the country, and the world will end up. Maybe an asteroid will hit the planet tomorrow, the earth will blow up, and everything human beings will have done from the dawn of time until this second will have all been for naught. Even if that were true, it’d still be worth trying to keep fighting to make life better for yourself, the world, and humanity right up to the last second.

Don’t ever give in to cynicism. Keep acting as if what you do matters because it does. Very, very few people truly change the whole world in major ways, but the smallest kind word, good deed, and good example can change someone’s world for the better and maybe, just maybe, a lot more of the world in the process. 

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