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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday. So we

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Speaker 1: have a vault episode for you. This is going to

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Speaker 1: be Cynicism Part one, which originally published four fifteen, twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five. It's gonna be part one of four. Was

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Speaker 1: it going to consist of, Well, we're going to get

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Speaker 1: into psychological cynicism, philosophical cynicism. There's a lot to discuss here.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today we wanted

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Speaker 3: to begin a series of episodes talking about something that

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Speaker 3: has been on my mind a lot lately, and that

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Speaker 3: is the concept of cynicism. Now, as we go on,

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Speaker 3: we're going to have to diinguish the common contemporary usage

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Speaker 3: of cynicism from other meanings extending into history, but as

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Speaker 3: used in common language today. We can think of cynicism

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Speaker 3: as a cognitive disposition, the core element of which is

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Speaker 3: social distrust. Cynicism is a dim view of human nature.

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Speaker 3: It's a suspicion of other people's motives and a tendency

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Speaker 3: to believe that people are primarily self interested and untrustworthy.

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Speaker 3: So there are a variety of kind of inventories or

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Speaker 3: tests that psychological studies will do to evaluate how cynical

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Speaker 3: you are as a person. They'll often give you like

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Speaker 3: a list of statements to see how much you agree

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Speaker 3: or disagree with them. A cynical person is going to

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Speaker 3: be more likely to agree with statements like altruism and

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Speaker 3: compassion are just for show. When it comes down to it,

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Speaker 3: people are in it for themselves. Everybody lies and cheats

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Speaker 3: when they can get away with it, Cliches like no

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Speaker 3: good deed goes unpunished, it's a dog eat dog world,

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Speaker 3: the idea that people are not sincere. They'll just tell

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Speaker 3: you what you want to hear. And I think the

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Speaker 3: core idea of it really is that you can't trust anybody.

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Speaker 3: We're all on our own. And before we started today,

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Speaker 3: I had been digging around trying to find good examples

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Speaker 3: of the cynical worldview presented in works of English literature.

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Speaker 3: And while you can find some pretty good examples, I

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Speaker 3: think particularly for some reason in like seventeenth and eighteenth

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Speaker 3: century English literature, with writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

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Speaker 3: Is some really hardcore cynical stuff there. I actually think

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Speaker 3: the most cynical canon of great literature is in the Bible.

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Speaker 3: So many books of the Bible, especially like the later

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Speaker 3: books of the Tanakh, like the Prophets, have awesomely cynical passages.

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Speaker 3: Can I offer you a few examples, rob, Yes, let's

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Speaker 3: hear it. Okay. Here's Micah chapter seven, verses two to six.

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Speaker 3: This is the King James translation. The good man is

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Speaker 3: perished out of the earth, and there is none upright

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Speaker 3: among men. They all lie in wait for blood. They

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Speaker 3: hunt every man his brother with a net, that they

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Speaker 3: may do evil with both hands earnestly. The prince asketh,

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Speaker 3: and the judge asketh for a reward, and the great

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Speaker 3: man he uttereth his mischievous desire. So they wrap it up.

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Speaker 3: The best of them is as a brier. The most

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Speaker 3: upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The day of

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Speaker 3: thy watchman and thy visitation cometh Now shall be their perplexity.

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Speaker 3: Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence

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Speaker 3: in a guide. Keep the doors of thy mouth from

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Speaker 3: her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoereth

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Speaker 3: the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the

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Speaker 3: daughter in law against her mother in law. A man's

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Speaker 3: enemies are the men of his own house.

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Speaker 1: Brutal, Yeah, if true, A sad state of affairs.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. I got a couple of more shorter ones.

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Speaker 3: This is from Psalm fourteen, verses two to four. The

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Speaker 3: Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men,

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Speaker 3: to see if there were any that did understand and

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Speaker 3: seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all

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Speaker 3: together become filthy. There is none that doeth good, No,

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Speaker 3: not one. And then finally this one. I think some

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Speaker 3: of the best poetry in the Bible is in the

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Speaker 3: Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah's like great, great writing, but it

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Speaker 3: contains the famous statement from Jeremiah seventeen the heart is

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Speaker 3: deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?

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Speaker 3: And these passages really emphasized something for me. I think

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Speaker 3: I am not an especially cynical person. I think I'm

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Speaker 3: not the least cynical person in the world, but I'm

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Speaker 3: very far from the most.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 3: I try to be skeptical of like sweeping negative characterizations

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Speaker 3: about people and all that. And yet I notice that

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Speaker 3: when a cynical condemnation of human nature is phrased really elegantly,

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Speaker 3: as I think these are in the King James translation,

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Speaker 3: they really takes mental effort to disagree with. So it

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Speaker 3: is not my worldview that the heart is deceitful above

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Speaker 3: all things. I don't think that's true, But I feel

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Speaker 3: kind of foolish trying to shake my head or argue

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Speaker 3: with that statement. When it's phrased in that way, it

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Speaker 3: possesses what feels like an a priori factuality. If you

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Speaker 3: don't force yourself to stop and think about it, it

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Speaker 3: just kind of hits you as self evidently true, and

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Speaker 3: you feel like you'd have to be naive to doubt it.

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Speaker 3: And yet that it's not really what I think. So

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Speaker 3: I don't know if you have a similar experience, rob

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Speaker 3: maybe not, but I wonder, at least for myself, and

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Speaker 3: I think this is probably pretty common. Why do cynical condemnations,

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Speaker 3: and especially when they're elegantly phrased, Why do they like

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Speaker 3: walk into my mind with a perfectly forged hall pass.

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Speaker 3: Why does it take such effortful, deliberate scrutiny to repel them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is I think this is something that

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Speaker 1: will come up again and again in this discussion, because yeah,

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Speaker 1: it these kind of statements they either ring really true

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Speaker 1: to you, and they ring true because you can take them,

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Speaker 1: you can hold them up to the world and you

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Speaker 1: can find examples. You know, you may be engaging in

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of cherry picking, or just point them

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Speaker 1: in the right general direction and you'll find evidence to

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Speaker 1: support this. I think these statements can also feel rather

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Speaker 1: cathartic because whatever's going on in your life, in your world,

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Speaker 1: in the like the media that you're consuming, you know,

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Speaker 1: there are going to be perceptions of this sort of

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Speaker 1: thing going on, and it can feel empowering to hold

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Speaker 1: up something that this is sort of like an elegant

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Speaker 1: takedown of what's going on and say, yeah, yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is exactly what I see in the world. This is

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Speaker 1: exactly what people's hearts are about, and you know, it

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Speaker 1: may not even be something that you believe all the time,

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Speaker 1: but it's kind of like, you know, sometimes you got

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Speaker 1: to go there. And in the same sense that you

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Speaker 1: might not listen to sad breakup songs all the time,

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Speaker 1: but there are times when you definitely need to listen

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Speaker 1: to a sad breakup song. Rob.

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Speaker 3: I think that's a really good point. I didn't quite

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Speaker 3: think about that, but the Catharsis element that's exactly right.

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Speaker 3: It does describe the experience of either saying or agreeing

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Speaker 3: with a really cynical statement. It feels like blowing off steam.

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Speaker 3: There's like a kind of relief that comes with expressing that.

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Speaker 3: Just total condemnation and lack of trust in human nature.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, sometimes you've got to crank up the

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Speaker 1: rage against the machine in the car. It doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: that you necessarily feel that all the time, but sometimes

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Speaker 1: you've got to do it.

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Speaker 3: Now, coming back to like the definitions of cynicism, I

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Speaker 3: think one thing that's important to flag at the top

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Speaker 3: here is like that cynicism is used kind of loosely,

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Speaker 3: and sometimes it's used to mean different things. We're going

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Speaker 3: to be trying in this series to focus on the

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Speaker 3: use of cynicism as like this dim view of human

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Speaker 3: nature and lack of trust in others. But I would

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Speaker 3: say less often. Cynicism is also used interchangeably with pessimism,

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Speaker 3: the belief that things will go poorly or that the

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Speaker 3: future will be bad. I think we should just note

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Speaker 3: for our purposes, these are different concepts. Pessimism is more

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Speaker 3: of an outlook on reality and all of life, all

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Speaker 3: future prospects. So this would include, you know, low expectations

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Speaker 3: for random events so called acts of God, and for

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Speaker 3: our own ability to do as we would hope. You know,

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Speaker 3: that's pessimism, whereas you might think of cynicism as pessimism

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Speaker 3: applied specifically to other people. Other people will always let

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Speaker 3: you down, they'll stab you in the back. They're only

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Speaker 3: in it for themselves.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it got me thinking about the saying don't hate

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Speaker 1: the player, hate the game. Your modern cynic definitely hates

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Speaker 1: the players, or at least sees them as the underlying problem.

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Speaker 2: You know.

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Speaker 1: It'd also add that cynicism can also easily bleed over

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Speaker 1: into downright nihilism. Though that's not to say that modern

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Speaker 1: cynicism isn't compatible with different philosophies and creeds, because you

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Speaker 1: could be a cynic and a hedonist at the same time. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that you'd bea trement it is fun

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Speaker 1: to hang out with, but you know it is possible.

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Speaker 3: Now, what does it mean to say a person is

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Speaker 3: cynical in a way that is subjective, because cynicism is

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Speaker 3: by its nature a comparative idea or a sort of

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Speaker 3: expression of degree. I would compare being cynical to being tall.

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Speaker 3: You know, there's no height at which a person becomes

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Speaker 3: objectively tall. People judge whether you're tall or not based

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Speaker 3: on the context. You know, they compare you to people

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Speaker 3: around you, or to other people in the culture where

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Speaker 3: you live, or other people in the room. And then,

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Speaker 3: on the other hand, while there's no objective cutoff point,

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Speaker 3: somebody who's like seven foot three is pretty much always

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Speaker 3: going to be considered tall no matter what context they're in.

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Speaker 3: And I think being cynical is like that. It's a

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Speaker 3: comparative idea. There's no threshold score of social trust, and

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Speaker 3: if you fall below that score, you're objectively cynical. But

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Speaker 3: there are some people who are so cynical that basically

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Speaker 3: everybody's going to think of them as a cynical person.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And then of course it also depends on how

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Speaker 1: well you know that person as well, right, Because if

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Speaker 1: all you know about a person is one cynical thing

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Speaker 1: they said, you might be like, oh, well, that person's

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Speaker 1: really cynical. But maybe they're not that way all the time.

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Speaker 1: You know. It kind of gets into the way we

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Speaker 1: sometimes use the term, right we say like I hate

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Speaker 1: to be cynical, butes, or you might call somebody out

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Speaker 1: and be like, I think you're being a little cynical

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Speaker 1: about this. You know, in those usages, acknowledge the fact

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Speaker 1: that it's not necessarily a constant. It's maybe something that

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Speaker 1: we dip into in response to different circumstances, different stimuli

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Speaker 1: and so forth.

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Speaker 3: That's right, That's a really good point. So, like a

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Speaker 3: lot of things in personality, you can think of cynicism

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Speaker 3: as a kind of it's a tendency. You know, you

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Speaker 3: might be you're more kind of pointed in one general

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Speaker 3: direction of interpretation, but it's not going to dictate that

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Speaker 3: every single moment of your life and every single thought

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Speaker 3: you have is exactly the same.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: So, when we're trying to judge is a person cynical?

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Speaker 3: I think there are two main comparative ideas we use there.

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Speaker 3: One is what I was just talking about, Like, how

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Speaker 3: cynical is that person compared to other people, like, compared

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Speaker 3: to the average of their peers. If they show less

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Speaker 3: social trusts than the people around them, we think of

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Speaker 3: them as cynical. But then there's a second metric that

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Speaker 3: I think people use, and that is how cynical a

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Speaker 3: person is compared to how cynical we, the people judging,

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Speaker 3: think it is reasonable to be.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we generally assume we've got it figured out. We're

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Speaker 1: at the right level.

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Speaker 3: We're at the right level, and anybody who's more cynical

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Speaker 3: than us is too cynical. Somebody less cynical is naive.

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Speaker 3: And this creates interesting levels of complexity. Like obviously, sometimes

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Speaker 3: it is reasonable to be suspicious of someone's motives and

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Speaker 3: to believe they will probably harm you if they can.

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Speaker 3: Here's a common but relatively benign example, and not getting

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Speaker 3: into like you know, deep acts of harm against people.

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Speaker 3: You should not walk into a car lot expecting that

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Speaker 3: the salesperson and the finance manager are trying to help

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Speaker 3: you out and get you the best deal they can.

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Speaker 3: Maybe in some scenarios you'll find an extraordinarily unusually altruistic

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Speaker 3: car dealer, but a lot of the time what they're

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Speaker 3: trying to do is make as much money off of

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Speaker 3: you as possible, which is not in your interest. And

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Speaker 3: that's not to suggest that people selling cars are like evil.

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Speaker 3: It's just it's their job to try to make money

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Speaker 3: selling cars. If they can make more on a sale

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Speaker 3: and you, you know, get you to buy at a

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Speaker 3: higher price, or you know, or to take a less

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Speaker 3: favorable financing option, they usually will. And I think this

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Speaker 3: is true. And yet I think I'm not a very

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Speaker 3: cynical person to make that judgment about what happens at

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Speaker 3: car lots. There are just specific situations where it is reasonable,

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Speaker 3: based on evidence and on our background knowledge, to withhold

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Speaker 3: trust from people. And this is different, I think, from

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Speaker 3: a generalized cynical distrust that is not related to the

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Speaker 3: specific situation. Now, of course, what I think I just

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Speaker 3: said is pretty uncontroversial in principle, but we actually spend

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Speaker 3: a lot of mental energy trying to tell the difference

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Speaker 3: between these two things, like the situation where it's reasonable

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Speaker 3: to be suspicious and the situation where you're just expressing

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Speaker 3: a bias towards cynicism. Like if a friend comes to

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Speaker 3: you and expresses distrust of something or someone that you

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Speaker 3: personally put a lot of faith in. What's the most

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Speaker 3: common defensive reaction for us to have. I think it's like,

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Speaker 3: don't be so cynical or you're just being cynical. Saying

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Speaker 3: you're just being cynical downplays the possibility that your doubting

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Speaker 3: friend has a good insight, you know, maybe that I

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Speaker 3: have misplaced my faith and trust in something, and instead

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Speaker 3: it reframes the doubting friends' skepticism as part of a

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Speaker 3: general dispositional bias that they have. So dealing with the

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Speaker 3: balance between cynicism and reasonable suspicion is just a really

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Speaker 3: difficult thing that I think we all have to deal

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Speaker 3: with in our lives. We're asking the question, like, in general,

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Speaker 3: how suspicious should we be of other people's motives? And

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Speaker 3: let's say you take generally cynical people and generally trusting people,

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Speaker 3: which groups model of the world makes more accurate predictions,

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Speaker 3: which group's model of the world is more useful in life,

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Speaker 3: and in which context does each model thrive the most.

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Speaker 3: I think we'll have to revisit that question and as

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Speaker 3: we go along.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's always in short, it's it's

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Speaker 1: a careful balance, right, because do you want to protect

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Speaker 1: yourself absolutely all the time from all things, or do

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Speaker 1: you want to be able to move through life and

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Speaker 1: open yourself up to new possibilities that may in fact

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Speaker 1: hurt you. Like it always, things like this will always

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Speaker 1: remind me of that C. S. Lewis quote about being

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Speaker 1: afraid to love because being because you're afraid that you

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Speaker 1: will be hurt through that love, either you know, VI

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Speaker 1: a loss or some other action. And therefore I think

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Speaker 1: the analogy made was like, you know, entombing yourself, you know,

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Speaker 1: putting yourself in a casket of loneliness, and I think

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Speaker 1: some of that applies here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: Now I do have to acknowledge that, Yeah, dealing with

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Speaker 1: cynicism in people can certainly be exhausting, you know, Like

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Speaker 1: we've been saying, the cynic, like the pastus, tends toward

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Speaker 1: type one errors in cognition, false positives, believing that the

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Speaker 1: predator alerks in the bushes even when it doesn't. And

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Speaker 1: there is always, again, ample evidence for the cynic, exhaustive evidence.

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Speaker 1: Even because they are not wrong about many generalities about

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Speaker 1: our world and human nature, they tend to put others

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Speaker 1: on the defensive, forcing them to make non cynical counter arguments,

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Speaker 1: you know, essentially prove the righteousness of their fellow human beings. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and at the same time, in making those counter arguments.

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Speaker 1: You don't want to go so far as to dismiss

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Speaker 1: the perceived threats or threats entirely, because then they're going

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Speaker 1: to come back at you with while you're being naive.

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Speaker 3: This connects to what I was saying earlier, Like, again,

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Speaker 3: I think I'm not very cynical, but I feel kind

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Speaker 3: of silly or foolish if I try to argue with

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Speaker 3: somebody who says the heart is deceitful above all things.

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Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know, it has a kind of

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Speaker 3: it has a kind of power because, as you were saying,

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Speaker 3: the cherry picking really works in its favor. You can

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Speaker 3: always think of examples when which you were wrong to

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Speaker 3: grant trust, but that if you think about it logically,

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Speaker 3: that doesn't actually mean you should always withhold trust. It's

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Speaker 3: just like it's very captivating those specific examples of when

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Speaker 3: it went wrong for you.

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about this as well over the weekend.

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Speaker 1: I was doing a bit of driving, and driving is

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Speaker 1: sort of a you know, it's a limited, sort of

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Speaker 1: artificial in some ways, like social scenario, and it's probably

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Speaker 1: a scenario where like I'm more cynical when I'm driving,

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Speaker 1: but in that I am less trusting of the other drivers,

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Speaker 1: And I'm not that I'm necessarily believing that they're out

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Speaker 1: to hurt me, but I maybe am more inclined to

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Speaker 1: believe that they are not looking out for me, and

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Speaker 1: they're maybe being a little greedy there and they might

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Speaker 1: not see me and so forth. But I guess the

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Speaker 1: danger would be taking cynicism from an environment like that,

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Speaker 1: where it is maybe you know, low risk to engage

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Speaker 1: in such cynicism. To take that feeling off the road

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Speaker 1: and into the real world, I could see where that

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Speaker 1: could be kind of hurtful.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you take your defensive driving mentality and apply it

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Speaker 3: to your friend and family relationships and to politics and

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Speaker 3: to everything else in your life. Yeah, not a good idea,

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Speaker 3: I would argue.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Now, another huge problem about regarding modern cynicism, and

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Speaker 1: this is something we'll come back to again and again,

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Speaker 1: is that it's often pointed out that it generally fosters

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Speaker 1: a worldview in which no progress is possible. So again,

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Speaker 1: not just talking about engaging in little feelings of cynicism

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Speaker 1: now and then, like if the cynicism really piles up,

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Speaker 1: and if you really double down on your cynicism, then

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Speaker 1: there's no reason to try for or aspire for anything,

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Speaker 1: you know, because like if people are all bad, essentially,

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Speaker 1: if people are all just in it for themselves, they're

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Speaker 1: just greedy, there's no caring. Then what can we do

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Speaker 1: as a society, What is it all possible? And you

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Speaker 1: just kind of become fossilized in the mud of your

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Speaker 1: own distrust.

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Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. In fact, this link you're

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Speaker 3: suggesting between cynicism and inaction or lack of progress is

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Speaker 3: absolutely backed up by evidence. We might get more into

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Speaker 3: the details of these studies later, but I've been looking

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Speaker 3: at studies that have found cynicism tends to cause people

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Speaker 3: to skip opportunities to cooperate to achieve goals. It tends

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Speaker 3: to people high in cynicism tend to hold back from

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Speaker 3: involvement in the political process, not voting, not protesting, not

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Speaker 3: signing a petition, even if they care about an issue.

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Speaker 3: And it just seems like if you're higher in cynicism,

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Speaker 3: you are less likely to try to make things better

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Speaker 3: and more likely to give up.

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Speaker 1: I want to read a quote here from Ascar Allen,

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Speaker 1: author of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series book Cynicism,

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Speaker 1: which deals as all just gusts and as I cite

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Speaker 1: this book again with both ancient cynicism and modern cynicism.

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Speaker 1: More on that in a bit, but he writes quote

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Speaker 1: as a cultural disposition, cynicism foments distrust, derails progress, and

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Speaker 1: reduces all higher things, all that is good about humankind

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Speaker 1: to the level of its own diminished outlook. It assumes

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Speaker 1: that all human motives are basically selfish and denies the

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Speaker 1: possibility of a better world. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I think that's true despite the persuasive power of cynicism.

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Speaker 3: As I mentioned earlier, I think that is correct at

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Speaker 3: the level of my personal experience, and that seems borne

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Speaker 3: out by experimental evidence as well.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I'll also add that in the book

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Speaker 1: he stresses that, you know, while we can all point

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Speaker 1: out just you know, egregious examples of cynicism in the

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Speaker 1: world around us, we're also just all infected by cynicism.

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Speaker 1: Like it's not just a world of cynics and non

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Speaker 1: cynics for the most part. And he cites common sayings

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Speaker 1: like I hate to be cynical, but and so forth,

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Speaker 1: like we were talking, but you know, points out that

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Speaker 1: cynicism is pretty much in all of us festering to

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Speaker 1: various degrees and very much takes on the form of

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Speaker 1: an affliction. It may dominate, it may go into remission,

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Speaker 1: it may flare up due to various and environmental factors.

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Speaker 3: But it is there, absolutely, Yeah, which raises the good

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Speaker 3: question of, if it's there latently to some degree in

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Speaker 3: all of us, and in some cases for quite understandable reasons,

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Speaker 3: what brings it out, what makes it grow, and maybe

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Speaker 3: what can diminish it. Now, I guess we'll have to

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Speaker 3: come back to that, because one thing that we definitely

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Speaker 3: should address here is it gets a little confusing when

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Speaker 3: you're trying to look up research on cynicism, because cynicism

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Speaker 3: is a word that is used to mean at least

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Speaker 3: two completely different things. There is a school of classical

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Speaker 3: Greek philosophy called cynicism, which is not merely social distrust.

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Speaker 3: It's a whole school of thought that entails different things. Rob,

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Speaker 3: I think you're about to get to it in the second.

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Speaker 3: But these two cynicisms are totally different, and it was

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Speaker 3: a kind of an interesting question to me to wonder

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Speaker 3: how the same word came to be used for these

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Speaker 3: two different things.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those things where it's it's complicated.

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Speaker 1: We're dealing with, you know, centuries upon centuries of human

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Speaker 1: history with different returns to ancient cynicism and so forth.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's it's not quite a scenario that you

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Speaker 1: might encounter with movie titles where you're like, Okay, well

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Speaker 1: there's the Peter Lorie mad Loove movie and then there's

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Speaker 1: the the nineties television series Mad Love, and these are

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Speaker 1: not connected at all. They just share a title. There's

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Speaker 1: more connective tissue here. But but it is I think

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Speaker 1: also completely correct to say you're dealing with two different things.

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Speaker 1: They don't line up on a lot of their principles,

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Speaker 1: even if there is ultimately some shared history there.

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Speaker 3: So what's the rundown on capital C cynicism or cynic philosophy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so in the books Cynicism, Alan gets into this

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Speaker 1: a bit and he refers to like the broader transitionary

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Speaker 1: matter as capital C slash lower C cynicism. So it's

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Speaker 1: like c C cynicism or something I don't know, you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't pronounce it, how about, but like basically referring to

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Speaker 1: this grander thing of cynism that begins with capital C

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Speaker 1: cynicism and eventually leads into lower case cynicism that is

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Speaker 1: in all of us today. In either case, he stresses

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Speaker 1: that cynics are not good people, not by mainstream social

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Speaker 1: standards anyway. But while the modern cynic is a person

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Speaker 1: under the influence again of this kind of infection of distrust,

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Speaker 1: the ancient cynics were a different matter. I have to

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Speaker 1: stress that the ancient cynics were totally punk, like abrasively punk. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And to really get into this we have to look

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Speaker 1: at the most famous of these ancient punks, and that

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Speaker 1: of course is Diogeny, the cynic or Diogenes of synop

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Speaker 1: We have talked about Diogenes on the show before. I

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Speaker 1: think in episodes we were talking about solitary hermits and

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Speaker 1: so forth, because one of the more famous aspects of

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Speaker 1: him that you often see illustrated and rendered as the

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Speaker 1: subject in various you know, Renaissance paintings and so forth,

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Speaker 1: is the fact that he lived in a jar in public.

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Speaker 3: I think in like the marketplace and Athens, there's lived

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Speaker 3: in a big tub or a jar just out in public.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When we say lived in a jar, not

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Speaker 1: a little jar, like a big like a big old

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Speaker 1: you know, you can think of it more as like

432
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:38,320
Speaker 1: a big barrel on its side. It's the way it's

433
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:39,520
Speaker 1: generally depicted in art.

434
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,359
Speaker 3: Often he's basically naked as well.

435
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically naked, dressed in rags, surrounded by dogs. Often

436
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:51,439
Speaker 1: has a lantern out in the day like he's like, yeah,

437
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: what about it, I've got a lantern. I'm burning the lantern.

438
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:56,399
Speaker 1: I don't need it right now, but I'm burning it.

439
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:59,400
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's how anti establishment I am.

440
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:01,880
Speaker 3: I think there's one story. I might have this wrong,

441
00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 3: but there's a story that he would carry around the

442
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:05,879
Speaker 3: lantern in the daytime and he would say that he

443
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 3: was looking for an honest man, which that almost connects

444
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:13,199
Speaker 3: a little bit to the Lower Sea cynicism kind of.

445
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:17,360
Speaker 3: There's a sort of critique of human nature or an

446
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:20,359
Speaker 3: idea of hypocrisy and how people present themselves there, So

447
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of connection.

448
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: Yeah.

449
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, But again not to imply that Diogenes was just

450
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 3: a lowercase CEA cynic, because he's much more interesting than that.

451
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of stories about him. There's

452
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,640
Speaker 1: like the famous story of him telling Alexander the Great

453
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:38,520
Speaker 1: essentially to f off and then Alexander the Great's like, huh,

454
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:42,200
Speaker 1: this guy's great, and that's basically the story there.

455
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 3: But oh no, it's a great one. Alexander the Great

456
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:46,440
Speaker 3: came through and he's like, oh, I want to meet

457
00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:49,879
Speaker 3: the great, the cynic philosopher Diogenes. So like, you know,

458
00:25:49,920 --> 00:25:52,080
Speaker 3: he goes with his retinue and the generals to go

459
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 3: find him, and he's I think the story's Diogenes is

460
00:25:54,880 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 3: like laying out sunning himself naked or something, and Alexander

461
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,439
Speaker 3: walks up to him and his shadow fall over him,

462
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:02,840
Speaker 3: and he's like, hey, can I you know, I'm the

463
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:07,240
Speaker 3: conquering King. Can I give you anything? And Diogenes is like,

464
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 3: I would like you to get out of my light.

465
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:10,320
Speaker 1: Yea.

466
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 3: And so Alexander did not kill him. He was just like, okay, yeah.

467
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: I think the essentially the quote that has attributed to

468
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: Alexander's like if I if I was an Alexander, I

469
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 1: would be Diogenes. Okay, it's like this character I like,

470
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: I like the cut of his gip.

471
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:26,960
Speaker 3: Well that's a that's the kind of story I like,

472
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:28,800
Speaker 3: telling the powerful man to f off.

473
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there are there are various stories about di

474
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:36,200
Speaker 1: Diogenes and his travels, and also about the various bodily

475
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: functions that he would carry out in public, sometimes like

476
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:45,439
Speaker 1: nd speech and so forth. And there are occasionals some

477
00:26:45,480 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 1: stories are thought to maybe maybe be a little more

478
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: fictional and a little more you know, legendary. But we

479
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 1: are definitely dealing with an historic person thought to have

480
00:26:56,280 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: lived four thirteen or four three BCE through three twenty

481
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 1: one or three twenty four BCE, and he did write.

482
00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:11,960
Speaker 1: None of his own writings survive, though I apparently wrote dialogues,

483
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:15,679
Speaker 1: letters and tragedies. We mostly know of him through the

484
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:18,320
Speaker 1: writings of others. Oh well, I should correct that we

485
00:27:18,359 --> 00:27:21,000
Speaker 1: know about him exclusively through the writings of others. Again,

486
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: his own writings did not survive.

487
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:25,520
Speaker 3: Now you mentioned the bodily functions. If you don't read deeper,

488
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 3: you might be tempted to assume, based on the example

489
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 3: of Diogenes, that cynic philosophy is just about like pooping in.

490
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: Public, And it is one of the more I guess,

491
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:41,960
Speaker 1: eye catching aspects of their public display of humanity. Yeah,

492
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:44,920
Speaker 1: they were said to, especially Diagenies was said to freely

493
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:48,919
Speaker 1: engage in public dispension of the body's various functions in

494
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:51,320
Speaker 1: a way that would still be shocking today and would

495
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:54,520
Speaker 1: still very much be against social norms. But I guess

496
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,239
Speaker 1: the key way of understanding what it was. I mean,

497
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: certainly it does seem like it was about shocking people. Again,

498
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,359
Speaker 1: these guys were very punk, very in everyone's faces, with

499
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:09,719
Speaker 1: how they viewed human nature and how they viewed society.

500
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:12,720
Speaker 1: But essentially we'll get into more of what this meant

501
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:14,600
Speaker 1: to them. But they were living the animal life, they

502
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 1: were rooting the human experience in the body, and so

503
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: they were they were saying, Hey, this is what we are.

504
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:24,200
Speaker 1: Why should we deny what we are?

505
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the good life lies in dispensing with sort

506
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:32,399
Speaker 3: of false pretensions and living in accordance with your nature.

507
00:28:32,960 --> 00:28:38,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Diogenes was not the first cynic and to

508
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: Spines roughly who live roughly four forty six through three

509
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:45,800
Speaker 1: sixty six BCE, a pupil of Socrates and said to

510
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 1: be the teacher of Diagenes, is often considered the founder

511
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:52,320
Speaker 1: of cynicism, though even in antiquity, Alan points out it

512
00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: was thought that cynicism dated back to a time before Heracles,

513
00:28:56,360 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: connected to the cunning intelligence of the gods. And I

514
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 1: did find it interesting that that Heracles was referenced here

515
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,480
Speaker 1: because it seems like a good name to invoke, even indirectly, because,

516
00:29:07,480 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 1: as we've discussed in the show before, the son of

517
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: Zeus wasn't just raw muscle, you know, throwing stones at

518
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: monsters and so forth. He was also clever and cunning.

519
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: He used his I guess, his high wisdom scores and

520
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: overcoming the various obstacles. So they had kind of kind

521
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 1: of barbarian wisdom that you see in some of these examples.

522
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:31,880
Speaker 1: You know, a figure from outside the system that is

523
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 1: opposed to the system, and in Heracles' case, you know,

524
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: often opposing mortal tyrants. And Alan points out that this

525
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: idea likely does extend pretty far back in Greek thought

526
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: as a kind of lifting up of an outsider figure

527
00:29:46,160 --> 00:29:47,520
Speaker 1: as a critic of society.

528
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,200
Speaker 3: So then, what actually are the tenets of Cinic philosophy?

529
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is interesting because I feel like a lot

530
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 1: of the tenets we can still recognize in the world

531
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 1: today in forms that we don't necessarily call sen Like

532
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 1: I was thinking of various biker movies I've seen where

533
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: you see some version of this, and again couldn't help

534
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 1: but think of, you know, various things from like the

535
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 1: punk scene or like metal lyrics and so forth. We

536
00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: often see some of these ideas, you know, idealized in

537
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: music and film. But the ancient cynics, again exemplified in

538
00:30:22,640 --> 00:30:27,720
Speaker 1: the figure of Diogenes, absolutely rejected conventional values and societal norms.

539
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 1: They absolutely did not care about your society, your obsession

540
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: with fame and wealth. They saw the absolute hypocrisy of

541
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: it all, and they openly dragged it like they they

542
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: were gonna you were gonna know they were a cynic

543
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 1: on site, and they were going to let you know

544
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: they were a cynic because they would, they would preach

545
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: to you about it, they would tell you about it.

546
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: They lived simple, self sufficient lives while also seeking to

547
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 1: expose the folly of the mainstream world.

548
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a tendency to uh simple living, to asceticism,

549
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 3: and to calling out ostentation. And it's interesting I think

550
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 3: you point out that cynicism was often a philosophy you

551
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 3: could see embodied on the person in the way they

552
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:13,160
Speaker 3: appeared and in the way they were living, which is

553
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 3: less true about some other schools. A philosophy in which

554
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:18,239
Speaker 3: you might have to like talk to the person and

555
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:20,880
Speaker 3: like hear about what they think in order to figure

556
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 3: out what their their philosophy is.

557
00:31:23,360 --> 00:31:25,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you wouldn't be going on a blind date

558
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:27,960
Speaker 1: and then halfway through the date realizing, oh, I think

559
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: this person's a cynic. Now you would know it at

560
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: first sight because they're surrounded by dogs, they're wearing rags. Well,

561
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: oftentimes they were said to wear old cloaks and carry

562
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 1: aus staff, but there would be there. You would know

563
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:43,720
Speaker 1: immediately if you were about to go on a blind

564
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: date with a cynic. It wouldn't be like halfway through. Oh,

565
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: and then I realized that they were, you know, you know,

566
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: a nihilist, you know, came up in conversation like, No,

567
00:31:52,760 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: it would be very apparent in your face. So again

568
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: absolutely in your face anti establishment vibes here. But it

569
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:02,120
Speaker 1: would be a mistake to assume that this was just

570
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:05,120
Speaker 1: about young yucking the world and seeking to drag everyone

571
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 1: down into sort of a miserable nihilistic existence, which I

572
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: think is an easy mistake to make when you look

573
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: at some of these factors. But in reality, the ancient

574
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 1: cynics praised virtue above all else. They believe that true

575
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 1: happiness and peace could only be achieved by following a

576
00:32:23,520 --> 00:32:28,240
Speaker 1: virtuous path close to nature, an authentic, natural human life

577
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: full of truth that also exposed the lies of others.

578
00:32:32,080 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 3: Okay, So, while I still think that cynic philosophy and

579
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 3: modern cynicism are pretty much totally different things, you can

580
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 3: start to see the connective thread here with like the

581
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 3: calling out of hypocrisy. You know, I think this would

582
00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 3: be a common virtue aspired to by people who think

583
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:49,760
Speaker 3: of themselves as cynical.

584
00:32:49,800 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 1: Today.

585
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 3: I am exposing hypocrisy. I'm exposing how you know you're

586
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 3: not really as good as you say you are, that

587
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:59,520
Speaker 3: there's something more base lying underneath you.

588
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:03,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now one thing that Alan points out another

589
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: difference here, though, is that the ancient cynics were also

590
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:10,800
Speaker 1: thought to consider themselves rather a cosmopolitan They saw themselves

591
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:13,120
Speaker 1: as citizens of the world, rather than members of a

592
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: local society or group. I don't know. You might be

593
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:17,880
Speaker 1: able to ben that in certain ways and make a

594
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: case for like modern cynics just thinking like that, but

595
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would. I would imagine that a

596
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 1: modern lower case C cynic who is thinking about themselves

597
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 1: as a citizen in the world is also thinking of

598
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:32,560
Speaker 1: it in a very dreary sense.

599
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, a less universal brotherhood and more like

600
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 3: we're all you know, we're all going to the same place.

601
00:33:39,840 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one of the big differences that Alan

602
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: points out is that the ancient cynics, again, they believed

603
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: in virtue. They believed that the world could become a

604
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: better place because they were preaching a philosophy that they

605
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: believed improved human lives. And this is really key too.

606
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 1: He points out that it was a joyful ethos It

607
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:05,080
Speaker 1: wasn't just like I'm sitting here in the dirt and

608
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: I'm miserable, be miserable with me. No, it had a

609
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: like radical joyful energy to it.

610
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:11,920
Speaker 3: Absolutely.

611
00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:17,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. So philosophical cynicism, big C cynicism was primarily practiced

612
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 1: from the fourth century BCE to around the fifth century CE,

613
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: though gradually declining after the third century BCE. And this

614
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 1: of course leads to a question that I think we

615
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:30,800
Speaker 1: may come back to a little bit more as well,

616
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 1: But what sort of transformation takes place from capital c

617
00:34:35,480 --> 00:34:38,200
Speaker 1: cynicism to lowercase cynicism from the ancient world and the

618
00:34:38,239 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: modern And to put it very briefly, to summarize some

619
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:46,239
Speaker 1: of what Alan gets into, First of all, the transformation

620
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:52,080
Speaker 1: involves a radical engage in an even joyful philosophy becoming

621
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:57,839
Speaker 1: this more corrosive, passive, and miserable way of looking at

622
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: the world. So again, you had to you really be

623
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,759
Speaker 1: engaged to be a capital C cynic You were making

624
00:35:04,840 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 1: definite life choices, going out in the streets and doing it.

625
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: Whereas lowercase C cynicism that we have today, it's in everybody.

626
00:35:12,600 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 1: It's ambient. It's just at what level is it going

627
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:21,200
Speaker 1: to manifest in our worldview and our speech and our actions. Yeah, okay, yeah,

628
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:23,280
Speaker 1: So it went from something that was very on activated

629
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: and optimistic to something that just kind of festers and

630
00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:29,920
Speaker 1: they're like a number I guess, sort of blips and

631
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: points you can single out. The stoics later took elements

632
00:35:34,800 --> 00:35:39,040
Speaker 1: of cynic ideas and tempered there are more radical elements.

633
00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: Then much later on, during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,

634
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:47,879
Speaker 1: cynic ideas were reinterpreted and utilized in ways that often

635
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:51,239
Speaker 1: eroded their critical edge. And then in modern times you

636
00:35:51,239 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 1: have to also factor in the perceived complexities and failures

637
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:59,799
Speaker 1: of modern systems, and this further squeezes some of these

638
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 1: ideas into the current ambient form. Though at the same time, again,

639
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:09,799
Speaker 1: the energy of ancient cynicism continues to thrive in other

640
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:13,120
Speaker 1: areas of rebellious thought, so you could again, you know,

641
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:16,480
Speaker 1: I can think of numerous examples, certainly from media, but

642
00:36:16,600 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: also from the real world people who are you speaking

643
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:25,239
Speaker 1: out against societal norms and engaging sometimes in speech that

644
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 1: may feel at least like its lowercase cynicism, But.

645
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 3: In a lot of the best cases of that, I

646
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 3: think it actually is not cynical in the dispositional way

647
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 3: we've been thinking about, because it requires a lot of

648
00:36:36,520 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 3: trust and cooperation and belief in the possibility of good

649
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 3: things coming out of human nature and all that stuff.

650
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:46,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, we may come back to more of

651
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: this as we go, but I think that is a

652
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: proper grounding in ancient capital c cynicism that allows us

653
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 1: to move forward into more discussions of where we are now.

654
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:08,560
Speaker 3: Whichever way you come down on the cynic versus the

655
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 3: non cynics accuracy in modeling the world, I think what

656
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 3: is absolutely clear at this point, based on a lot

657
00:37:15,600 --> 00:37:21,239
Speaker 3: of research, is that there are tons of straightforwardly negative

658
00:37:21,360 --> 00:37:26,719
Speaker 3: life outcomes correlated with cynicism. You know, I sometimes try

659
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 3: to stay away from like strong normative claims of this

660
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:32,799
Speaker 3: sort on the show. But I think it's just like

661
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:36,839
Speaker 3: it's almost definite, like it is bad for you in

662
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 3: lots of ways to be cynical. It's not good for

663
00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 3: your physical or mental health. It's not good for your

664
00:37:42,640 --> 00:37:46,240
Speaker 3: ability to attain goals. It's just like across the board,

665
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 3: pretty bad for you to be highly cynical. Now, since

666
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 3: we're about to look at some psychological and medical research,

667
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 3: I think it's worth a check in on how cynicism

668
00:37:55,800 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 3: is defined in this literature. It's usually tree as what

669
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 3: a couple of authors Stavrova and Elibroct I'll come back

670
00:38:05,120 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 3: to them in a bit, call a quote cognitive component

671
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 3: of hostility. So, in other words, when a person displays

672
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 3: the character trait of hostility, cynicism is the main cognitive

673
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 3: part of that. It's the thought patterns and belief structures

674
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:26,800
Speaker 3: underlying hostility. So in these papers, cynicism is often called

675
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 3: cynical hostility. And I would say, based on my reading,

676
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:35,239
Speaker 3: there seem to be three core beliefs defining cynical hostility.

677
00:38:36,040 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 3: Number One, other people have bad moral character and harmful intentions.

678
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 3: Number Two, people are motivated primarily by self interest. And

679
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 3: number three, people will ignore their moral values if given

680
00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 3: the opportunity. So the very short way to paraphrase cynical

681
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 3: hostility is people are bad, people are selfish, and morals

682
00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 3: are fake. So what effects do these beliefs have on

683
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 3: our lives and our bodies? Well, I'm going to run

684
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:10,200
Speaker 3: through some commonly cited items. One is the well established

685
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 3: link between cynicism and various health outcomes. So, for example,

686
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 3: studies have repeatedly found links between high cynicism and poor

687
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:26,480
Speaker 3: cardiovascular health. In fact, I even found one study arguing

688
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 3: for a particular causal link between cynical hostility and cardiovascular disease.

689
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:35,320
Speaker 3: That paper was by Tyra at All in the journal

690
00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 3: Psychophysiology from the year twenty twenty, and it's called cynical

691
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:43,280
Speaker 3: hostility relates to a lack of habituation of the cardiovascular

692
00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 3: response to repeated acute stress. So once I read this,

693
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 3: I thought this was really interesting. The study built on

694
00:39:52,239 --> 00:39:54,440
Speaker 3: a general finding that had been in the research for

695
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:58,359
Speaker 3: years that if a person exhibits hostility to others, they

696
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 3: will be at an increased risk of heart disease over time,

697
00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 3: and the authors here decided to probe more specifically into

698
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 3: what kinds of hostility or what elements of hostility were

699
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 3: the most damaging, and they looked at emotional hostility, behavioral hostility,

700
00:40:15,640 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 3: and cognitive hostility. Emotional hostility is it's affective in nature,

701
00:40:21,239 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 3: and it's characterized by things like chronic anger, when you

702
00:40:23,960 --> 00:40:28,200
Speaker 3: feel the emotion of anger a lot. Behavioral hostility is

703
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 3: a tendency to react to situations with expressions of aggression,

704
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:37,240
Speaker 3: and cognitive hostility is about beliefs, meaning it is essentially

705
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:41,160
Speaker 3: synonymous with cynicism. In the words of the lead author here,

706
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 3: Alexandra Tyra, it is quote negative beliefs, thoughts, and attitudes

707
00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:51,680
Speaker 3: about other people's motives, intentions, and trustworthiness. Hostility tends to

708
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 3: come along with a physiological stress response, including things like

709
00:40:56,239 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 3: increased blood pressure that can damage the cardiovascular system when

710
00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 3: chronic Now, normally, when we have a stressful experience, the

711
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 3: body tends to acclimate to that stressful experience by desensitizing

712
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 3: us to the stressful stimulus. So what really freaked us

713
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,839
Speaker 3: out the first time is old news by the seventeenth time,

714
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 3: and we just don't have the same stress response anymore.

715
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:22,640
Speaker 3: You can think about this a common example used in

716
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:26,640
Speaker 3: these experiments is like public speaking tends to be really

717
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 3: stressful the first time, but if you do it again

718
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 3: and again you get used to it, it becomes less

719
00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:37,600
Speaker 3: stressful each time, apparently, except when cynicism comes into play. Somehow,

720
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 3: cognitive cynicism this lack of trust in others, a belief

721
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 3: that other people are bad, that they're self interested, and

722
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:49,960
Speaker 3: that their morals are fake. Cognitive cynicism seems to prevent

723
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:55,440
Speaker 3: the body from chilling out about stressors upon repeat exposure.

724
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 3: And here I'm going to quote from the lead author,

725
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:02,520
Speaker 3: Alexandra Tige. She's quoted in a Baylor University press release

726
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 3: about this research. Quote. Essentially, when you're exposed to the

727
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:10,439
Speaker 3: same thing multiple times, the novelty of that situation wears off,

728
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 3: and then you don't have as big of a response

729
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:15,440
Speaker 3: as you did the first time. This is a healthy response,

730
00:42:15,480 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 3: but our study demonstrates that a higher tendency for cynical

731
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:23,879
Speaker 3: hostility may prevent or inhibit this decrease in response over time.

732
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 3: In other words, the cardiovascular system responds similarly to a

733
00:42:28,440 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 3: second stressor as it did to the first. So a

734
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:36,319
Speaker 3: really interesting question is, like, why is this like when

735
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:39,479
Speaker 3: you believe everybody's in it for themselves, and people can't

736
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:42,320
Speaker 3: be trusted, and everybody lies and cheats to get ahead.

737
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 3: It is apparently just harder for people to relax about

738
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,800
Speaker 3: the things that are causing them distress upon repeat exposure,

739
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 3: even harder than it might be for people who have

740
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:56,560
Speaker 3: other other kinds of issues, like emotional issues with chronic anger,

741
00:42:56,800 --> 00:43:00,560
Speaker 3: though of course those things can and do overlap. But yeah,

742
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:03,919
Speaker 3: really fascinating to me, Like, why would that link be there?

743
00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:08,600
Speaker 3: What exactly is the causal connection? But apparently it's not

744
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:14,000
Speaker 3: just heart disease. Another commonly studied example is depression. Cynicism

745
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 3: is perhaps unsurprisingly associated with increased risk of depression. One

746
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 3: paper on this subject is by Nabi at All from

747
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:24,799
Speaker 3: twenty ten in the journal Psychological Medicine called Hostility and

748
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 3: Depressive Mood Results from the Whitehall two perspective cohort study

749
00:43:30,160 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 3: and so this was a longitudinal study of data collected

750
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,880
Speaker 3: by a survey of a large group of civil servants

751
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:39,680
Speaker 3: in London beginning in the nineteen eighties and then following

752
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,200
Speaker 3: up with the same participants many years later. In this

753
00:43:43,239 --> 00:43:48,000
Speaker 3: particular study found that people with the most cynical hostility

754
00:43:48,080 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 3: at ages thirty five to fifty five, as measured by

755
00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 3: a couple of common inventories such as the Cook Medley

756
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:59,640
Speaker 3: hostility scale, also had the greatest likelihood of depressive mood

757
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 3: teen years later, even after controlling for socio demographic variables

758
00:44:05,360 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 3: and the presence of baseline mental health struggles and so

759
00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 3: the authors conclude that cynicism on its own is a

760
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:16,560
Speaker 3: strong and robust predictor of later depression, and the negative

761
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,040
Speaker 3: effects don't stop there. There's also there are multiple studies

762
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 3: going at least as far back as the nineteen nineties,

763
00:44:22,440 --> 00:44:25,759
Speaker 3: maybe even earlier, that have found a link between cynicism

764
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 3: and all cause mortality, so on average, cynical people tend

765
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:34,040
Speaker 3: to have earlier deaths. One example of this research is

766
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:36,600
Speaker 3: a study by Susan Everson and co authors in the

767
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:40,839
Speaker 3: American Journal of Epidemiology in nineteen ninety seven. This investigated

768
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 3: a group of twenty one hundred and twenty five men

769
00:44:43,320 --> 00:44:45,520
Speaker 3: between the ages of forty two and sixty over a

770
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 3: period of nine years, and it found that men in

771
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 3: the top quartile, so the top twenty five percent of

772
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:56,440
Speaker 3: cynical hostility scores, were more than twice as likely to

773
00:44:56,520 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 3: die in the next nine years as men in the

774
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 3: bottom quartile, the lowest twenty five percent of cynicism scores.

775
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:06,280
Speaker 3: And in this case, the authors found that the correlation

776
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 3: with all cause mortality disappeared when the analysis factored in

777
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,400
Speaker 3: behavioral risk factors things like smoking and levels of alcohol

778
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:19,880
Speaker 3: consumption and some other risk factors, which suggests that at

779
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:22,479
Speaker 3: least within this sample the way they looked at it here,

780
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 3: it might not necessarily be that cynicism kills you directly,

781
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 3: but that cynicism is associated with behaviors and lifestyle and

782
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 3: conditioned responses that worsen health outcomes and lead to earlier deaths.

783
00:45:39,120 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 3: And so of course you could factor in things like

784
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,399
Speaker 3: the later finding that cynicism does appear to be bad

785
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:47,760
Speaker 3: for your cardiovascular health. Now here's another question. There appears

786
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 3: to be a wide consensus among experts cynicism it comes

787
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:54,439
Speaker 3: with bad health outcomes, But are we sure which way

788
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 3: the effect goes? Like does poor health make people more

789
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,759
Speaker 3: cynical or does cynicism lead to poor health? Well, I

790
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 3: found a paper looking into that, and it seems like

791
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:08,720
Speaker 3: the effect probably goes both ways, creating a vicious cycle.

792
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:13,359
Speaker 3: So this paper was by Olgas Stavrova and Daniel Elibracht

793
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 3: called Broken Bodies, Broken Spirits How poor health contributes to

794
00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:21,120
Speaker 3: a cynical worldview in the European Journal of Personality from

795
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. A note that we'll encounter these author names

796
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 3: repeatedly in the series. That seems like they've done a

797
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:31,120
Speaker 3: lot of research on cynicism. Olgus Stavrova is a professor

798
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 3: of psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and Daniel

799
00:46:34,239 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 3: Elibracht is at the University of Cologne in Germany. Now

800
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 3: this one I thought was pretty interesting. This paper opens

801
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 3: with a little historical anecdote that I don't think I'd

802
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:49,520
Speaker 3: ever come across before. It's talking about King Henry aka

803
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:54,760
Speaker 3: Robert Barathian. Yeah, Henry so. On January twenty fourth, fifteen

804
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 3: thirty six, the English King Henry the Eighth was knocked

805
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:02,280
Speaker 3: off of his horse during a jousting event at a tournament,

806
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 3: and he lost consciousness for a few hours. And as

807
00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 3: a result of this fall, he sustained a number of

808
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:14,359
Speaker 3: injuries which essentially led to pain and various downstream health

809
00:47:14,400 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 3: problems for the rest of his life. I think he

810
00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:19,759
Speaker 3: lived another ten or eleven years after this. And what's

811
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 3: interesting is that around this time, records and chronicles of

812
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:27,880
Speaker 3: Henry's reign note a shift in the king's personality. It

813
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:31,680
Speaker 3: seems that sometime around here Henry really started to become

814
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 3: more paranoid and suspicious and increasingly tyrannical. Now there are

815
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 3: multiple historical hypotheses to explain what was going on with Henry.

816
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: Here.

817
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:44,480
Speaker 3: I found another paper. I was just looking around and

818
00:47:44,480 --> 00:47:46,239
Speaker 3: found another paper that was like, well, what if there

819
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,200
Speaker 3: was like a lead poisoning thing. You know, who knows,

820
00:47:49,239 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 3: But so what they're about to say is not the

821
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 3: only possible explanation. But the authors discussed the idea that

822
00:47:56,680 --> 00:48:00,120
Speaker 3: what if Henry's injuries and the pursuant health problem prob

823
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:03,560
Speaker 3: in the years that followed made him into that type

824
00:48:03,600 --> 00:48:07,520
Speaker 3: of person, made him into a person who quote believed everyone,

825
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:12,759
Speaker 3: including his court members and close ones, were untrustworthy and

826
00:48:12,920 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 3: mean spirited. So coming to the actual experiment here, we

827
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 3: already have evidence that cynicism tends in multiple ways to

828
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 3: lead to poor health. But to read from the author's

829
00:48:24,680 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 3: abstract quote, the present research proposes that poor health might

830
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 3: represent both a consequence and a source of cynicism. Using

831
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:38,800
Speaker 3: cross lagged path analyzes. We documented bi directional associations between

832
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 3: health and cynicism in a nationally representative sample of Germans

833
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 3: study one and a large example of the American elderly

834
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:51,000
Speaker 3: study two. Cynical individuals were more likely to develop health

835
00:48:51,040 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 3: problems and poor health promoted the development of a cynical

836
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:59,239
Speaker 3: worldview over time. And so these health status evaluations were

837
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:03,160
Speaker 3: done bo with self report surveys and with objective physical

838
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 3: measures by third party administrators, and they found the effect

839
00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:09,640
Speaker 3: was robust even when the author is controlled the for

840
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:13,920
Speaker 3: the effects of depression. So in their analysis, the authors

841
00:49:14,200 --> 00:49:17,760
Speaker 3: actually propose a mechanism by which cynicism and poor health

842
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 3: ratchet one another up in a vicious cycle. So cynicism

843
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:26,319
Speaker 3: tends to lead to your health getting worse. When your

844
00:49:26,320 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 3: health gets worse, it imposes constraints on your life. You know,

845
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:34,040
Speaker 3: this is a I think a lot of people probably

846
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 3: like when you've had a medical condition or something. It's

847
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:40,000
Speaker 3: not just like the direct pain caused by the condition,

848
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,719
Speaker 3: it's also the way it limits your freedom to do

849
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 3: what you want to do. That can be so frustrating

850
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,799
Speaker 3: and so painful. So you know, medical medical problems can

851
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 3: directly limit your freedom, they can take away your sense

852
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:57,200
Speaker 3: of control over your own fate. They can make you

853
00:49:57,239 --> 00:50:01,279
Speaker 3: more dependent on others, and this con drained status, the

854
00:50:01,320 --> 00:50:06,280
Speaker 3: authors think, may in turn activate quote self protection strategies,

855
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 3: including suspiciousness and hostility, contributing to the endorsement of a

856
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 3: cynical worldview. So, in this model, health problems make you

857
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 3: feel constrained and vulnerable, which makes you defensive, which in

858
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 3: some cases makes people cynical. And of course the increased

859
00:50:24,080 --> 00:50:27,560
Speaker 3: cynicism will tend, on balance to make health outcomes even worse.

860
00:50:28,160 --> 00:50:29,719
Speaker 1: And I'm to assume the other part of that then,

861
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:32,480
Speaker 1: is yet you're not going out then and like making

862
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:38,400
Speaker 1: new friends, engaging in friendships and family relationships that you

863
00:50:38,480 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 1: already have.

864
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're taking part in activities that make you feel fulfilled.

865
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:45,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so yeah, it becomes this visious feedback loop.

866
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:49,960
Speaker 3: I say, even apart from the health consequences, I think

867
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:54,239
Speaker 3: this is very interesting to find this association between cynicism

868
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 3: and a perception of constraint. That cynicism seems to bloom

869
00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:01,359
Speaker 3: when it is why uttered by the feeling that you

870
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:03,759
Speaker 3: are not free to do what you want and do

871
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 3: not have control over your life. There's one more thing

872
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 3: I want to talk about before we have to wrap

873
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:22,719
Speaker 3: up this part today, and that is cynicism and other

874
00:51:22,840 --> 00:51:26,920
Speaker 3: life outcomes. So here's a kind of irony. If you

875
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:29,000
Speaker 3: were to ask me, is there any realm in which

876
00:51:29,080 --> 00:51:32,920
Speaker 3: cynicism is correlated with better outcomes for a person? Does

877
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 3: cynicism ever like help you? I might have guessed without

878
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 3: reading anything, maybe in like material success in career and business.

879
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:45,359
Speaker 3: You know, because there's like an archetype character we all

880
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 3: have in our heads, the cynical materialist shark, like a

881
00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:54,120
Speaker 3: business leader or career ladder climber who trusts no one,

882
00:51:54,200 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 3: has a dark view of human nature, and who will

883
00:51:56,200 --> 00:51:57,440
Speaker 3: do anything to succeed.

884
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like the TV reality show trope of

885
00:52:00,800 --> 00:52:02,800
Speaker 1: that I'm not here to make friends guy.

886
00:52:02,719 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 3: Right exactly. So you imagine that guy that I'm not

887
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 3: here to make friends guy gets ahead because that's how

888
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:11,640
Speaker 3: they present themselves. Right now, there is no doubt you

889
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:15,080
Speaker 3: will find individual examples of quite cynical people who have

890
00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:19,239
Speaker 3: found material success. But is this correlation generally true? Is

891
00:52:19,239 --> 00:52:22,640
Speaker 3: it true on average most of the time according to

892
00:52:22,680 --> 00:52:25,920
Speaker 3: the research I was reading. Nope, not at all. So

893
00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:31,720
Speaker 3: one study by Stavrova, Ileibracht, and Dungning Wren called cynical

894
00:52:31,719 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 3: people desire power but rarely acquire it, exploring the role

895
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:38,240
Speaker 3: of cynicism in leadership attainment. This was in the British

896
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:42,360
Speaker 3: Journal of Psychology twenty twenty four. This found that cynical

897
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 3: people have a greater desire for power than non cynical

898
00:52:45,920 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 3: people do. They tend to seek dominance, however, quote a

899
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:54,399
Speaker 3: study of virtual teams showed that more cynical individuals were

900
00:52:54,560 --> 00:52:58,560
Speaker 3: less likely to emerge as group leaders, and a perspective

901
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 3: study of about nine thousand employees followed for up to

902
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:05,840
Speaker 3: ten years showed that cynicism predicted a lower likelihood of

903
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:10,719
Speaker 3: attaining a leadership position in organizations. So in these experiments,

904
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:15,040
Speaker 3: cynicism means you want power more than the average person,

905
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:19,400
Speaker 3: but you're actually less likely to acquire it. Okay, that's power.

906
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:23,160
Speaker 3: How about money? Money and power, that's all anybody cares about?

907
00:53:23,160 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 3: Maybe in the cynical worldview. But Stavrova and Alebracht found

908
00:53:27,560 --> 00:53:30,760
Speaker 3: in a study called Cynical Beliefs about Human Nature and Income,

909
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:35,239
Speaker 3: Longitudinal and Cross cultural Analyzes in the Journal of Personality

910
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:39,840
Speaker 3: and Social Psychology in twenty sixteen. This looked at surveys

911
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 3: that were conducted over time, and the authors here found

912
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:46,960
Speaker 3: that Americans who endorsed cynical beliefs about human nature think

913
00:53:47,000 --> 00:53:49,080
Speaker 3: you can't trust anybody, They're all going to stab you

914
00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:52,719
Speaker 3: in the back. These people actually made less money over time,

915
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:56,200
Speaker 3: measured at intervals of two years and at nine years.

916
00:53:56,719 --> 00:54:00,880
Speaker 3: And then research on German workers also found cynicism undermined

917
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:05,239
Speaker 3: income potential over a period of nine years. Now, why

918
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:09,879
Speaker 3: would cynicism cut into a person's earning potential? You have

919
00:54:09,960 --> 00:54:12,399
Speaker 3: this idea that like the cynical person, will you know

920
00:54:12,440 --> 00:54:14,359
Speaker 3: that they're not here to make friends and so they'll

921
00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 3: get the raise and all that. The authors here say

922
00:54:17,840 --> 00:54:20,719
Speaker 3: that it seems to be because cynicism, of course, is

923
00:54:20,800 --> 00:54:24,799
Speaker 3: characterized by low trust. So people high in cynicism miss

924
00:54:24,840 --> 00:54:28,399
Speaker 3: out on opportunities to cooperate, you know, they miss out

925
00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 3: on opportunities to achieve mutual benefit by working together with

926
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 3: other people. And they also, I thought this was interesting

927
00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 3: quote over invest in monitoring, control and other means of

928
00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:45,480
Speaker 3: protection from potential exploitation. So when you're very cynical, you

929
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:48,440
Speaker 3: not only miss out on chances to work together for

930
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 3: mutual benefit. You also waste a lot of your resources,

931
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:56,719
Speaker 3: your time and energy and money on excessive efforts to

932
00:54:56,920 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 3: avoid being a sucker.

933
00:54:59,800 --> 00:55:02,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you're you're always on the defense, right,

934
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:04,600
Speaker 1: You're like, nice, Try trying to get me to go

935
00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:09,080
Speaker 1: out to lunch with you coworkers. You're just stealing my

936
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:10,640
Speaker 1: lunch break from me, that sort of thing.

937
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:13,520
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, yeah, what are they trying to get

938
00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:13,920
Speaker 3: out of me?

939
00:55:14,080 --> 00:55:14,319
Speaker 1: Yeah?

940
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:19,520
Speaker 3: Okay, they want to be friends. Yeah. So however, here

941
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:23,200
Speaker 3: I there is also an interesting example in this study

942
00:55:23,200 --> 00:55:27,280
Speaker 3: that illuminates the question of wind as being cynical actually

943
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 3: benefit a person, and the authors say quote. Using survey

944
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:34,120
Speaker 3: data from forty one countries, it revealed that the negative

945
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:38,840
Speaker 3: effect of cynical beliefs on income is alleviated in sociocultural

946
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 3: contexts with low levels of pro social behavior, high homicide rates,

947
00:55:43,600 --> 00:55:48,279
Speaker 3: and high overall societal cynicism levels. Holding cynical beliefs about

948
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:54,880
Speaker 3: others has negative economic outcomes unless such beliefs hold true.

949
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:57,480
Speaker 3: And so this connects to something that we may have

950
00:55:57,520 --> 00:55:59,680
Speaker 3: to explore as we go on. But I think there's

951
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 3: some t truth to this idea. Cynicism is harmful to

952
00:56:03,680 --> 00:56:07,440
Speaker 3: the individual to the cynical individual in a cultural environment

953
00:56:07,520 --> 00:56:11,440
Speaker 3: that is less cynical. But cynicism appears to be more

954
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 3: or less harmful or maybe even helpful to the cynical

955
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 3: individual in a cultural environment that is more cynical, which

956
00:56:20,320 --> 00:56:25,440
Speaker 3: should obviously trouble us if we like, since increasing cynicism

957
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,880
Speaker 3: within the culture that's bad in itself for lots of reasons,

958
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:33,480
Speaker 3: but it also puts real pressure on each individual person

959
00:56:33,960 --> 00:56:37,200
Speaker 3: to be more cynical to adapt to the cynical environment.

960
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 3: So trust just ratchets down and down in one direction.

961
00:56:42,040 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the more life becomes the movie RoboCop. Yeah,

962
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:49,200
Speaker 1: it's not just in terms of you know, technology obviously

963
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:51,920
Speaker 1: and and the you know, the crime that is a

964
00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 1: that exists in that view of of a futuristic Detroit,

965
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:58,840
Speaker 1: but also just like like it's a very cynical world

966
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:02,000
Speaker 1: and it seems like the kind of place where, I mean,

967
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:05,799
Speaker 1: we see examples of this where the cynic rises, and yeah,

968
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:08,640
Speaker 1: you can imagine cynicism perhaps would protect you a little

969
00:57:08,640 --> 00:57:11,640
Speaker 1: bit from like random robot murders. Ah.

970
00:57:11,640 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 3: That's kind of interesting though, because on one hand, yeah,

971
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:17,320
Speaker 3: it's like in reality, you might have to be more

972
00:57:17,360 --> 00:57:21,680
Speaker 3: cynical to get by in OCP Controlled Detroit. But in

973
00:57:21,720 --> 00:57:24,120
Speaker 3: the movie you do really see people like benefiting from

974
00:57:24,320 --> 00:57:25,720
Speaker 3: mutual trust and cooperation.

975
00:57:26,000 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, like I feel like you do see.

976
00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 1: I feel like in many of your more cynical worlds

977
00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 1: in a work of fiction. And to be clear, there

978
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:38,840
Speaker 1: are works out there that are just like ultimately very

979
00:57:40,680 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: very cynical and maybe very nihilistic in their vision. But

980
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:46,480
Speaker 1: a lot of times, like ultimately, I mean, you've got

981
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:51,720
Speaker 1: to invest the viewer, the listener, the reader in some way,

982
00:57:51,840 --> 00:57:56,080
Speaker 1: and so therefore they often involve a cynical figure coming

983
00:57:56,120 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: out of their cynicism a little bit, you know, like

984
00:57:58,640 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: maybe it's a noir, you know, hard boiled detective story.

985
00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:05,840
Speaker 1: You have a very like world weary, cynical detective. Like

986
00:58:05,880 --> 00:58:08,960
Speaker 1: there's there's often got to be something, some light that

987
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:12,160
Speaker 1: is bringing them out of that darkness, at least for

988
00:58:12,200 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 1: a little bit.

989
00:58:12,880 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, Unfortunately, I feel not unfortunately, I guess, I mean

990
00:58:16,800 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 3: I like these stories too, but I think the shape

991
00:58:20,600 --> 00:58:23,120
Speaker 3: of a lot of these noir stories is like somebody

992
00:58:23,160 --> 00:58:26,120
Speaker 3: is cynical at the beginning, they put their trust in someone,

993
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 3: there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and

994
00:58:27,920 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 3: then the light is snuffed out and they end up

995
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:31,240
Speaker 3: even more cynical at the end.

996
00:58:31,520 --> 00:58:33,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's China sound, but hey, can I.

997
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 3: Can I offer I think an actually really positive spin

998
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 3: on a lot of this research about all these negative

999
00:58:39,800 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 3: effects of cynicism. There is an implied inverse in most

1000
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 3: of these, which is that it really emphasizes how much

1001
00:58:48,040 --> 00:58:52,880
Speaker 3: mutual trust and cooperation benefits our lives. That like, when

1002
00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 3: you cut these things out, here is all of the

1003
00:58:55,520 --> 00:58:57,320
Speaker 3: negative consequences that flow in.

1004
00:58:58,160 --> 00:59:01,240
Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah, and so these are these are things we

1005
00:59:01,280 --> 00:59:04,920
Speaker 1: need to value while we have them, and nurture them

1006
00:59:04,960 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 1: while they're in our lives, and seek them out of

1007
00:59:06,640 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 1: there if they're missing.

1008
00:59:07,640 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, and try to grow them where they're where they

1009
00:59:09,800 --> 00:59:10,480
Speaker 3: are faltering.

1010
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 1: Don't skip game night this week or whatever is game

1011
00:59:15,080 --> 00:59:17,760
Speaker 1: night in your life, you know. Yeah, these are things

1012
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:18,560
Speaker 1: worth holding on to.

1013
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:22,240
Speaker 3: By God, trust somebody this week. Yeah, Okay, Well should

1014
00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:24,680
Speaker 3: we cap part one there? We're definitely going to come

1015
00:59:24,680 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 3: back for more.

1016
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:27,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot more to discuss, so we'll be

1017
00:59:27,520 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 1: back in part two. But I think already there's a

1018
00:59:29,880 --> 00:59:32,720
Speaker 1: lot of food for thought here, So already feel free

1019
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: to write in if you have thoughts on capital CE cynicism,

1020
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:39,880
Speaker 1: lowercase C cynicism, or anything else that's come up in

1021
00:59:39,920 --> 00:59:42,800
Speaker 1: this episode. We'd like to remind everyone out there that

1022
00:59:43,080 --> 00:59:45,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1023
00:59:45,200 --> 00:59:49,160
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On

1024
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays

1025
00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:54,840
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

1026
00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:57,920
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Of note, if

1027
00:59:57,960 --> 01:00:01,480
Speaker 1: all goes according to plan, this Friday, we will discuss

1028
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 1: the two hundredth film selection for Weird House Cinema. We

1029
01:00:05,640 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 1: picked out quite a doozy, so tune in for that

1030
01:00:08,480 --> 01:00:09,720
Speaker 1: if that interests you.

1031
01:00:10,040 --> 01:00:13,800
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1032
01:00:14,160 --> 01:00:15,600
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1033
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1034
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:19,919
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1035
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your

1036
01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:30,320
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1037
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:33,800
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1038
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:36,680
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1039
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:54,120
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.