On Cynicism

A lot of cynics I encounter are people who find it hard to reach out, connect & participate in an affable manner; there is a 'people-skills' deficit there borne out of innumerable crushed hopes & experiences. Typically, they've been rejected in some form or another, not having had their talents recognised or developed from an early age - squashed in the crib by indifferent or incompetent parents.

Perhaps they over-estimated themselves from an early age and life has thrown up one road-block after another in their pursuit of happiness. 'Low-functioning' cynics of this stamp can be easily cajoled by flattery but react viciously at the slightest perceived slight as once you extend them a kindness they invest you in turn with an unrealistic amount of hope and expectation.

People generally recoil from this as it gets too 'clingy' and once again they are back nurturing their favourite grievances. Many become divorced from the main thrust of society whose rules they can never fully comprehend and they wind up begging in the streets, populating our jails or filling our mental institutes.

One thing all of them lack is real personal confidence and a capacity to roll with life's punches; having never experienced true love and affection they're incapable in turn of ever developing a social instinct that will advance them outside the narrow confines of their own wants and needs.

Being spurned or rejected or being continually presented with the worst in human nature in circumstances in which they feel themselves (or are actually trapped into experiencing) is an acid that rots away at their capacity to develop normally and in time they internalise and habituate those worst elements and pass them on in turn in cyclical manner.

Much of this socially bred cynicism occurs in the worst blighted areas of our countries; pockets of social exclusion divorced from the normal concerns of legislators and voters alike - it's very neglect drives a wedge in society as one class habituates itself into divorcing it's concerns from another.

Cynicism in it's essence is to impugn the worst motives in others which becomes easier to an extent when considered in tandem with that other great habit of the human mind to classify and bracket off different groups of people in accordance to ready made formulas which chime well with our lazy preconceptions (all politicians are this etc.. they're not, though many of them are) - but I don't have any time for cynicism as a default attitudinal stance or worldview, there are well-intentioned people stitching and re-stitching the social fabric every day and without whose efforts we'd quickly see what it means to descend into a real hell, and not just one of our own making.

Harbour a residual cynicism by all means, it's necessary after all to avoid being swallowed up by disillusionment (this is basic survival) but keep it in check and give it proportion; it's simply irrational and defeatist to lose sight of the good that is out there - a suggested antidote might be to trouble yourself in identifying that good, see how it works, marvel how it thrives, then maybe do something yourself to give it a dig out.