Cynicism is like cholesterol; there’s a good kind and a bad kind. I used to dislike cynicism categorically, but over time I’ve come to recognize that we call at least two diametrically opposed concepts by the same name. This sort of rhetorical sleight of hand is very useful for discrediting arguments and attitudes which otherwise might be inconvenient, so it is unsurprising to see it popularized. I try to untangle these semantic knots when I find them.
The cynical approach which I still dislike is that which automatically leaps to suspect the motives of any kind or altruistic action, which suspects every person and action of an ulterior motive. This, I would still contend, is no more innately enlightened than the sweet naiveté of never suspecting ulterior motives, and is far more socially harmful. This was usually the sort of behavior I was thinking of when I’ve decried the cynical approach in the past.
However, there’s another perspective, which is often called cynicism as well, which distrusts institutions and their end results – and consequently also distrusts members of those institutions. Even that’s not quite accurate though, because I actually have great faith in institutions – faith that they will continue as they began, will carry forward those principles which established them, will maintain themselves and will reinforce themselves, and that whichever individuals act within those systems usually end up having a very limited capability to change them in any meaningful way once they are established.
This is not so much a lack of trust as it is a surfeit – I trust things to continue to be what they are. This is not to be confused with what they say they are, which is often something else entirely. I suppose this also touches on the semantic knot of the many things we mean when we speak of ‘trust’ – whether we trust in motive or trust in capability implies vastly different things about the entity we are trusting.
Neither of these perspectives – distrusting humanity or distrusting authority and institutions – bear much resemblance to the original philosophy of cynicism. It is worth mentioning, though, that since the tenets of this philosophy included a rejection of societal value systems in favor of living a life closer to the necessities of human nature, the latter is certainly the more similar to the origins of the term.
Nevertheless, not only are these perspectives, both called cynical, intrinsically different from one another, they are even intrinsically opposed. Maintaining a belief in well-meaning and functional institutions requires suspicion and contempt for the motives of people to explain away the failures of those institutions – layabouts, fraudsters, welfare queens and so forth. Meanwhile, maintaining faith in human nature requires a belief that they are often pushed to behave against their own best interests and those of the society they live in for structural reasons. A relentless faith on the goodness of country tends to produce a contempt for the humans that fail to abide by their strictures – a relentless faith in humanity tends to produce a contempt of the institutions that fail them. Obviously neither of these perspectives are completely accurate in and of themselves, they both produce a myopic lens – for, of course, humanity influences and is influenced by institution, and either may be swayed by the other.
The actual motives that humans hold are seldom either entirely altruistic or entirely selfish, and while they are largely shaped by the institutions they grew up in they are also influenced by the behaviors of other people and circumstances surrounding them. These motives usually derive from some principle of behavior, often a very simple one, that has been instilled in them. For instance, Donald Trump has learned that taking makes you strong, and the strongest is the one who takes the most, and that if you let anyone else take more than you then that makes you look bad. This is the result of a rather dimwitted but accurate reading of the mores of capitalism, and while it is clearly idiotic it is still internally consistent and functional, and you can generally expect him to abide by these principles. Others abide with other principles – generosity, patriotism, hard work, and when in doubt will usually abide by whatever these are without hesitation – though, just as with the aims of institutions, it’s worth noting that our principles are, when put into action, often not what we believe them to be. Usually unless we put serious effort into examining these principles, their implications, and what they mean we seldom even understand them, much less have the opportunity to change them.
Most of us don’t put any real thought into what we believe past a certain point in our lives, for the simple reason that we seldom have time and energy to do so.