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I think there's a general failure of communication here, and throughout the current social discourse on "cynicism".

There's a sort of false trichotomy at play in this post, and on Twitter I've noticed a dichotomous version: "Should we be happy that we're improving, or sad that there's so far to go?" (That's my summary of it, anyway)

Why not both? We should appreciate how far things have come (it is truely astounding), but of course that doesn't imply that we should be content with where we are. We should be deeply discontent - at least to the extent that it motivates us to fight towards a better future. A magnitude or type of discontent that leads to depression/apathy is obviously not helpful.

It seems like a significant portion of tribal "controversy" on social media is stoked by mouthpieces on either side that are almost purposefully playing into the dichotomy perspective, because adding subtlety into the discussion would throw water on the flames, and that's just ending the "fun".

Call me cynical, but I think the communication here is just virtue signaling. Both the content of the message and the act of displaying it.

OK.

I think this comment is a good example of a type of cynicism that we're discussing, probably the type that most instinctively jumps out as "cynical."

Like pessimism and optimism, cynicism often boils down to a bias.

The key word is "just" (virtue signalling). Blogging, commenting, and communicating generally are various things as once. We're pursuing intellectual curiosity, showing off, participating in a culture, signalling virtue, signalling other things... to ourselves and to others.

Our bias and/or perspective lens dictates our focus. A lot of cynicism, certainly within my generational cohort, is also about signalling. Signaling that we're not naive, that we're cool, grunge, etc. If you hate grunge, hippies, Diogenes or whatnot, you're more likely to adopt a perspective whereby they're "just" bunch of virtue signaling posers.

You can always plausibly adopt this perspective. Grunge, hippies, Diogenes & whatnot are attention seekers. They are cultural figures, which is kind of virtue signalling by definition. They're also other things though. Reducing these to "just" virtue signalling is cynicism regarding these things.

You can also have a general cynical viewpoint, but it's pretty hard to do without also adopting arseholery. As a general cynic, you pretty much assume that base motivation for everything. OP is just virtue-signalling optimism. Drewcoo is just edgelord cool-signalling. Netcan is just cool-signaling.

I think what is true from reading reddit, HN & the internet broadly is that cynicism is very "in" right now, to the point where it's annoying. Hence, I suppose, why such posts do well.

It's signaling something, but not virtue: criticism implies expertise. People observe the respect experts get and start imitating the behavior. Since they don't have anything actually insightful to add, they fall back on generic opposition to everything, also called cynicism.

It's cargo-culting for non-(non-?)academia. HN, the world's #1 source of smartitude, may just be its purest crystallization.

"Should we be happy that we're improving, or sad that there's so far to go?"

A hardcore cynic might say, there is no improvement, only change. We might have come so far with some things, but lost or destroyed so many others in exchange.

I'm not chronically depressed or antagonistic because of it, but I think I'd rather have what I'd consider a realistic and true view of the world as it is rather than anything else.

I knew some cynical folks and you do not seem to be one of them. The criteria is not how objectively you view the world, but how you act on it. E.g. someone “redirects” the train of medicine for troops in a conflict, because anybody would do that if it wasn’t them (and spent this money on things much worse than they planned). Someone figuratively spits onto a guy operating a gate, because he didn’t choose to have a good time in his life anyway.

And they are right – that train would never make it to its destination, and a gate operator made a mistake in their career. But once you accept that as how the world works naturally, it’s easy to just go and take it, cause you’re not that bad, bad is the world. That is cynical. Simply seeing things as they are is not.

One of the strongest medicines against cynical mindset which I’ve tried is to do a “no-complain challenge” (from tfa)

I don’t know, maybe it works for them, but if I would no-complain everyday, I believe I’d become cynical AF. Our local prisoners have the rule: do not seek the truth, i.e. do not complain about anything, it is what it is. Everyone experiences it and your problem is irrelevant. This teaches them to live on their own, ignore any unfairness, and get whatever they can whenever they can. Long-term convicts basically live by these rules.

Of course there are levels of cynicism, and maybe it’s all about moderate levels of it, not extreme ones.

Interesting post. I think cynicism is both about how you view the world and how you act in it, because the former informs the latter. So to me cynicism is both a view of the world broadly, I think of it sort of as Hobbesian, empirical and realistic rather than idealistic and certain ways to act individually. A sort of Machiavellian personality type is to me a pragmatic form of cynicism.

To take the prison example. I guess a cynical person would say, yes, complaining makes no sense because if you loudly complain the guards just beat you up. Staging a prison revolt is just going to give you more years and the justice system is screwed as well. The prison is a zero sum environment and you're likely only going to get ahead by screwing over someone else, and being deceptive and clever.

And honestly to me that's a fairly accurate description of actual prisons in most places. Cynics tend to be people who are acutely aware of power and how people leverage it for their own interests, but I don't think it implies that one has to resign from life.

Thanks for the personal take, a lot of people would couch that perspective in abstract terms or attack the piece.

I see cynicism as coming from alienation, lack of alignment, "alone in a crowd" type of thing. I start thinking cynically when I have a problem that I don't trust other people with, and feel like I can't solve on my own.

IMO cynicism is not a problem on an individual level.

It’s when the group has a lot of cynics is when we have a problem. Have you ever had to work with a group of “low energy” people? They’re not only just low energy — they’re energy vampires.

The converse is true, too. It’s absolutely sapping working with folks who’ll just repeat bullshit and call you a cynic for trying to helpfully point out the flaws in their thinking.

There is a very real difference between constructive criticism and simply complaining. In most cases, complaining and shutting people down without suggesting any possible alternative or improvement just makes the situation even less unpleasant for everyone.

Sometimes complaining means acknowledging that a problem exists even if you don't know the solution. Pointing out problems is valuable too. On the other and the people[1] who "opt out of cynicism" generally want to live in the "best of the possible world" where problems just disappear if don't look at them.

[1] that I've met and interacted with, of course there's a sampling bias.

Pointing out a few core problems at a few key moments is valuable.

Pointing out every problem, all the time, isn't.

It's a very fine line and not everyone manages to stay on the right side.

True, but that's why I specified "helpfully" pointing out flaws.

Wouldn’t it also be applicable to a lot of intrinsically problematic situations ?

For instance if you had to direct an “employees right” course in a strongly anti-union company, you’d have “low energy” people looking at you with dead eyes, and you’d be complaining they suck your energy too. But is it really a problem outside of the scope of your course ?

> I think I'd rather have what I'd consider a realistic and true view of the world as it is rather than anything else.

You say that but a realistic and true view of the world will show that things have indeed changed for the better for a lot of marginalized people -- and within our lifetimes, too. It's definitely not "always the same", to paraphrase the author. If you think it is, you may be the kind of person the author is referring to.

I agree with you completely. I think that I am also a cynic based on this article but certainly an optimistic cynic. I believe fully that things can but we will have to work together(which is admittedly a very difficult thing to do) and also be very smart about the changes we make. I would argue that choosing to ignore the reality of things and to not be cynical would ultimately make change harder to achieve. Working smarter not harder, after all.

Definitely. I see myself as a cynic, but I also don't find cynicism compulsive like the author suggests. If someone asks me to stop being cynical, or a situation calls for less reductive voices in the room, I have no problem shutting up and simply listening to people. Mentally, I can still digest the conversation around me and operate normally, but acting like it's some kind of disorder is a silly exaggeration, plain and simple.

If you continuously call all politicians equally corrupt, they have no incentive not to be. You and the people you influence will have no justification based in reality for the decisions you get to make, like voting. That’s the end of democracy.

Cynicism is a form of having outcome independence. I can only change what is in my control. The forces of zealots, the paranoid, the corrupt, sociopaths, and benevolent dictators will keep swarming around in a cacophony until long after I'm dead. I choose to let it ruin my day on a regular basis, or I can find inner happiness.

Isn't that Stoicism though?