How I Realised I’m Not Really A Cynic

I used to think of myself as quite cynical, but on reflection, it isn’t the case

It’s a funny thing how we view ourselves.

On occasion, it concurs with what might be defined as reality, but very often it does not.

As a species, we are rather adept at deluding ourselves. Sometimes we even manage to delude others and turn them into co-conspirators of our ridiculous charade.

There are many things that I have deluded myself about over the years. For example, I used to delude myself that I was a cynic.

I convinced myself that I saw the world as red in tooth and claw, and that to survive, let alone thrive, one had to comport themselves in line with that reality.

If the land is governed by realpolitik then to do so is a necessity, is it not?

Years of frustration with how my life was, and how I was treated conditioned me to be mistrustful. It primed me to see the world as harsh and uncaring.

You see I believed in fairness, but the more I observed and the more I experienced, the more it became apparent that the belief wasn’t all that widespread.

After all, I wasn’t treated fairly by my peers. I existed in a state of near-perpetual marginalization. I lived in exile.

So, I decided to look for answers, and I found them, or so I thought.

I read The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene when I was in my 20s and it just seemed to make sense. Around the same time, I read The Prince by Machiavelli.

As I read these books I was struck by what I regarded epiphany after epiphany.

What was unclear, what didn’t make sense, what utterly confused and baffled me, about the way my fellow humans behaved became illuminated in detail and definition.

Essentially, people were just bad and selfish. Simple as. Therefore if you want to get on in life, you need to understand this. Life was a zero-sum game and I did not want to be the one left with nothing anymore.

Not only that, but poor behavior from others excuses poor behavior from yourself.

But as I look back I realize that I did not believe this stuff with the hard conviction that I thought.

It is certainly times that I have acted cynically. I did so on the basis of my interpretation of what I had observed in the behaviors of others and the reading material I had ingested. But it always felt a bit forced; like I was acting.

And when people behaved poorly towards me at that time I wasn’t able to dismiss it as part of the great cynical game. It upset me.

The belief in what was just hadn’t gone away, as much as I had tried to push it to the margins. If I believed in justice for myself, then surely it follows that it is right that others have an equal measure of it for themselves too.

I tried to imagine myself as tough, but deep down I was still the same sensitive boy.

The truth is that I believe in ideals such as justice and fairness. I did back then and I still do now. I believe it is right and good to tell the truth, and that it is a moral obligation to do so (most of the time).

Sure, one does not have to look long and hard for examples of poor behavior. People can be cruel, stupid, irrational, selfish, and show a startling lack of empathy.

But one need not look too far either to cast their eye on what is good in this world and the people who work quietly and with diligence to bring it about.

Now, it is most certainly the case that there are people out there who are just plain bad and irredeemably so.

However, most people are a mix of both good and bad. If you speak to their better angles, they do have the ability to hear and listen; even if they don’t always show it.

So am I a cynic? No, not really. I’m just a hopeless romantic who got worn down by disappointment.

But that disappointment was never a truly convincing excuse to act poorly. Nor was it an excuse to not try to make the world a better place, even if just by a little bit.

If we don’t demand from ourselves and others that the world becomes a better place then it never will.

Conversely, if enough of us demand that it does, then surely it will be.