Cynical - the easy way out

It's that time again in Australia - the time we're not officially in an election but, yeah, we sure are in an election. We can tell by the politicians' behaviour: the clearing of decks, the salves to lobby groups, the announcements, the special funds for 'special' electorates. 

One of the words I hear a lot around election time is cynical. We're told the 'voters are cynical' and wary of political promises, but equally we hear that some politicians undertake actions as 'cynical attempts to win votes'. And we turn off. 

That makes me wonder: where does cynicism reside? 

Is it in me - in the way I interpret other people's behaviour as negative? Or is it in other people - in the way they think they can treat me, can buy me off? If I describe a politician's actions as cynical, just who is the cynic? Is it a type of judgement or is it a more general 'lens' through which a person sees the world? 

Welcome to the first Wordly Explorations for 2022. I will return to truth soon, but the universe keeps flinging things at me that don't allow much writing time, and not enough for a challenging topic like truth. 

You cynical old dog

Diogenes of Sinope is regarded as the main voice
and embodiment of The Cynic's ideas.

The word cynical comes from the Greek word kinos for 'dog'. It was first used to name The Cynics, a group of philosophers founded by Antisthenes, either because of their coarse 'dog-like' life on the streets of Athens and their sneering surliness, or because of the name of the building in which they regularly met (the Kynosarge meaning Silver Hound/Grey Dog). They promoted self-knowledge, discipline and restraint, and disdainfully rejected conventional ideas about shelter, money, and power. 

By the 1500s, the meaning of cynic (still a noun only) had shifted to someone who adopted austerity because of a belief in the worthlessness of any form of enjoyment or comfort. It follows that they probably also disdained those who sought comfort, distraction and enjoyment. This would explain the next meaning shift through the 1500s, where cynic came to mean someone with a tendency to put an unfavourable interpretation on others' conduct. The adjective cynical came into use in the mid-1500s. 

According to the dictionary, the contemporary meaning of cynical is: 

♦️ believing that people are generally selfish and dishonest
♦️ [being] selfish and dishonest in a way that shows no concern about treating other people fairly 

♦️ having a sneering disbelief in sincerity or integrity 

I guess the first meaning gives rise to the second. If you believe that humans are selfish and dishonest, you may be inclined to justify your own selfish and dishonest behaviour as just what everyone else does. And the third: if you believe that people are selfish, you interpret acts of sincerity and integrity as somehow dishonest. (And you sneer!)

To describe yourself as cynical means that you trust no-one at face value. The cynical person is somewhat disengaged from other people, from causes or from any enthusiasms, because they are too clever to be manipulated by others' actions and ideas and exuberance - which they know are really disguised selfishness and dishonesty. They are like the cynical, surly but brilliant TV private eye, using their negative view of humanity to find out 'who done it'. 

The self-described cynical person knows what's really going on. 

Cynical and sophisticated 

A snip from a cynical cartoon by Existential Comics
(Do read the full toon)

When I was young, being cynical was cool. The cynical young person was too cool to get enthusiastic, get engaged, get emotional. I was not cool: I was too keen on doing things, on ideas, on new experiences. But I wished I could just not care, like the cool kids who smugly disdained my efforts: 'caring is lame'.  (Now I enjoy cynical toons like this one from Existential Comics) 

Cynicism still retains a certain glamour - the sophisticated realist who knows what is really going on. The cynical person sees themself as calculating and smart, and sees the optimist as gullible and foolish.

The cool cynic never has to risk looking foolish by being misled by someone, or face disappointment when dreams and desires fail to materialise, or seem naïve for being taken in by dishonesty. They are too intelligent for that! They mock people who dare to have dreams or hope things might improve. Cynics will say people are selfish and dishonest; ideals are puffery; trying to change the world is just virtue-signalling; the system is rigged. Nothing will improve so it's pointless to try; not only that it is contemptible to try. 

Back to sneering, like the ancient Greek Cynics.

Behind the cynicism 

So, are people selfish and dishonest? Sure, they can be, but is this the only motivator for human behaviour, ever? 

The evidence of our friendships, many interactions with strangers in our daily activities, our community groups, our volunteers, our general willingness to cooperate in activities for public benefit (like using rubbish bins in the mall), shows that people are much more than selfish and dishonest, and that people can be altruistic and generous, honest and cooperative. People are complex and multifaceted and motivated by innumerable factors. 

Source: me.me

Being cynical is not based on a rational assessment of humanity based on evidence. It is primarily a defence against pain and hurt, being disappointed, discouraged, having failed to achieve something. By avoiding engagement, avoiding caring, the cynical person avoids someone else disappointing them. It's an insulation and numbing technique, and as I've written elsewhere, you can't selectively numb your feelings. You end up numbing them all. You're so cool, you're only barely alive. 

So, cynicism is not based on knowing what's really going on at all, but on avoiding suffering, avoiding messy and sometimes painful reality. Avoiding finding out if your dreams and desires might fail by not caring at all, not trying, and burying any hope or desire. 

At the personal level, cynicism is a way to avoid facing our human vulnerability. We focus on those around us out to get us, as greedy and dishonest. 

Is this what's going on when I say I'm cynical about the deluge of political promises during an election?

Scepticism is not cynicism

Source

It's not unreasonable to distrust people in power. We have plenty of examples of powerful people letting us down, lining their own pockets, or taking us to wars on false pretences. We share quotes about the corrupting effect of power.  

We would be gullible and foolish to trust everything a politician says. We would be let down and disappointed. 

But can we be sceptical of political promises without being cynical?

It's an important distinction. A sceptic asks for the factual evidence for a political (or other) claim. The sceptic wants to determine if a claim is believable rather than misleading, lying or a faulty belief. 

A cynic, on the other hand, questions the motives of the person who makes a political claim, including the evidence they present for it. The cynic starts with the assumption a person making the claim is trying to deceive or trick them. A cynic can disregard factual evidence because they question the character of the person who provides it. They dismiss efforts to defend a claim with facts as nefariously motivated. 

So scepticism is about information while cynicism is about the motives of the person presenting that information. We need to be sceptical, but cynicism is a bit of a dead-end.

Scepticism can be replaced by cynicism 

The stand-off over appropriate climate action shows the impact on politics once cynicism dominates a topic. 

It has become fruitless to present more and more facts with the hope that sound argument and increasing evidence will eventually persuade those who don't believe the climate science. Because the cynical are not concerned about the facts, but the motivations of those who present them. They are not climate sceptics; they are climate cynics. 

Demands for strong climate change action have become associated with left wing politics. As a result, much of the pushback from the Right has focused on exposing the perceived (selfish and dishonest) motivation of the Left to promote big government, implement higher taxes, control and limit business. The Right believes control of people, with centralised, even international government, is the real aim, and stoking climate change fears is actually a global plot to achieve this. Facts and understanding the science are irrelevant; perceived motivation is much more important.

The Left then point to the deliberate distortions and obscuring of information by, e.g. fossil fuel companies, as motivated by profit regardless of people's suffering, and as evidence the Right is selfish and dishonest. They despair about the ease with which distrust in science can be created and aspersions on the motivations of scientists and left-wing politicians can stick. 

An important climate scepticism (what are the facts?) has been driven out by climate cynicism (what is their ulterior motive?). Once cynicism becomes entrenched, no further discussion to be had. 

Cynicism works as obstruction, and the cynic converts a debate to a character assassination. 

Weaponising cynicism

For the cynical, there's no point in political engagement because the 'system is rigged', 'they' are all corrupt, and there is no point working for local or political change which will fail anyway. (Sounds a lot like cynicism at the personal level: there's no point hoping or working toward dreams and desires in your own life.)

You can't trust anyone, so don't even engage. Cynicism moves to apathy.  The quiet Australian, perhaps? Vote because you have to by law, but there's no real point. Whose hand does that play into? I sometimes wonder whether the strategic lying, overt disingenuousness, failure to admit wrong and be accountable for mistakes, etc., isn't a deliberate strategy to undermine trust and engender cynicism. 

Motivated by hatred, not rational objection?

Cynicism can be wielded as a weapon in the battle to retain power. It can be used to discount those who are sceptical of a politician's promises, and ignore legitimate requests for evidence to support a political claim. Scott Morrison (and the Murdoch media supporting him) is particularly skilled at this strategy. It means we can't even point to the many legitimate and specific reasons not to trust a politician's words, without being subject to fabricated cynicism about our motives. 

Alternatively, as populists like Trump have done, a politician can garner support through appealing to people's cynicism, cutting through their defences by agreeing the people have been let down, they alone have figured it all out, they know what is really going on, and that EVERYONE else is not to be trusted.  He doesn't argue the facts, he casts doubt on the people who assess crowd sizes, pandemic numbers, federal appointees' histories, and experts who contradict his populist claims. Trump appeals to many, because, underneath our protective cynicism, we want to trust, we want to be engaged. We want someone who identifies with us, who says that our secret (or repressed) desires for a good life and for fulfilment in our lives are possible after all. 

Being cynical is a cold and lonely place for the social animal that we are. 

Cynicism means no trust

If we are cynical of politicians' motives, we assume they are selfish and dishonest and only engage in actions to win support and retain power.

We measure public trust in institutions because it is an essential part of representative democracies. We need to trust various people, institutions and processes for our society to work. Lack of trust, and the belief that all politicians are corrupt, biased and only self-serving, is bad for a participatory democracy. And that's where we are: trust in politicians and others in positions of power is at a low point in Australia (and the USA.) 

We don't trust their motives, and we thus do not trust any information they provide. 

We are cynical and feel disempowered. 

Rather than being 'in' me or 'in' the other person's actions, cynicism works as a vicious circle.

If facts don't work, what is there?

So, what can we do in the face of cynicism in politics? 

Facts don't cut through. Evidence that someone is lying also won't cut through if your own motivation is questioned. Some say that 'stories' work better than facts but again, I would say only if we already trust the motivation of the story teller.  

What might cut through is exposing hypocrisy behind various claims and arguments made with the intent to deceive a populace. 

This involves showing that a politician knows the facts (e.g. about climate change, poverty, domestic violence) and privately acts according to this knowledge (for their self-interest), but publicly attempts to persuade the rest of us that they are full of doubt about the facts and the motivations of those presenting the facts. An example that illustrates this well was the outrage when one of Trump's companies organised the raising of the sea walls around his Scottish golf course while Trump was calling sea level rise and climate change a hoax. In fact, Trump was not involved at all, and sea level rise was only one factor in the project (thanks Snopes). But this type of exposure of self-serving behaviours could cut through - showing there is no doubt; the populists do not practice what they preach. 

Occupy yourself with this 'cynical' distraction

An example still in play relates to the actions of fossil fuel companies. We are now aware of the information available to (and even produced by) fossil fuel companies from the late 1970s, which they then knowingly covered over or used to strategise how to disempower climate activism and climate policy while individuals worked to protect their own interests. That is lying and deceit. But we can add hypocrisy, as we are discovering that the many 'moral' crusades, such as energy-saving lightbulbs, metal straws, recycled shopping bags, and the 'carbon footprint', etc., have been sponsored by the fossil fuel lobby groups to distract us. These 'individual' actions are ineffectual against the continuing pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But worse, they are promoted as a moral virtue, of how the virtuous behave to 'save the planet', while the fossil fuel companies are patronising us and manipulating our desire to have a safe future. This is hypocrisy. 

We dislike hypocrites for their overt moralising because they send a false signal of their own virtue.¹

Is there a party behind this door?

This is behind the furore around Boris Johnson currently. It's not the parties per se; it's the contrast between the public and overt 'moralising' about appropriate Covid behaviour and restrictions, and his 'false signals' that this is what he and everyone would be doing. His actions show he thinks the rules don't apply to him, and thus he communicates that he thinks he is better than other people. There are plenty of examples, like the 'family values' politician who doesn't adhere to these values privately.

Exposing hypocrisy is not a solution to cynicism itself, but it could reduce its ability to completely nobble political debate. 

We don't enjoy being moralised at, especially by those we think are loudly signalling their own virtue, but we hate the hypocrite who patronises and deceives us by falsely claiming to be morally superior to us. 

This provides a valuable link between cynicism and anger which might motivate political action. 

Perhaps being cynical doesn't need to lead to withdrawal and apathy.

Cynicism and accountability 

The example above proposed that, for many, climate change 'cynicism' was really a cover for the argument about 'big' versus 'small' government. What if that's not the right question? What if what we really want is accountable government and moral accountability from those who have power to make decisions that affect us? 

Being cynical - assuming that politicians will generally be selfish and dishonest to gain and hold onto power - is perhaps the starting point for demanding better, more pragmatic, and more robust accountability measures. If politics entails distributing favours or crafting favourable policy in return for support, then we need to start from this reality. Perhaps working to circumvent corruption is based on accepting this cynical view.² 

Source: A-Z Quotes

But self-serving or corrupt politicians are not combated with cynicism. Accountability measures are based on scepticism, on determining facts and verifying information.

This election, I think we should be exercising plenty of scepticism, but looking for ways to ensure scepticism doesn't given way to cynicism. 

Footnotes

1. Jillian J. Jordan, Roseanna Sommers, Paul Bloom, & David Rand (2017). Why Do We Hate Hypocrites? Evidence for a Theory of False Signaling. Psychological Science, v 28, issue 3, pp: 356-368 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797616685771
2. Roberta Muramatsu & Ana Maria Bianchi (2021) The big picture of corruption: Five lessons from Behavioral Economics. Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Vol. 5, Special Issue 3: Roots and Branches, 55-62
• Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that corruption is a typically complex phenomenon and therefore we might never know what features some nations have that make them vulnerable to corruption, either small-scale or systemic. That being so, it might be prudent to rethink the anticorruption debate and avoid explanations of why people engage in exchanges that are solely based on material incentives. New directions in research and policy point to the importance of investigating the contexts in which some types of corruption emerge and evolve over time. They draw attention to the fact that evidence-based policies to curb corruption highlight that one-size-fits all structural reforms based on principles of deterrence, transparency and accountability can backfire.
• Excessive control of civil servants can bring unintended negative consequences and even hurt their intrinsic motivation for behaving honestly. Rather, some contemporary anticorruption measures recommend a shift from the focus of oversight and deterrence to the promotion of an environment of public and private integrity.

Images

• Turned off voters by James Brooks boring political caucus https://www.flickr.com/photos/jkbrooks85/25450068264/in/photostream/ [CC BY]
• Diogenes and the dogs by Jean-Léon Gérôme, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-L%C3%A9on_G%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_-_Diogenes_-_Walters_37131.jpg [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
• Existential Comics cartoon on cynicism https://existentialcomics.com/comic/431 
• George Carlin quote: https://me.me/i/inside-every-cynical-person-there-is-a-disappointed-idealist-george-2740246 [Used under terms]
• Cynicism and accusation https://www.pngall.com/wp-content/uploads/2/Angry-Person-Transparent.png [free use]
• Aung San Suu Kyi quote made by the author with text from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1359432X.2019.1635584  
• Hatred of Scott Morrison snipped from Herald Sun on twitter at https://twitter.com/theheraldsun/status/1484428249924988928 
• A cynical and vicious circle by the author 
• Carbon footprint by Robert 1966 https://www.flickr.com/photos/pro_portfolio/5791450810/ [CC BY-SA-NC]
• Party behind the door at Number 10? snipped from social media, no source 
• Penn Jillette quote on cynicism https://www.azquotes.com/quote/146905 [Used within terms]