Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and it is Saturday. So we
Speaker 1: have a vault episode for you. This is going to
Speaker 1: be Cynicism Part one, which originally published four fifteen, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. It's gonna be part one of four. Was
Speaker 1: it going to consist of, Well, we're going to get
Speaker 1: into psychological cynicism, philosophical cynicism. There's a lot to discuss here.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And today we wanted
Speaker 3: to begin a series of episodes talking about something that
Speaker 3: has been on my mind a lot lately, and that
Speaker 3: is the concept of cynicism. Now, as we go on,
Speaker 3: we're going to have to diinguish the common contemporary usage
Speaker 3: of cynicism from other meanings extending into history, but as
Speaker 3: used in common language today. We can think of cynicism
Speaker 3: as a cognitive disposition, the core element of which is
Speaker 3: social distrust. Cynicism is a dim view of human nature.
Speaker 3: It's a suspicion of other people's motives and a tendency
Speaker 3: to believe that people are primarily self interested and untrustworthy.
Speaker 3: So there are a variety of kind of inventories or
Speaker 3: tests that psychological studies will do to evaluate how cynical
Speaker 3: you are as a person. They'll often give you like
Speaker 3: a list of statements to see how much you agree
Speaker 3: or disagree with them. A cynical person is going to
Speaker 3: be more likely to agree with statements like altruism and
Speaker 3: compassion are just for show. When it comes down to it,
Speaker 3: people are in it for themselves. Everybody lies and cheats
Speaker 3: when they can get away with it, Cliches like no
Speaker 3: good deed goes unpunished, it's a dog eat dog world,
Speaker 3: the idea that people are not sincere. They'll just tell
Speaker 3: you what you want to hear. And I think the
Speaker 3: core idea of it really is that you can't trust anybody.
Speaker 3: We're all on our own. And before we started today,
Speaker 3: I had been digging around trying to find good examples
Speaker 3: of the cynical worldview presented in works of English literature.
Speaker 3: And while you can find some pretty good examples, I
Speaker 3: think particularly for some reason in like seventeenth and eighteenth
Speaker 3: century English literature, with writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.
Speaker 3: Is some really hardcore cynical stuff there. I actually think
Speaker 3: the most cynical canon of great literature is in the Bible.
Speaker 3: So many books of the Bible, especially like the later
Speaker 3: books of the Tanakh, like the Prophets, have awesomely cynical passages.
Speaker 3: Can I offer you a few examples, rob, Yes, let's
Speaker 3: hear it. Okay. Here's Micah chapter seven, verses two to six.
Speaker 3: This is the King James translation. The good man is
Speaker 3: perished out of the earth, and there is none upright
Speaker 3: among men. They all lie in wait for blood. They
Speaker 3: hunt every man his brother with a net, that they
Speaker 3: may do evil with both hands earnestly. The prince asketh,
Speaker 3: and the judge asketh for a reward, and the great
Speaker 3: man he uttereth his mischievous desire. So they wrap it up.
Speaker 3: The best of them is as a brier. The most
Speaker 3: upright is sharper than a thorn hedge. The day of
Speaker 3: thy watchman and thy visitation cometh Now shall be their perplexity.
Speaker 3: Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence
Speaker 3: in a guide. Keep the doors of thy mouth from
Speaker 3: her that lieth in thy bosom. For the son dishonoereth
Speaker 3: the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the
Speaker 3: daughter in law against her mother in law. A man's
Speaker 3: enemies are the men of his own house.
Speaker 1: Brutal, Yeah, if true, A sad state of affairs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. I got a couple of more shorter ones.
Speaker 3: This is from Psalm fourteen, verses two to four. The
Speaker 3: Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men,
Speaker 3: to see if there were any that did understand and
Speaker 3: seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all
Speaker 3: together become filthy. There is none that doeth good, No,
Speaker 3: not one. And then finally this one. I think some
Speaker 3: of the best poetry in the Bible is in the
Speaker 3: Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah's like great, great writing, but it
Speaker 3: contains the famous statement from Jeremiah seventeen the heart is
Speaker 3: deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Speaker 3: And these passages really emphasized something for me. I think
Speaker 3: I am not an especially cynical person. I think I'm
Speaker 3: not the least cynical person in the world, but I'm
Speaker 3: very far from the most.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I try to be skeptical of like sweeping negative characterizations
Speaker 3: about people and all that. And yet I notice that
Speaker 3: when a cynical condemnation of human nature is phrased really elegantly,
Speaker 3: as I think these are in the King James translation,
Speaker 3: they really takes mental effort to disagree with. So it
Speaker 3: is not my worldview that the heart is deceitful above
Speaker 3: all things. I don't think that's true, But I feel
Speaker 3: kind of foolish trying to shake my head or argue
Speaker 3: with that statement. When it's phrased in that way, it
Speaker 3: possesses what feels like an a priori factuality. If you
Speaker 3: don't force yourself to stop and think about it, it
Speaker 3: just kind of hits you as self evidently true, and
Speaker 3: you feel like you'd have to be naive to doubt it.
Speaker 3: And yet that it's not really what I think. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if you have a similar experience, rob
Speaker 3: maybe not, but I wonder, at least for myself, and
Speaker 3: I think this is probably pretty common. Why do cynical condemnations,
Speaker 3: and especially when they're elegantly phrased, Why do they like
Speaker 3: walk into my mind with a perfectly forged hall pass.
Speaker 3: Why does it take such effortful, deliberate scrutiny to repel them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is I think this is something that
Speaker 1: will come up again and again in this discussion, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it these kind of statements they either ring really true
Speaker 1: to you, and they ring true because you can take them,
Speaker 1: you can hold them up to the world and you
Speaker 1: can find examples. You know, you may be engaging in
Speaker 1: a certain amount of cherry picking, or just point them
Speaker 1: in the right general direction and you'll find evidence to
Speaker 1: support this. I think these statements can also feel rather
Speaker 1: cathartic because whatever's going on in your life, in your world,
Speaker 1: in the like the media that you're consuming, you know,
Speaker 1: there are going to be perceptions of this sort of
Speaker 1: thing going on, and it can feel empowering to hold
Speaker 1: up something that this is sort of like an elegant
Speaker 1: takedown of what's going on and say, yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is exactly what I see in the world. This is
Speaker 1: exactly what people's hearts are about, and you know, it
Speaker 1: may not even be something that you believe all the time,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of like, you know, sometimes you got
Speaker 1: to go there. And in the same sense that you
Speaker 1: might not listen to sad breakup songs all the time,
Speaker 1: but there are times when you definitely need to listen
Speaker 1: to a sad breakup song. Rob.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really good point. I didn't quite
Speaker 3: think about that, but the Catharsis element that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: It does describe the experience of either saying or agreeing
Speaker 3: with a really cynical statement. It feels like blowing off steam.
Speaker 3: There's like a kind of relief that comes with expressing that.
Speaker 3: Just total condemnation and lack of trust in human nature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, sometimes you've got to crank up the
Speaker 1: rage against the machine in the car. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you necessarily feel that all the time, but sometimes
Speaker 1: you've got to do it.
Speaker 3: Now, coming back to like the definitions of cynicism, I
Speaker 3: think one thing that's important to flag at the top
Speaker 3: here is like that cynicism is used kind of loosely,
Speaker 3: and sometimes it's used to mean different things. We're going
Speaker 3: to be trying in this series to focus on the
Speaker 3: use of cynicism as like this dim view of human
Speaker 3: nature and lack of trust in others. But I would
Speaker 3: say less often. Cynicism is also used interchangeably with pessimism,
Speaker 3: the belief that things will go poorly or that the
Speaker 3: future will be bad. I think we should just note
Speaker 3: for our purposes, these are different concepts. Pessimism is more
Speaker 3: of an outlook on reality and all of life, all
Speaker 3: future prospects. So this would include, you know, low expectations
Speaker 3: for random events so called acts of God, and for
Speaker 3: our own ability to do as we would hope. You know,
Speaker 3: that's pessimism, whereas you might think of cynicism as pessimism
Speaker 3: applied specifically to other people. Other people will always let
Speaker 3: you down, they'll stab you in the back. They're only
Speaker 3: in it for themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it got me thinking about the saying don't hate
Speaker 1: the player, hate the game. Your modern cynic definitely hates
Speaker 1: the players, or at least sees them as the underlying problem.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It'd also add that cynicism can also easily bleed over
Speaker 1: into downright nihilism. Though that's not to say that modern
Speaker 1: cynicism isn't compatible with different philosophies and creeds, because you
Speaker 1: could be a cynic and a hedonist at the same time. Certainly,
Speaker 1: I don't know that you'd bea trement it is fun
Speaker 1: to hang out with, but you know it is possible.
Speaker 3: Now, what does it mean to say a person is
Speaker 3: cynical in a way that is subjective, because cynicism is
Speaker 3: by its nature a comparative idea or a sort of
Speaker 3: expression of degree. I would compare being cynical to being tall.
Speaker 3: You know, there's no height at which a person becomes
Speaker 3: objectively tall. People judge whether you're tall or not based
Speaker 3: on the context. You know, they compare you to people
Speaker 3: around you, or to other people in the culture where
Speaker 3: you live, or other people in the room. And then,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, while there's no objective cutoff point,
Speaker 3: somebody who's like seven foot three is pretty much always
Speaker 3: going to be considered tall no matter what context they're in.
Speaker 3: And I think being cynical is like that. It's a
Speaker 3: comparative idea. There's no threshold score of social trust, and
Speaker 3: if you fall below that score, you're objectively cynical. But
Speaker 3: there are some people who are so cynical that basically
Speaker 3: everybody's going to think of them as a cynical person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then of course it also depends on how
Speaker 1: well you know that person as well, right, Because if
Speaker 1: all you know about a person is one cynical thing
Speaker 1: they said, you might be like, oh, well, that person's
Speaker 1: really cynical. But maybe they're not that way all the time.
Speaker 1: You know. It kind of gets into the way we
Speaker 1: sometimes use the term, right we say like I hate
Speaker 1: to be cynical, butes, or you might call somebody out
Speaker 1: and be like, I think you're being a little cynical
Speaker 1: about this. You know, in those usages, acknowledge the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not necessarily a constant. It's maybe something that
Speaker 1: we dip into in response to different circumstances, different stimuli
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: That's right, That's a really good point. So, like a
Speaker 3: lot of things in personality, you can think of cynicism
Speaker 3: as a kind of it's a tendency. You know, you
Speaker 3: might be you're more kind of pointed in one general
Speaker 3: direction of interpretation, but it's not going to dictate that
Speaker 3: every single moment of your life and every single thought
Speaker 3: you have is exactly the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, when we're trying to judge is a person cynical?
Speaker 3: I think there are two main comparative ideas we use there.
Speaker 3: One is what I was just talking about, Like, how
Speaker 3: cynical is that person compared to other people, like, compared
Speaker 3: to the average of their peers. If they show less
Speaker 3: social trusts than the people around them, we think of
Speaker 3: them as cynical. But then there's a second metric that
Speaker 3: I think people use, and that is how cynical a
Speaker 3: person is compared to how cynical we, the people judging,
Speaker 3: think it is reasonable to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we generally assume we've got it figured out. We're
Speaker 1: at the right level.
Speaker 3: We're at the right level, and anybody who's more cynical
Speaker 3: than us is too cynical. Somebody less cynical is naive.
Speaker 3: And this creates interesting levels of complexity. Like obviously, sometimes
Speaker 3: it is reasonable to be suspicious of someone's motives and
Speaker 3: to believe they will probably harm you if they can.
Speaker 3: Here's a common but relatively benign example, and not getting
Speaker 3: into like you know, deep acts of harm against people.
Speaker 3: You should not walk into a car lot expecting that
Speaker 3: the salesperson and the finance manager are trying to help
Speaker 3: you out and get you the best deal they can.
Speaker 3: Maybe in some scenarios you'll find an extraordinarily unusually altruistic
Speaker 3: car dealer, but a lot of the time what they're
Speaker 3: trying to do is make as much money off of
Speaker 3: you as possible, which is not in your interest. And
Speaker 3: that's not to suggest that people selling cars are like evil.
Speaker 3: It's just it's their job to try to make money
Speaker 3: selling cars. If they can make more on a sale
Speaker 3: and you, you know, get you to buy at a
Speaker 3: higher price, or you know, or to take a less
Speaker 3: favorable financing option, they usually will. And I think this
Speaker 3: is true. And yet I think I'm not a very
Speaker 3: cynical person to make that judgment about what happens at
Speaker 3: car lots. There are just specific situations where it is reasonable,
Speaker 3: based on evidence and on our background knowledge, to withhold
Speaker 3: trust from people. And this is different, I think, from
Speaker 3: a generalized cynical distrust that is not related to the
Speaker 3: specific situation. Now, of course, what I think I just
Speaker 3: said is pretty uncontroversial in principle, but we actually spend
Speaker 3: a lot of mental energy trying to tell the difference
Speaker 3: between these two things, like the situation where it's reasonable
Speaker 3: to be suspicious and the situation where you're just expressing
Speaker 3: a bias towards cynicism. Like if a friend comes to
Speaker 3: you and expresses distrust of something or someone that you
Speaker 3: personally put a lot of faith in. What's the most
Speaker 3: common defensive reaction for us to have. I think it's like,
Speaker 3: don't be so cynical or you're just being cynical. Saying
Speaker 3: you're just being cynical downplays the possibility that your doubting
Speaker 3: friend has a good insight, you know, maybe that I
Speaker 3: have misplaced my faith and trust in something, and instead
Speaker 3: it reframes the doubting friends' skepticism as part of a
Speaker 3: general dispositional bias that they have. So dealing with the
Speaker 3: balance between cynicism and reasonable suspicion is just a really
Speaker 3: difficult thing that I think we all have to deal
Speaker 3: with in our lives. We're asking the question, like, in general,
Speaker 3: how suspicious should we be of other people's motives? And
Speaker 3: let's say you take generally cynical people and generally trusting people,
Speaker 3: which groups model of the world makes more accurate predictions,
Speaker 3: which group's model of the world is more useful in life,
Speaker 3: and in which context does each model thrive the most.
Speaker 3: I think we'll have to revisit that question and as
Speaker 3: we go along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's always in short, it's it's
Speaker 1: a careful balance, right, because do you want to protect
Speaker 1: yourself absolutely all the time from all things, or do
Speaker 1: you want to be able to move through life and
Speaker 1: open yourself up to new possibilities that may in fact
Speaker 1: hurt you. Like it always, things like this will always
Speaker 1: remind me of that C. S. Lewis quote about being
Speaker 1: afraid to love because being because you're afraid that you
Speaker 1: will be hurt through that love, either you know, VI
Speaker 1: a loss or some other action. And therefore I think
Speaker 1: the analogy made was like, you know, entombing yourself, you know,
Speaker 1: putting yourself in a casket of loneliness, and I think
Speaker 1: some of that applies here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Now I do have to acknowledge that, Yeah, dealing with
Speaker 1: cynicism in people can certainly be exhausting, you know, Like
Speaker 1: we've been saying, the cynic, like the pastus, tends toward
Speaker 1: type one errors in cognition, false positives, believing that the
Speaker 1: predator alerks in the bushes even when it doesn't. And
Speaker 1: there is always, again, ample evidence for the cynic, exhaustive evidence.
Speaker 1: Even because they are not wrong about many generalities about
Speaker 1: our world and human nature, they tend to put others
Speaker 1: on the defensive, forcing them to make non cynical counter arguments,
Speaker 1: you know, essentially prove the righteousness of their fellow human beings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, in making those counter arguments.
Speaker 1: You don't want to go so far as to dismiss
Speaker 1: the perceived threats or threats entirely, because then they're going
Speaker 1: to come back at you with while you're being naive.
Speaker 3: This connects to what I was saying earlier, Like, again,
Speaker 3: I think I'm not very cynical, but I feel kind
Speaker 3: of silly or foolish if I try to argue with
Speaker 3: somebody who says the heart is deceitful above all things.
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't know, it has a kind of
Speaker 3: it has a kind of power because, as you were saying,
Speaker 3: the cherry picking really works in its favor. You can
Speaker 3: always think of examples when which you were wrong to
Speaker 3: grant trust, but that if you think about it logically,
Speaker 3: that doesn't actually mean you should always withhold trust. It's
Speaker 3: just like it's very captivating those specific examples of when
Speaker 3: it went wrong for you.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this as well over the weekend.
Speaker 1: I was doing a bit of driving, and driving is
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, it's a limited, sort of
Speaker 1: artificial in some ways, like social scenario, and it's probably
Speaker 1: a scenario where like I'm more cynical when I'm driving,
Speaker 1: but in that I am less trusting of the other drivers,
Speaker 1: And I'm not that I'm necessarily believing that they're out
Speaker 1: to hurt me, but I maybe am more inclined to
Speaker 1: believe that they are not looking out for me, and
Speaker 1: they're maybe being a little greedy there and they might
Speaker 1: not see me and so forth. But I guess the
Speaker 1: danger would be taking cynicism from an environment like that,
Speaker 1: where it is maybe you know, low risk to engage
Speaker 1: in such cynicism. To take that feeling off the road
Speaker 1: and into the real world, I could see where that
Speaker 1: could be kind of hurtful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you take your defensive driving mentality and apply it
Speaker 3: to your friend and family relationships and to politics and
Speaker 3: to everything else in your life. Yeah, not a good idea,
Speaker 3: I would argue.
Speaker 1: Yes. Now, another huge problem about regarding modern cynicism, and
Speaker 1: this is something we'll come back to again and again,
Speaker 1: is that it's often pointed out that it generally fosters
Speaker 1: a worldview in which no progress is possible. So again,
Speaker 1: not just talking about engaging in little feelings of cynicism
Speaker 1: now and then, like if the cynicism really piles up,
Speaker 1: and if you really double down on your cynicism, then
Speaker 1: there's no reason to try for or aspire for anything,
Speaker 1: you know, because like if people are all bad, essentially,
Speaker 1: if people are all just in it for themselves, they're
Speaker 1: just greedy, there's no caring. Then what can we do
Speaker 1: as a society, What is it all possible? And you
Speaker 1: just kind of become fossilized in the mud of your
Speaker 1: own distrust.
Speaker 3: I think that's exactly right. In fact, this link you're
Speaker 3: suggesting between cynicism and inaction or lack of progress is
Speaker 3: absolutely backed up by evidence. We might get more into
Speaker 3: the details of these studies later, but I've been looking
Speaker 3: at studies that have found cynicism tends to cause people
Speaker 3: to skip opportunities to cooperate to achieve goals. It tends
Speaker 3: to people high in cynicism tend to hold back from
Speaker 3: involvement in the political process, not voting, not protesting, not
Speaker 3: signing a petition, even if they care about an issue.
Speaker 3: And it just seems like if you're higher in cynicism,
Speaker 3: you are less likely to try to make things better
Speaker 3: and more likely to give up.
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote here from Ascar Allen,
Speaker 1: author of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series book Cynicism,
Speaker 1: which deals as all just gusts and as I cite
Speaker 1: this book again with both ancient cynicism and modern cynicism.
Speaker 1: More on that in a bit, but he writes quote
Speaker 1: as a cultural disposition, cynicism foments distrust, derails progress, and
Speaker 1: reduces all higher things, all that is good about humankind
Speaker 1: to the level of its own diminished outlook. It assumes
Speaker 1: that all human motives are basically selfish and denies the
Speaker 1: possibility of a better world. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's true despite the persuasive power of cynicism.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned earlier, I think that is correct at
Speaker 3: the level of my personal experience, and that seems borne
Speaker 3: out by experimental evidence as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I'll also add that in the book
Speaker 1: he stresses that, you know, while we can all point
Speaker 1: out just you know, egregious examples of cynicism in the
Speaker 1: world around us, we're also just all infected by cynicism.
Speaker 1: Like it's not just a world of cynics and non
Speaker 1: cynics for the most part. And he cites common sayings
Speaker 1: like I hate to be cynical, but and so forth,
Speaker 1: like we were talking, but you know, points out that
Speaker 1: cynicism is pretty much in all of us festering to
Speaker 1: various degrees and very much takes on the form of
Speaker 1: an affliction. It may dominate, it may go into remission,
Speaker 1: it may flare up due to various and environmental factors.
Speaker 3: But it is there, absolutely, Yeah, which raises the good
Speaker 3: question of, if it's there latently to some degree in
Speaker 3: all of us, and in some cases for quite understandable reasons,
Speaker 3: what brings it out, what makes it grow, and maybe
Speaker 3: what can diminish it. Now, I guess we'll have to
Speaker 3: come back to that, because one thing that we definitely
Speaker 3: should address here is it gets a little confusing when
Speaker 3: you're trying to look up research on cynicism, because cynicism
Speaker 3: is a word that is used to mean at least
Speaker 3: two completely different things. There is a school of classical
Speaker 3: Greek philosophy called cynicism, which is not merely social distrust.
Speaker 3: It's a whole school of thought that entails different things. Rob,
Speaker 3: I think you're about to get to it in the second.
Speaker 3: But these two cynicisms are totally different, and it was
Speaker 3: a kind of an interesting question to me to wonder
Speaker 3: how the same word came to be used for these
Speaker 3: two different things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those things where it's it's complicated.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with, you know, centuries upon centuries of human
Speaker 1: history with different returns to ancient cynicism and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's not quite a scenario that you
Speaker 1: might encounter with movie titles where you're like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: there's the Peter Lorie mad Loove movie and then there's
Speaker 1: the the nineties television series Mad Love, and these are
Speaker 1: not connected at all. They just share a title. There's
Speaker 1: more connective tissue here. But but it is I think
Speaker 1: also completely correct to say you're dealing with two different things.
Speaker 1: They don't line up on a lot of their principles,
Speaker 1: even if there is ultimately some shared history there.
Speaker 3: So what's the rundown on capital C cynicism or cynic philosophy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in the books Cynicism, Alan gets into this
Speaker 1: a bit and he refers to like the broader transitionary
Speaker 1: matter as capital C slash lower C cynicism. So it's
Speaker 1: like c C cynicism or something I don't know, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't pronounce it, how about, but like basically referring to
Speaker 1: this grander thing of cynism that begins with capital C
Speaker 1: cynicism and eventually leads into lower case cynicism that is
Speaker 1: in all of us today. In either case, he stresses
Speaker 1: that cynics are not good people, not by mainstream social
Speaker 1: standards anyway. But while the modern cynic is a person
Speaker 1: under the influence again of this kind of infection of distrust,
Speaker 1: the ancient cynics were a different matter. I have to
Speaker 1: stress that the ancient cynics were totally punk, like abrasively punk. Yes,
Speaker 1: And to really get into this we have to look
Speaker 1: at the most famous of these ancient punks, and that
Speaker 1: of course is Diogeny, the cynic or Diogenes of synop
Speaker 1: We have talked about Diogenes on the show before. I
Speaker 1: think in episodes we were talking about solitary hermits and
Speaker 1: so forth, because one of the more famous aspects of
Speaker 1: him that you often see illustrated and rendered as the
Speaker 1: subject in various you know, Renaissance paintings and so forth,
Speaker 1: is the fact that he lived in a jar in public.
Speaker 3: I think in like the marketplace and Athens, there's lived
Speaker 3: in a big tub or a jar just out in public.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When we say lived in a jar, not
Speaker 1: a little jar, like a big like a big old
Speaker 1: you know, you can think of it more as like
Speaker 1: a big barrel on its side. It's the way it's
Speaker 1: generally depicted in art.
Speaker 3: Often he's basically naked as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically naked, dressed in rags, surrounded by dogs. Often
Speaker 1: has a lantern out in the day like he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what about it, I've got a lantern. I'm burning the lantern.
Speaker 1: I don't need it right now, but I'm burning it.
Speaker 1: You know. That's that's how anti establishment I am.
Speaker 3: I think there's one story. I might have this wrong,
Speaker 3: but there's a story that he would carry around the
Speaker 3: lantern in the daytime and he would say that he
Speaker 3: was looking for an honest man, which that almost connects
Speaker 3: a little bit to the Lower Sea cynicism kind of.
Speaker 3: There's a sort of critique of human nature or an
Speaker 3: idea of hypocrisy and how people present themselves there, So
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of connection.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But again not to imply that Diogenes was just
Speaker 3: a lowercase CEA cynic, because he's much more interesting than that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of stories about him. There's
Speaker 1: like the famous story of him telling Alexander the Great
Speaker 1: essentially to f off and then Alexander the Great's like, huh,
Speaker 1: this guy's great, and that's basically the story there.
Speaker 3: But oh no, it's a great one. Alexander the Great
Speaker 3: came through and he's like, oh, I want to meet
Speaker 3: the great, the cynic philosopher Diogenes. So like, you know,
Speaker 3: he goes with his retinue and the generals to go
Speaker 3: find him, and he's I think the story's Diogenes is
Speaker 3: like laying out sunning himself naked or something, and Alexander
Speaker 3: walks up to him and his shadow fall over him,
Speaker 3: and he's like, hey, can I you know, I'm the
Speaker 3: conquering King. Can I give you anything? And Diogenes is like,
Speaker 3: I would like you to get out of my light.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 3: And so Alexander did not kill him. He was just like, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the essentially the quote that has attributed to
Speaker 1: Alexander's like if I if I was an Alexander, I
Speaker 1: would be Diogenes. Okay, it's like this character I like,
Speaker 1: I like the cut of his gip.
Speaker 3: Well that's a that's the kind of story I like,
Speaker 3: telling the powerful man to f off.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there are there are various stories about di
Speaker 1: Diogenes and his travels, and also about the various bodily
Speaker 1: functions that he would carry out in public, sometimes like
Speaker 1: nd speech and so forth. And there are occasionals some
Speaker 1: stories are thought to maybe maybe be a little more
Speaker 1: fictional and a little more you know, legendary. But we
Speaker 1: are definitely dealing with an historic person thought to have
Speaker 1: lived four thirteen or four three BCE through three twenty
Speaker 1: one or three twenty four BCE, and he did write.
Speaker 1: None of his own writings survive, though I apparently wrote dialogues,
Speaker 1: letters and tragedies. We mostly know of him through the
Speaker 1: writings of others. Oh well, I should correct that we
Speaker 1: know about him exclusively through the writings of others. Again,
Speaker 1: his own writings did not survive.
Speaker 3: Now you mentioned the bodily functions. If you don't read deeper,
Speaker 3: you might be tempted to assume, based on the example
Speaker 3: of Diogenes, that cynic philosophy is just about like pooping in.
Speaker 1: Public, And it is one of the more I guess,
Speaker 1: eye catching aspects of their public display of humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were said to, especially Diagenies was said to freely
Speaker 1: engage in public dispension of the body's various functions in
Speaker 1: a way that would still be shocking today and would
Speaker 1: still very much be against social norms. But I guess
Speaker 1: the key way of understanding what it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly it does seem like it was about shocking people. Again,
Speaker 1: these guys were very punk, very in everyone's faces, with
Speaker 1: how they viewed human nature and how they viewed society.
Speaker 1: But essentially we'll get into more of what this meant
Speaker 1: to them. But they were living the animal life, they
Speaker 1: were rooting the human experience in the body, and so
Speaker 1: they were they were saying, Hey, this is what we are.
Speaker 1: Why should we deny what we are?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the good life lies in dispensing with sort
Speaker 3: of false pretensions and living in accordance with your nature.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Diogenes was not the first cynic and to
Speaker 1: Spines roughly who live roughly four forty six through three
Speaker 1: sixty six BCE, a pupil of Socrates and said to
Speaker 1: be the teacher of Diagenes, is often considered the founder
Speaker 1: of cynicism, though even in antiquity, Alan points out it
Speaker 1: was thought that cynicism dated back to a time before Heracles,
Speaker 1: connected to the cunning intelligence of the gods. And I
Speaker 1: did find it interesting that that Heracles was referenced here
Speaker 1: because it seems like a good name to invoke, even indirectly, because,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed in the show before, the son of
Speaker 1: Zeus wasn't just raw muscle, you know, throwing stones at
Speaker 1: monsters and so forth. He was also clever and cunning.
Speaker 1: He used his I guess, his high wisdom scores and
Speaker 1: overcoming the various obstacles. So they had kind of kind
Speaker 1: of barbarian wisdom that you see in some of these examples.
Speaker 1: You know, a figure from outside the system that is
Speaker 1: opposed to the system, and in Heracles' case, you know,
Speaker 1: often opposing mortal tyrants. And Alan points out that this
Speaker 1: idea likely does extend pretty far back in Greek thought
Speaker 1: as a kind of lifting up of an outsider figure
Speaker 1: as a critic of society.
Speaker 3: So then, what actually are the tenets of Cinic philosophy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is interesting because I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of the tenets we can still recognize in the world
Speaker 1: today in forms that we don't necessarily call sen Like
Speaker 1: I was thinking of various biker movies I've seen where
Speaker 1: you see some version of this, and again couldn't help
Speaker 1: but think of, you know, various things from like the
Speaker 1: punk scene or like metal lyrics and so forth. We
Speaker 1: often see some of these ideas, you know, idealized in
Speaker 1: music and film. But the ancient cynics, again exemplified in
Speaker 1: the figure of Diogenes, absolutely rejected conventional values and societal norms.
Speaker 1: They absolutely did not care about your society, your obsession
Speaker 1: with fame and wealth. They saw the absolute hypocrisy of
Speaker 1: it all, and they openly dragged it like they they
Speaker 1: were gonna you were gonna know they were a cynic
Speaker 1: on site, and they were going to let you know
Speaker 1: they were a cynic because they would, they would preach
Speaker 1: to you about it, they would tell you about it.
Speaker 1: They lived simple, self sufficient lives while also seeking to
Speaker 1: expose the folly of the mainstream world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a tendency to uh simple living, to asceticism,
Speaker 3: and to calling out ostentation. And it's interesting I think
Speaker 3: you point out that cynicism was often a philosophy you
Speaker 3: could see embodied on the person in the way they
Speaker 3: appeared and in the way they were living, which is
Speaker 3: less true about some other schools. A philosophy in which
Speaker 3: you might have to like talk to the person and
Speaker 3: like hear about what they think in order to figure
Speaker 3: out what their their philosophy is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you wouldn't be going on a blind date
Speaker 1: and then halfway through the date realizing, oh, I think
Speaker 1: this person's a cynic. Now you would know it at
Speaker 1: first sight because they're surrounded by dogs, they're wearing rags. Well,
Speaker 1: oftentimes they were said to wear old cloaks and carry
Speaker 1: aus staff, but there would be there. You would know
Speaker 1: immediately if you were about to go on a blind
Speaker 1: date with a cynic. It wouldn't be like halfway through. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then I realized that they were, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: a nihilist, you know, came up in conversation like, No,
Speaker 1: it would be very apparent in your face. So again
Speaker 1: absolutely in your face anti establishment vibes here. But it
Speaker 1: would be a mistake to assume that this was just
Speaker 1: about young yucking the world and seeking to drag everyone
Speaker 1: down into sort of a miserable nihilistic existence, which I
Speaker 1: think is an easy mistake to make when you look
Speaker 1: at some of these factors. But in reality, the ancient
Speaker 1: cynics praised virtue above all else. They believe that true
Speaker 1: happiness and peace could only be achieved by following a
Speaker 1: virtuous path close to nature, an authentic, natural human life
Speaker 1: full of truth that also exposed the lies of others.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, while I still think that cynic philosophy and
Speaker 3: modern cynicism are pretty much totally different things, you can
Speaker 3: start to see the connective thread here with like the
Speaker 3: calling out of hypocrisy. You know, I think this would
Speaker 3: be a common virtue aspired to by people who think
Speaker 3: of themselves as cynical.
Speaker 1: Today.
Speaker 3: I am exposing hypocrisy. I'm exposing how you know you're
Speaker 3: not really as good as you say you are, that
Speaker 3: there's something more base lying underneath you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now one thing that Alan points out another
Speaker 1: difference here, though, is that the ancient cynics were also
Speaker 1: thought to consider themselves rather a cosmopolitan They saw themselves
Speaker 1: as citizens of the world, rather than members of a
Speaker 1: local society or group. I don't know. You might be
Speaker 1: able to ben that in certain ways and make a
Speaker 1: case for like modern cynics just thinking like that, but
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would. I would imagine that a
Speaker 1: modern lower case C cynic who is thinking about themselves
Speaker 1: as a citizen in the world is also thinking of
Speaker 1: it in a very dreary sense.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, a less universal brotherhood and more like
Speaker 3: we're all you know, we're all going to the same place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think one of the big differences that Alan
Speaker 1: points out is that the ancient cynics, again, they believed
Speaker 1: in virtue. They believed that the world could become a
Speaker 1: better place because they were preaching a philosophy that they
Speaker 1: believed improved human lives. And this is really key too.
Speaker 1: He points out that it was a joyful ethos It
Speaker 1: wasn't just like I'm sitting here in the dirt and
Speaker 1: I'm miserable, be miserable with me. No, it had a
Speaker 1: like radical joyful energy to it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So philosophical cynicism, big C cynicism was primarily practiced
Speaker 1: from the fourth century BCE to around the fifth century CE,
Speaker 1: though gradually declining after the third century BCE. And this
Speaker 1: of course leads to a question that I think we
Speaker 1: may come back to a little bit more as well,
Speaker 1: But what sort of transformation takes place from capital c
Speaker 1: cynicism to lowercase cynicism from the ancient world and the
Speaker 1: modern And to put it very briefly, to summarize some
Speaker 1: of what Alan gets into, First of all, the transformation
Speaker 1: involves a radical engage in an even joyful philosophy becoming
Speaker 1: this more corrosive, passive, and miserable way of looking at
Speaker 1: the world. So again, you had to you really be
Speaker 1: engaged to be a capital C cynic You were making
Speaker 1: definite life choices, going out in the streets and doing it.
Speaker 1: Whereas lowercase C cynicism that we have today, it's in everybody.
Speaker 1: It's ambient. It's just at what level is it going
Speaker 1: to manifest in our worldview and our speech and our actions. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it went from something that was very on activated
Speaker 1: and optimistic to something that just kind of festers and
Speaker 1: they're like a number I guess, sort of blips and
Speaker 1: points you can single out. The stoics later took elements
Speaker 1: of cynic ideas and tempered there are more radical elements.
Speaker 1: Then much later on, during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,
Speaker 1: cynic ideas were reinterpreted and utilized in ways that often
Speaker 1: eroded their critical edge. And then in modern times you
Speaker 1: have to also factor in the perceived complexities and failures
Speaker 1: of modern systems, and this further squeezes some of these
Speaker 1: ideas into the current ambient form. Though at the same time, again,
Speaker 1: the energy of ancient cynicism continues to thrive in other
Speaker 1: areas of rebellious thought, so you could again, you know,
Speaker 1: I can think of numerous examples, certainly from media, but
Speaker 1: also from the real world people who are you speaking
Speaker 1: out against societal norms and engaging sometimes in speech that
Speaker 1: may feel at least like its lowercase cynicism, But.
Speaker 3: In a lot of the best cases of that, I
Speaker 3: think it actually is not cynical in the dispositional way
Speaker 3: we've been thinking about, because it requires a lot of
Speaker 3: trust and cooperation and belief in the possibility of good
Speaker 3: things coming out of human nature and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, we may come back to more of
Speaker 1: this as we go, but I think that is a
Speaker 1: proper grounding in ancient capital c cynicism that allows us
Speaker 1: to move forward into more discussions of where we are now.
Speaker 3: Whichever way you come down on the cynic versus the
Speaker 3: non cynics accuracy in modeling the world, I think what
Speaker 3: is absolutely clear at this point, based on a lot
Speaker 3: of research, is that there are tons of straightforwardly negative
Speaker 3: life outcomes correlated with cynicism. You know, I sometimes try
Speaker 3: to stay away from like strong normative claims of this
Speaker 3: sort on the show. But I think it's just like
Speaker 3: it's almost definite, like it is bad for you in
Speaker 3: lots of ways to be cynical. It's not good for
Speaker 3: your physical or mental health. It's not good for your
Speaker 3: ability to attain goals. It's just like across the board,
Speaker 3: pretty bad for you to be highly cynical. Now, since
Speaker 3: we're about to look at some psychological and medical research,
Speaker 3: I think it's worth a check in on how cynicism
Speaker 3: is defined in this literature. It's usually tree as what
Speaker 3: a couple of authors Stavrova and Elibroct I'll come back
Speaker 3: to them in a bit, call a quote cognitive component
Speaker 3: of hostility. So, in other words, when a person displays
Speaker 3: the character trait of hostility, cynicism is the main cognitive
Speaker 3: part of that. It's the thought patterns and belief structures
Speaker 3: underlying hostility. So in these papers, cynicism is often called
Speaker 3: cynical hostility. And I would say, based on my reading,
Speaker 3: there seem to be three core beliefs defining cynical hostility.
Speaker 3: Number One, other people have bad moral character and harmful intentions.
Speaker 3: Number Two, people are motivated primarily by self interest. And
Speaker 3: number three, people will ignore their moral values if given
Speaker 3: the opportunity. So the very short way to paraphrase cynical
Speaker 3: hostility is people are bad, people are selfish, and morals
Speaker 3: are fake. So what effects do these beliefs have on
Speaker 3: our lives and our bodies? Well, I'm going to run
Speaker 3: through some commonly cited items. One is the well established
Speaker 3: link between cynicism and various health outcomes. So, for example,
Speaker 3: studies have repeatedly found links between high cynicism and poor
Speaker 3: cardiovascular health. In fact, I even found one study arguing
Speaker 3: for a particular causal link between cynical hostility and cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 3: That paper was by Tyra at All in the journal
Speaker 3: Psychophysiology from the year twenty twenty, and it's called cynical
Speaker 3: hostility relates to a lack of habituation of the cardiovascular
Speaker 3: response to repeated acute stress. So once I read this,
Speaker 3: I thought this was really interesting. The study built on
Speaker 3: a general finding that had been in the research for
Speaker 3: years that if a person exhibits hostility to others, they
Speaker 3: will be at an increased risk of heart disease over time,
Speaker 3: and the authors here decided to probe more specifically into
Speaker 3: what kinds of hostility or what elements of hostility were
Speaker 3: the most damaging, and they looked at emotional hostility, behavioral hostility,
Speaker 3: and cognitive hostility. Emotional hostility is it's affective in nature,
Speaker 3: and it's characterized by things like chronic anger, when you
Speaker 3: feel the emotion of anger a lot. Behavioral hostility is
Speaker 3: a tendency to react to situations with expressions of aggression,
Speaker 3: and cognitive hostility is about beliefs, meaning it is essentially
Speaker 3: synonymous with cynicism. In the words of the lead author here,
Speaker 3: Alexandra Tyra, it is quote negative beliefs, thoughts, and attitudes
Speaker 3: about other people's motives, intentions, and trustworthiness. Hostility tends to
Speaker 3: come along with a physiological stress response, including things like
Speaker 3: increased blood pressure that can damage the cardiovascular system when
Speaker 3: chronic Now, normally, when we have a stressful experience, the
Speaker 3: body tends to acclimate to that stressful experience by desensitizing
Speaker 3: us to the stressful stimulus. So what really freaked us
Speaker 3: out the first time is old news by the seventeenth time,
Speaker 3: and we just don't have the same stress response anymore.
Speaker 3: You can think about this a common example used in
Speaker 3: these experiments is like public speaking tends to be really
Speaker 3: stressful the first time, but if you do it again
Speaker 3: and again you get used to it, it becomes less
Speaker 3: stressful each time, apparently, except when cynicism comes into play. Somehow,
Speaker 3: cognitive cynicism this lack of trust in others, a belief
Speaker 3: that other people are bad, that they're self interested, and
Speaker 3: that their morals are fake. Cognitive cynicism seems to prevent
Speaker 3: the body from chilling out about stressors upon repeat exposure.
Speaker 3: And here I'm going to quote from the lead author,
Speaker 3: Alexandra Tige. She's quoted in a Baylor University press release
Speaker 3: about this research. Quote. Essentially, when you're exposed to the
Speaker 3: same thing multiple times, the novelty of that situation wears off,
Speaker 3: and then you don't have as big of a response
Speaker 3: as you did the first time. This is a healthy response,
Speaker 3: but our study demonstrates that a higher tendency for cynical
Speaker 3: hostility may prevent or inhibit this decrease in response over time.
Speaker 3: In other words, the cardiovascular system responds similarly to a
Speaker 3: second stressor as it did to the first. So a
Speaker 3: really interesting question is, like, why is this like when
Speaker 3: you believe everybody's in it for themselves, and people can't
Speaker 3: be trusted, and everybody lies and cheats to get ahead.
Speaker 3: It is apparently just harder for people to relax about
Speaker 3: the things that are causing them distress upon repeat exposure,
Speaker 3: even harder than it might be for people who have
Speaker 3: other other kinds of issues, like emotional issues with chronic anger,
Speaker 3: though of course those things can and do overlap. But yeah,
Speaker 3: really fascinating to me, Like, why would that link be there?
Speaker 3: What exactly is the causal connection? But apparently it's not
Speaker 3: just heart disease. Another commonly studied example is depression. Cynicism
Speaker 3: is perhaps unsurprisingly associated with increased risk of depression. One
Speaker 3: paper on this subject is by Nabi at All from
Speaker 3: twenty ten in the journal Psychological Medicine called Hostility and
Speaker 3: Depressive Mood Results from the Whitehall two perspective cohort study
Speaker 3: and so this was a longitudinal study of data collected
Speaker 3: by a survey of a large group of civil servants
Speaker 3: in London beginning in the nineteen eighties and then following
Speaker 3: up with the same participants many years later. In this
Speaker 3: particular study found that people with the most cynical hostility
Speaker 3: at ages thirty five to fifty five, as measured by
Speaker 3: a couple of common inventories such as the Cook Medley
Speaker 3: hostility scale, also had the greatest likelihood of depressive mood
Speaker 3: teen years later, even after controlling for socio demographic variables
Speaker 3: and the presence of baseline mental health struggles and so
Speaker 3: the authors conclude that cynicism on its own is a
Speaker 3: strong and robust predictor of later depression, and the negative
Speaker 3: effects don't stop there. There's also there are multiple studies
Speaker 3: going at least as far back as the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 3: maybe even earlier, that have found a link between cynicism
Speaker 3: and all cause mortality, so on average, cynical people tend
Speaker 3: to have earlier deaths. One example of this research is
Speaker 3: a study by Susan Everson and co authors in the
Speaker 3: American Journal of Epidemiology in nineteen ninety seven. This investigated
Speaker 3: a group of twenty one hundred and twenty five men
Speaker 3: between the ages of forty two and sixty over a
Speaker 3: period of nine years, and it found that men in
Speaker 3: the top quartile, so the top twenty five percent of
Speaker 3: cynical hostility scores, were more than twice as likely to
Speaker 3: die in the next nine years as men in the
Speaker 3: bottom quartile, the lowest twenty five percent of cynicism scores.
Speaker 3: And in this case, the authors found that the correlation
Speaker 3: with all cause mortality disappeared when the analysis factored in
Speaker 3: behavioral risk factors things like smoking and levels of alcohol
Speaker 3: consumption and some other risk factors, which suggests that at
Speaker 3: least within this sample the way they looked at it here,
Speaker 3: it might not necessarily be that cynicism kills you directly,
Speaker 3: but that cynicism is associated with behaviors and lifestyle and
Speaker 3: conditioned responses that worsen health outcomes and lead to earlier deaths.
Speaker 3: And so of course you could factor in things like
Speaker 3: the later finding that cynicism does appear to be bad
Speaker 3: for your cardiovascular health. Now here's another question. There appears
Speaker 3: to be a wide consensus among experts cynicism it comes
Speaker 3: with bad health outcomes, But are we sure which way
Speaker 3: the effect goes? Like does poor health make people more
Speaker 3: cynical or does cynicism lead to poor health? Well, I
Speaker 3: found a paper looking into that, and it seems like
Speaker 3: the effect probably goes both ways, creating a vicious cycle.
Speaker 3: So this paper was by Olgas Stavrova and Daniel Elibracht
Speaker 3: called Broken Bodies, Broken Spirits How poor health contributes to
Speaker 3: a cynical worldview in the European Journal of Personality from
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. A note that we'll encounter these author names
Speaker 3: repeatedly in the series. That seems like they've done a
Speaker 3: lot of research on cynicism. Olgus Stavrova is a professor
Speaker 3: of psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and Daniel
Speaker 3: Elibracht is at the University of Cologne in Germany. Now
Speaker 3: this one I thought was pretty interesting. This paper opens
Speaker 3: with a little historical anecdote that I don't think I'd
Speaker 3: ever come across before. It's talking about King Henry aka
Speaker 3: Robert Barathian. Yeah, Henry so. On January twenty fourth, fifteen
Speaker 3: thirty six, the English King Henry the Eighth was knocked
Speaker 3: off of his horse during a jousting event at a tournament,
Speaker 3: and he lost consciousness for a few hours. And as
Speaker 3: a result of this fall, he sustained a number of
Speaker 3: injuries which essentially led to pain and various downstream health
Speaker 3: problems for the rest of his life. I think he
Speaker 3: lived another ten or eleven years after this. And what's
Speaker 3: interesting is that around this time, records and chronicles of
Speaker 3: Henry's reign note a shift in the king's personality. It
Speaker 3: seems that sometime around here Henry really started to become
Speaker 3: more paranoid and suspicious and increasingly tyrannical. Now there are
Speaker 3: multiple historical hypotheses to explain what was going on with Henry.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: I found another paper. I was just looking around and
Speaker 3: found another paper that was like, well, what if there
Speaker 3: was like a lead poisoning thing. You know, who knows,
Speaker 3: But so what they're about to say is not the
Speaker 3: only possible explanation. But the authors discussed the idea that
Speaker 3: what if Henry's injuries and the pursuant health problem prob
Speaker 3: in the years that followed made him into that type
Speaker 3: of person, made him into a person who quote believed everyone,
Speaker 3: including his court members and close ones, were untrustworthy and
Speaker 3: mean spirited. So coming to the actual experiment here, we
Speaker 3: already have evidence that cynicism tends in multiple ways to
Speaker 3: lead to poor health. But to read from the author's
Speaker 3: abstract quote, the present research proposes that poor health might
Speaker 3: represent both a consequence and a source of cynicism. Using
Speaker 3: cross lagged path analyzes. We documented bi directional associations between
Speaker 3: health and cynicism in a nationally representative sample of Germans
Speaker 3: study one and a large example of the American elderly
Speaker 3: study two. Cynical individuals were more likely to develop health
Speaker 3: problems and poor health promoted the development of a cynical
Speaker 3: worldview over time. And so these health status evaluations were
Speaker 3: done bo with self report surveys and with objective physical
Speaker 3: measures by third party administrators, and they found the effect
Speaker 3: was robust even when the author is controlled the for
Speaker 3: the effects of depression. So in their analysis, the authors
Speaker 3: actually propose a mechanism by which cynicism and poor health
Speaker 3: ratchet one another up in a vicious cycle. So cynicism
Speaker 3: tends to lead to your health getting worse. When your
Speaker 3: health gets worse, it imposes constraints on your life. You know,
Speaker 3: this is a I think a lot of people probably
Speaker 3: like when you've had a medical condition or something. It's
Speaker 3: not just like the direct pain caused by the condition,
Speaker 3: it's also the way it limits your freedom to do
Speaker 3: what you want to do. That can be so frustrating
Speaker 3: and so painful. So you know, medical medical problems can
Speaker 3: directly limit your freedom, they can take away your sense
Speaker 3: of control over your own fate. They can make you
Speaker 3: more dependent on others, and this con drained status, the
Speaker 3: authors think, may in turn activate quote self protection strategies,
Speaker 3: including suspiciousness and hostility, contributing to the endorsement of a
Speaker 3: cynical worldview. So, in this model, health problems make you
Speaker 3: feel constrained and vulnerable, which makes you defensive, which in
Speaker 3: some cases makes people cynical. And of course the increased
Speaker 3: cynicism will tend, on balance to make health outcomes even worse.
Speaker 1: And I'm to assume the other part of that then,
Speaker 1: is yet you're not going out then and like making
Speaker 1: new friends, engaging in friendships and family relationships that you
Speaker 1: already have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're taking part in activities that make you feel fulfilled.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so yeah, it becomes this visious feedback loop.
Speaker 3: I say, even apart from the health consequences, I think
Speaker 3: this is very interesting to find this association between cynicism
Speaker 3: and a perception of constraint. That cynicism seems to bloom
Speaker 3: when it is why uttered by the feeling that you
Speaker 3: are not free to do what you want and do
Speaker 3: not have control over your life. There's one more thing
Speaker 3: I want to talk about before we have to wrap
Speaker 3: up this part today, and that is cynicism and other
Speaker 3: life outcomes. So here's a kind of irony. If you
Speaker 3: were to ask me, is there any realm in which
Speaker 3: cynicism is correlated with better outcomes for a person? Does
Speaker 3: cynicism ever like help you? I might have guessed without
Speaker 3: reading anything, maybe in like material success in career and business.
Speaker 3: You know, because there's like an archetype character we all
Speaker 3: have in our heads, the cynical materialist shark, like a
Speaker 3: business leader or career ladder climber who trusts no one,
Speaker 3: has a dark view of human nature, and who will
Speaker 3: do anything to succeed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like the TV reality show trope of
Speaker 1: that I'm not here to make friends guy.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. So you imagine that guy that I'm not
Speaker 3: here to make friends guy gets ahead because that's how
Speaker 3: they present themselves. Right now, there is no doubt you
Speaker 3: will find individual examples of quite cynical people who have
Speaker 3: found material success. But is this correlation generally true? Is
Speaker 3: it true on average most of the time according to
Speaker 3: the research I was reading. Nope, not at all. So
Speaker 3: one study by Stavrova, Ileibracht, and Dungning Wren called cynical
Speaker 3: people desire power but rarely acquire it, exploring the role
Speaker 3: of cynicism in leadership attainment. This was in the British
Speaker 3: Journal of Psychology twenty twenty four. This found that cynical
Speaker 3: people have a greater desire for power than non cynical
Speaker 3: people do. They tend to seek dominance, however, quote a
Speaker 3: study of virtual teams showed that more cynical individuals were
Speaker 3: less likely to emerge as group leaders, and a perspective
Speaker 3: study of about nine thousand employees followed for up to
Speaker 3: ten years showed that cynicism predicted a lower likelihood of
Speaker 3: attaining a leadership position in organizations. So in these experiments,
Speaker 3: cynicism means you want power more than the average person,
Speaker 3: but you're actually less likely to acquire it. Okay, that's power.
Speaker 3: How about money? Money and power, that's all anybody cares about?
Speaker 3: Maybe in the cynical worldview. But Stavrova and Alebracht found
Speaker 3: in a study called Cynical Beliefs about Human Nature and Income,
Speaker 3: Longitudinal and Cross cultural Analyzes in the Journal of Personality
Speaker 3: and Social Psychology in twenty sixteen. This looked at surveys
Speaker 3: that were conducted over time, and the authors here found
Speaker 3: that Americans who endorsed cynical beliefs about human nature think
Speaker 3: you can't trust anybody, They're all going to stab you
Speaker 3: in the back. These people actually made less money over time,
Speaker 3: measured at intervals of two years and at nine years.
Speaker 3: And then research on German workers also found cynicism undermined
Speaker 3: income potential over a period of nine years. Now, why
Speaker 3: would cynicism cut into a person's earning potential? You have
Speaker 3: this idea that like the cynical person, will you know
Speaker 3: that they're not here to make friends and so they'll
Speaker 3: get the raise and all that. The authors here say
Speaker 3: that it seems to be because cynicism, of course, is
Speaker 3: characterized by low trust. So people high in cynicism miss
Speaker 3: out on opportunities to cooperate, you know, they miss out
Speaker 3: on opportunities to achieve mutual benefit by working together with
Speaker 3: other people. And they also, I thought this was interesting
Speaker 3: quote over invest in monitoring, control and other means of
Speaker 3: protection from potential exploitation. So when you're very cynical, you
Speaker 3: not only miss out on chances to work together for
Speaker 3: mutual benefit. You also waste a lot of your resources,
Speaker 3: your time and energy and money on excessive efforts to
Speaker 3: avoid being a sucker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you're you're always on the defense, right,
Speaker 1: You're like, nice, Try trying to get me to go
Speaker 1: out to lunch with you coworkers. You're just stealing my
Speaker 1: lunch break from me, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, yeah, what are they trying to get
Speaker 3: out of me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, they want to be friends. Yeah. So however, here
Speaker 3: I there is also an interesting example in this study
Speaker 3: that illuminates the question of wind as being cynical actually
Speaker 3: benefit a person, and the authors say quote. Using survey
Speaker 3: data from forty one countries, it revealed that the negative
Speaker 3: effect of cynical beliefs on income is alleviated in sociocultural
Speaker 3: contexts with low levels of pro social behavior, high homicide rates,
Speaker 3: and high overall societal cynicism levels. Holding cynical beliefs about
Speaker 3: others has negative economic outcomes unless such beliefs hold true.
Speaker 3: And so this connects to something that we may have
Speaker 3: to explore as we go on. But I think there's
Speaker 3: some t truth to this idea. Cynicism is harmful to
Speaker 3: the individual to the cynical individual in a cultural environment
Speaker 3: that is less cynical. But cynicism appears to be more
Speaker 3: or less harmful or maybe even helpful to the cynical
Speaker 3: individual in a cultural environment that is more cynical, which
Speaker 3: should obviously trouble us if we like, since increasing cynicism
Speaker 3: within the culture that's bad in itself for lots of reasons,
Speaker 3: but it also puts real pressure on each individual person
Speaker 3: to be more cynical to adapt to the cynical environment.
Speaker 3: So trust just ratchets down and down in one direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the more life becomes the movie RoboCop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just in terms of you know, technology obviously
Speaker 1: and and the you know, the crime that is a
Speaker 1: that exists in that view of of a futuristic Detroit,
Speaker 1: but also just like like it's a very cynical world
Speaker 1: and it seems like the kind of place where, I mean,
Speaker 1: we see examples of this where the cynic rises, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine cynicism perhaps would protect you a little
Speaker 1: bit from like random robot murders. Ah.
Speaker 3: That's kind of interesting though, because on one hand, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like in reality, you might have to be more
Speaker 3: cynical to get by in OCP Controlled Detroit. But in
Speaker 3: the movie you do really see people like benefiting from
Speaker 3: mutual trust and cooperation.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, like I feel like you do see.
Speaker 1: I feel like in many of your more cynical worlds
Speaker 1: in a work of fiction. And to be clear, there
Speaker 1: are works out there that are just like ultimately very
Speaker 1: very cynical and maybe very nihilistic in their vision. But
Speaker 1: a lot of times, like ultimately, I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: to invest the viewer, the listener, the reader in some way,
Speaker 1: and so therefore they often involve a cynical figure coming
Speaker 1: out of their cynicism a little bit, you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe it's a noir, you know, hard boiled detective story.
Speaker 1: You have a very like world weary, cynical detective. Like
Speaker 1: there's there's often got to be something, some light that
Speaker 1: is bringing them out of that darkness, at least for
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Unfortunately, I feel not unfortunately, I guess, I mean
Speaker 3: I like these stories too, but I think the shape
Speaker 3: of a lot of these noir stories is like somebody
Speaker 3: is cynical at the beginning, they put their trust in someone,
Speaker 3: there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and
Speaker 3: then the light is snuffed out and they end up
Speaker 3: even more cynical at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's China sound, but hey, can I.
Speaker 3: Can I offer I think an actually really positive spin
Speaker 3: on a lot of this research about all these negative
Speaker 3: effects of cynicism. There is an implied inverse in most
Speaker 3: of these, which is that it really emphasizes how much
Speaker 3: mutual trust and cooperation benefits our lives. That like, when
Speaker 3: you cut these things out, here is all of the
Speaker 3: negative consequences that flow in.
Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah, and so these are these are things we
Speaker 1: need to value while we have them, and nurture them
Speaker 1: while they're in our lives, and seek them out of
Speaker 1: there if they're missing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and try to grow them where they're where they
Speaker 3: are faltering.
Speaker 1: Don't skip game night this week or whatever is game
Speaker 1: night in your life, you know. Yeah, these are things
Speaker 1: worth holding on to.
Speaker 3: By God, trust somebody this week. Yeah, Okay, Well should
Speaker 3: we cap part one there? We're definitely going to come
Speaker 3: back for more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot more to discuss, so we'll be
Speaker 1: back in part two. But I think already there's a
Speaker 1: lot of food for thought here, So already feel free
Speaker 1: to write in if you have thoughts on capital CE cynicism,
Speaker 1: lowercase C cynicism, or anything else that's come up in
Speaker 1: this episode. We'd like to remind everyone out there that
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Of note, if
Speaker 1: all goes according to plan, this Friday, we will discuss
Speaker 1: the two hundredth film selection for Weird House Cinema. We
Speaker 1: picked out quite a doozy, so tune in for that
Speaker 1: if that interests you.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
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