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In case someone reading this thread has never encountered this stance, I sincerely hold the belief that there are objective moral truths that we can discover with our senses and intuition.
What is the ends and purpose of these moral truths?
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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)…
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.
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.
LOLz well done, selling happy faces to the most cynical crowd on the internet :D Look at these comments! My oh-my. Seriously though, good piece - if a bit shallow. It's a good start. People need to hear this. Cynicism is the only evil in the world. The opposite, of course, is innocence - and, since this can't exist in pure form, the closest second is gullibility. Not ONE person here will agree that gullibility is a g…
> The ones who fight injustice are the most cruel.
> The ones who fight intolerance are least tolerant.
I have not found this to be the case; and this phrasing is needlessly reductive. See also the paradox of tolerance. And “tolerance” as a bar is pretty damn low; it’s not something you should be patting yourself on the back for. It’s just showing humanity to those around you.
Part of the problem is that we live in a world where “lie, cheat, steal” legitimately does make your material conditions better most of the time. So we’re all typically equal parts “good” and “bad”, and we even have different definitions (e.g. an evangelical Christian may legitimately feel like they’re doing good by shaming gay people).
Cynicism is a recognition that not everyone shares your values, and some in fact have values that directly conflict with yours. It’s often useful, and I disagree with the original article.
LOLz well done, selling happy faces to the most cynical crowd on the internet :D Look at these comments! My oh-my. Seriously though, good piece - if a bit shallow. It's a good start. People need to hear this. Cynicism is the only evil in the world. The opposite, of course, is innocence - and, since this can't exist in pure form, the closest second is gullibility. Not ONE person here will agree that gullibility is a g…
> Your only moral obligation in life is to make this decision for yourself: Do you want to be right? Or do you want to be good? I'm stealing this.
The inimitable Hans Rosling[1] used to call himself a "possibilist": People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious “possibilist”. That's something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdram…
LOLz well done, selling happy faces to the most cynical crowd on the internet :D Look at these comments! My oh-my. Seriously though, good piece - if a bit shallow. It's a good start. People need to hear this. Cynicism is the only evil in the world. The opposite, of course, is innocence - and, since this can't exist in pure form, the closest second is gullibility. Not ONE person here will agree that gullibility is a g…
The ones who fight cynism are the most cynic.
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It's a nice catchy slogan that falls apart at the tiniest scrutiny.
Worse, it's a political agenda camouflaged as philosophical stance.
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So, assuming this isn't just a rumour spread by Diogenes himself.... Diogenes' barrel was in the middle of Corinth, where he could be seen & talked about. Where he could be vocally cynical of other people, etc. If Diogenes really wanted to be left alone, fill his belly and nap... he could have done this easily. Many Greek well-to-dos in his place did just retired to a quiet country life where no one bothers you. He d…
> Many Greek well-to-dos in his place Well if he had zero money he couldn't retire to a quiet country life... That's why homeless people today do not choose to live in nice places in the countryside but instead sleep on the pavement in cities. It's much less pleasant but you starve less in the city. Also, maybe he wanted to tell other people they were fools, not just "wanting to be seen not giving a fuck". Sure, if y…
Diogenes (the character) was a famous, upper class dude. Lifelong poverty wasn't a trap he couldn't escape.
Also I didn't mean to be too harsh. The "can't wait to tell you how little I care" trope is one we can't escape even in modern dissident youth culture. Hippies, punk, goth, emo... every generation reinvents it and it's artistically/culturally rich ground.
That said, the Diogenes character definitely does seem like he enjoyed being the centre of attention. It's like Marilyn Manson going on daytime talk shows in the 90s to tell normies that he doesn't care what they think. There's obviously a falsity in there, somewhere. It got my attention though, as a teen, and I still listen to th albums.
The point of the barrel is to be seen in a barrel, at the very least to demonstrate the philosophical reasoning for the barrel.
There are plenty of people who genuinely don't care what the people of Corinth think, say or do. The don't choose to spend their time in the public square debating.
LOLz well done, selling happy faces to the most cynical crowd on the internet :D Look at these comments! My oh-my. Seriously though, good piece - if a bit shallow. It's a good start. People need to hear this. Cynicism is the only evil in the world. The opposite, of course, is innocence - and, since this can't exist in pure form, the closest second is gullibility. Not ONE person here will agree that gullibility is a g…
"That's just, like, your opinion, man"
In all seriousness, though, no one has your moral obligations. They're yours and yours alone by definition (unless you believe in gods, fairy tales and whatnot).