Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Land, and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 3: And today we wanted to begin a series of episodes
Speaker 3: talking about something that has been on my mind a
Speaker 3: lot lately, and that is the concept of cynicism. Now,
Speaker 3: as we go on, we're going to have to distinguish
Speaker 3: the common contemporary usage of cynicism from other meanings extending
Speaker 3: into history, but as used in common language today. We
Speaker 3: can think of cynicism as a cognitive disposition, the core
Speaker 3: element of which is social distrust. Cynicism is a dim
Speaker 3: view of human nature. It's a suspicion of other people's
Speaker 3: motives and a tendency to believe that people are primarily
Speaker 3: self interested and un trustworthy. So there are a variety
Speaker 3: of kind of inventories or tests that psychological studies will
Speaker 3: do to evaluate how cynical you are as a person.
Speaker 3: They'll often give you like a list of statements to
Speaker 3: see how much you agree or disagree with them. A
Speaker 3: cynical person is going to be more likely to agree
Speaker 3: with statements like altruism and compassion are just for show
Speaker 3: when it comes down to it, people are in it
Speaker 3: for themselves. Everybody lies and cheats when they can get
Speaker 3: away with it, cliches like no good deed goes unpunished,
Speaker 3: it's a dog eat dog world, the idea that people
Speaker 3: are not sincere, they'll just tell you what you want
Speaker 3: to hear. And I think the core idea of it
Speaker 3: really is that you can't trust anybody. We're all on
Speaker 3: our own. And before we started today, I had been
Speaker 3: digging around trying to find good examples of the cynical
Speaker 3: worldview presented in works of English literature. And while you
Speaker 3: can find some pretty good examples, I think, particularly for
Speaker 3: some reason in like seventeenth and eighteenth century English literature
Speaker 3: with writers like Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, is some
Speaker 3: really hardcore cynical stuff there. I actually think the most
Speaker 3: cynical canon of great literature is in the Bible. So
Speaker 3: many books of the Bible, especially like the later books
Speaker 3: 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 watchmen 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 dishonoreth
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 2: 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 2: 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 it's not really what I think. So I
Speaker 3: don't know if you have a similar experience, Rob maybe not,
Speaker 3: but I wonder, at least for myself, and I think
Speaker 3: this is probably pretty common. Why do cynical condemnations, and
Speaker 3: especially when they're elegantly phrased, why do they like walk
Speaker 3: into my mind with a perfectly forged hall pass. Why
Speaker 3: does it take such effortful, deliberate scrutiny to repel them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is I think this is something that
Speaker 2: will come up again and again in this discussion, because yeah,
Speaker 2: it these kind of statements they either ring really true
Speaker 2: to you, and they ring true because you can take them,
Speaker 2: you can hold them up to the world and you
Speaker 2: can find examples. You know, you may be engaging in
Speaker 2: a certain amount of cherry picking, or just point them
Speaker 2: in the right general direction and you'll find evidence to
Speaker 2: support this. I think these statements can also feel rather cathartic,
Speaker 2: because whatever's going on in your life, in your world,
Speaker 2: in the like the media that you're consuming, you know
Speaker 2: there are going to be perceptions of this sort of
Speaker 2: thing going on, and it can feel empowering to hold
Speaker 2: up something that is sort of like an elegant takedown
Speaker 2: of what's going on and say, yeah, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: this is exactly what I see in the world, This
Speaker 2: is exactly what people's hearts are about. And you know,
Speaker 2: it may not even be something that you believe all
Speaker 2: the time, but it's kind of like, you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: you got to go there. And in the same sense
Speaker 2: that you might not listen to sad breakup songs all
Speaker 2: the time, but there are times when you definitely need
Speaker 2: to listen to a sad breakup song.
Speaker 3: Rob, I think that's a really good point. I didn't
Speaker 3: quite 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
Speaker 3: that that just total condemnation and lack of trust in
Speaker 3: human nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, sometimes you've got to crank up the
Speaker 2: rage against the machine in the car. It doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that you necessarily feel that all the time, but sometimes
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, it got me thinking about the saying, don't hate
Speaker 2: the player, hate the game. Your modern cynic definitely hates
Speaker 2: the players, or at least sees them as the underlying problem.
Speaker 2: You know. It'd also add that cynicism can also easily
Speaker 2: bleed over into downright nihilism. Though that's not to say
Speaker 2: that modern cynicism isn't compatible with different philosophies and creeds,
Speaker 2: because you could be a cynic and a hedonist at
Speaker 2: the same time. Certainly, I don't know that you'd bea
Speaker 2: trementdu is fun to hang out with, but you know
Speaker 2: 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 sort of expression
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, And then of course it also depends on how
Speaker 2: well you know that person as well, right, Because if
Speaker 2: all you know about a person is one cynical thing
Speaker 2: they said, you might be like, oh, well, that person's
Speaker 2: really cynical. But maybe they're not that way all the time.
Speaker 2: You know. It kind of gets into the way we
Speaker 2: sometimes use the term, right. We say like I hate
Speaker 2: to be cynical, but or you might call somebody out
Speaker 2: and be like, I think you're being a little cynical
Speaker 2: about this. You know, in those usages acknowledge the fact
Speaker 2: that it's not necessarily a constant. It maybe something that
Speaker 2: we dip into in response to different circumstances, different stimuli
Speaker 2: 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 2: 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 2: Yeah, we generally assume we've got it figured out. We're
Speaker 2: 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 it's manager are trying to
Speaker 3: help 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 get you to buy at a higher price
Speaker 3: or to take a less favorable financing option, they usually will.
Speaker 3: And I think this is true, And yet I think
Speaker 3: I'm not a very cynical person to make that judgment
Speaker 3: about what happens at car lots. There are just specific
Speaker 3: situations where it is reasonable, based on evidence and on
Speaker 3: our background knowledge, to withhold trust from people, and this
Speaker 3: is different, I think, from a generalized cynical distrust that
Speaker 3: is not related to the specific situation. Now, of course,
Speaker 3: what I think I just said is pretty uncontroversial in principle,
Speaker 3: but we actually spend a lot of mental energy trying
Speaker 3: to tell the difference between these two things, like the
Speaker 3: situation where it's reasonable to be suspicious and the situation
Speaker 3: where you're just expressing a bias towards cynicism. Like if
Speaker 3: a friend comes to you and expresses distrust of something
Speaker 3: or someone that you personally put a lot of faith in,
Speaker 3: what's the most common defensive reaction for us to have.
Speaker 3: I think it's like, don't be so cynical, or you're
Speaker 3: just being cynical. Saying you're just being cynical downplays the
Speaker 3: possibility that your doubting friend has a good insight, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe that I have misplaced my faith and trust in something,
Speaker 3: and instead it reframes the doubting friends' skepticism as part
Speaker 3: of a general dispositional bias that they have. So dealing
Speaker 3: with the balance between cynicism and reasonable suspicion is just
Speaker 3: a really difficult thing that I think we all have
Speaker 3: to deal with in our lives. We're asking the question like,
Speaker 3: in general, how suspicious should we be of other people's motives?
Speaker 3: And let's say you take generally cynical people and generally
Speaker 3: trusting people, which groups model of the world makes more
Speaker 3: accurate predictions, which group's model of the world is more
Speaker 3: useful in life, and in which context does each model
Speaker 3: thrive the most. I think we'll have to revisit that
Speaker 3: question as we go along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's always in short, it's a
Speaker 2: careful balance, right, because do you want to protect yourself
Speaker 2: absolutely all the time from all things, or do you
Speaker 2: want to be able to move through life and open
Speaker 2: yourself up to new possibilities that may in fact hurt you.
Speaker 2: It always things like this will always remind me of
Speaker 2: that C. S. Lewis quote about being afraid to love
Speaker 2: because being because you're afraid that you will be hurt
Speaker 2: through that love, either of you know, be a lot
Speaker 2: or some other action. And therefore I think the analogy
Speaker 2: made was like, you know, entombing yourself, you know, putting
Speaker 2: yourself in a casket of loneliness, and I think some
Speaker 2: of that applies here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Now I do have to acknowledge that. Yeah, dealing with
Speaker 2: cynicism in people can certainly be exhausting, you know. Like
Speaker 2: we've been saying, the cynic, like the pessimist, tends toward
Speaker 2: type one errors in cognition, false positives, believing that the
Speaker 2: predator alerks in the bushes even when it doesn't. And
Speaker 2: there is always, again, an ample evidence for the cynic
Speaker 2: exhaustive evidence. Even because they are not wrong about many
Speaker 2: generalities about our world and human nature, they tend to
Speaker 2: put others on the defensive, forcing them to make non
Speaker 2: cynical counter arguments, you know, essentially prove the righteousness of
Speaker 2: their all of human beings. Yeah, and at the same time,
Speaker 2: in making those counter arguments, you don't want to go
Speaker 2: so far as to dismiss the perceived threats or threats entirely,
Speaker 2: because then they're going to come back at you with
Speaker 2: 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 2: I was thinking about this as well over the weekend.
Speaker 2: I was doing a bit of driving, and driving is
Speaker 2: sort of a you know, it's a limited, sort of
Speaker 2: artificial in some ways, like social scenario, and it's probably
Speaker 2: a scenario where like I'm more cynical when I'm driving,
Speaker 2: but in that I am less trusting of the other drivers,
Speaker 2: and I'm not that I'm necessarily believing that they're out
Speaker 2: to hurt me, but I maybe am more inclined to
Speaker 2: believe that they are not looking out for me, and
Speaker 2: they're maybe being a little greedy there and they might
Speaker 2: not see me and so forth. But I guess the
Speaker 2: danger would be taking cynicism from an environment like that
Speaker 2: where it is maybe you know, low risk to engage
Speaker 2: in such cynicism, To take that feeling off the road
Speaker 2: and into the real world. I could see where that
Speaker 2: 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. Yes.
Speaker 2: Now, another huge problem about regarding mod and cynicism, this
Speaker 2: is something we'll come back to again and again, is
Speaker 2: that it's often pointed out that it generally fosters a
Speaker 2: worldview in which no progress is possible. So again not
Speaker 2: just talking about engaging in little feelings of cynicism now
Speaker 2: and then like if the cynicism really piles up, and
Speaker 2: if you really double down on your cynicism, then there's
Speaker 2: no reason to try for or aspire for anything, you know,
Speaker 2: because like if people are all bad essentially, if people
Speaker 2: are all just in it for themselves, they're just greedy,
Speaker 2: there's no caring. Then what can we do as a society,
Speaker 2: What is it all possible? And you just kind of
Speaker 2: become fossilized in the mud of your 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 2: I want to read a quote here from Asgar Allen,
Speaker 2: author of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series book Cynicism,
Speaker 2: which deals, as I'll discuss and as I cite this
Speaker 2: book again with both ancient cynicism and modern cynicism. More
Speaker 2: on that in a bit, but he writes quote as
Speaker 2: a cultural disposition, cynicism foments distrust, derails progress, and reduces
Speaker 2: all higher things, all that is good about humankind, to
Speaker 2: the level of its own diminished outlook. It assumes that
Speaker 2: all human motives are basically selfish and denies the possibility
Speaker 2: of a better world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, 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 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I'll also add that in the book
Speaker 2: he stresses that, you know, while we can all point
Speaker 2: out just you know, egregious examples of cynicism in the
Speaker 2: world around us, we're also just all infected by cynicism.
Speaker 2: Like it's not just a world of cynics and non
Speaker 2: cynics for the most part, And he cites common sayings
Speaker 2: like I hate to be cynical, but and so forth,
Speaker 2: like we were talking, but you know, points out that
Speaker 2: cynicism is pretty much in all of us, festering to
Speaker 2: various degrees and very much takes on the form of
Speaker 2: an affliction. It may dominate, it may go into remission,
Speaker 2: 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 into it in a 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 2: Yeah, it's one of those things where it's complicated. We're
Speaker 2: dealing with centuries upon centuries of human history with different
Speaker 2: returns to ancient cynicism and so forth. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not quite a scenario that you might encounter with movie
Speaker 2: titles where you're like, Okay, well there's the Peter Lorie
Speaker 2: Madlove movie and then there's the the nineties television series
Speaker 2: Mad Love, and these are not connected at all. They
Speaker 2: just share a title. There's there's more connective tissue here,
Speaker 2: but it but it is I think also completely correct
Speaker 2: to say you're dealing with two different things. They don't
Speaker 2: line up on a lot of their principles, even if
Speaker 2: there is ultimately some shared history there.
Speaker 3: So what's the rundown on capital C cynicism or cynic philosophy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in the book Cynicism, Alan gets into this
Speaker 2: a bit and he refers to like the broader transitionary
Speaker 2: matter as capital C slash lower C cynicism. So it's
Speaker 2: like like c C cynicism or something I don't know,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't pronounce it out about, but like basically referring
Speaker 2: to this grander thing of cynism that begins with capital
Speaker 2: C cynicism and eventually leads into lower case cynicism that
Speaker 2: is in all of us today. In either case, he
Speaker 2: stresses that cynics are not good people, not by mainstream
Speaker 2: social standards anyway. But while the modern cynic is a
Speaker 2: person under the influence again of this kind of infection
Speaker 2: of distrust, the ancient cynics were a different matter. I
Speaker 2: have to stress that the ancient cynics were totally punk,
Speaker 2: like abrasively punk. Yes, And to really get into this,
Speaker 2: we have to look at the most famous of these
Speaker 2: ancient punks, and that of course is Diogenes the Cynic
Speaker 2: or Diogenes of synop. We have talked about Diogenes on
Speaker 2: the show before. I think in episodes we were talking
Speaker 2: about solitary hermits and so forth, because one of the
Speaker 2: more famous aspects of him that you often see illustrated
Speaker 2: and rendered as the subject in various Renaissance paintings and
Speaker 2: so forth is the fact that he lived in a
Speaker 2: jar in public.
Speaker 3: I think in like the marketplace and athensres it lived
Speaker 3: in a big tub or a jar just out in public.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, when we say lived in a jar, not
Speaker 2: a little jar, like a big like a big old
Speaker 2: you know, you can think of it more as like
Speaker 2: a big barrel on its side. It's the way it's
Speaker 2: generally depicted in art.
Speaker 3: Often he's basically naked as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically naked, dressed in rags, surrounded by dogs. Often
Speaker 2: has a lantern out in the day, like he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what about it, I've got a lantern. I'm burning the lantern.
Speaker 2: I don't need it right now, but I'm burning it.
Speaker 2: 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. It kind
Speaker 3: of there's a sort of critique of human nature or
Speaker 3: an idea of hypocrisy and how people present themselves there,
Speaker 3: so there's a little bit of connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but again not to imply that Diogenes was just
Speaker 3: a lowercase Sea cynic, because he's much more interesting than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of stories about him. There's
Speaker 2: like the famous story of him telling Alexander the Great
Speaker 2: essentially to to f off and then Alexander the Great's like, huh,
Speaker 2: this guy's great, and that's basically the whole story there.
Speaker 3: But no, it's a great one. Alexander the Great came
Speaker 3: through and he's like, oh, I want to meet the great,
Speaker 3: the centic philosopher Diogenes. So like you know, he goes
Speaker 3: with his retinue and the generals to go find him,
Speaker 3: and he's I think the story's Diogenes is like laying
Speaker 3: out sunning himself naked or something, and Alexander walks up
Speaker 3: to him and his shadow falls over him, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 3: can I you know, I'm the conquering king. Can I
Speaker 3: give you anything? And Diogenes is like, I would like
Speaker 3: you to get out of my light. Yeah, And so
Speaker 3: Alexander did not kill him.
Speaker 2: He was just like, okay, yeah, I think that the
Speaker 2: essentially the quote that has attributed to Alexander. He's like
Speaker 2: if I if I wasn't Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: It's like this character I like. I like the cut
Speaker 2: of his chip.
Speaker 3: Well that's a that's the kind of story I like
Speaker 3: telling the powerful man to f off. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Though there are there are various stories about the Diogenes
Speaker 2: and his travels, and also about the various bodily functions
Speaker 2: that he would carry out in public, sometimes like mid
Speaker 2: speech and so forth, and there are occasionals some stories
Speaker 2: are thought to maybe maybe be a little more fictional
Speaker 2: and a little more you know, legendary, but we are
Speaker 2: definitely dealing with an historic person thought to have lived
Speaker 2: four thirteen or four three BCE through three twenty one
Speaker 2: or three twenty four BCE, and he did write. None
Speaker 2: of his own writings survive, though I apparently wrote dialogues,
Speaker 2: letters and tragedies. We mostly know of him through the
Speaker 2: writings of others. Oh, I should correct that we know
Speaker 2: about him exclusively through the writings of others. Again, his
Speaker 2: 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 sin philosophy is just about like pooping
Speaker 3: in public.
Speaker 2: And it is one of the more I guess, eye
Speaker 2: catching aspects of their of their public display of humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they they were said to, especially Diagenies, was said to
Speaker 2: freely engage in public dispension of the body's various functions
Speaker 2: in a way that would still be shocking today and
Speaker 2: would still very much be against social norms. But the
Speaker 2: I guess the key way of understanding what it was.
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly it does seem like it was about
Speaker 2: shocking people. Again, these these guys were very punk, very
Speaker 2: in everyone's faces with how they viewed human nature and
Speaker 2: how they viewed society. But essentially we'll get into more
Speaker 2: of what this meant to them. But they were living
Speaker 2: the animal life, They were rooting the human experience in
Speaker 2: the body. Uh and uh and uh, and so they
Speaker 2: were they were saying, Hey, this is what we are.
Speaker 2: Why should we deny what we are?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the good life lies in dispensing with sort
Speaker 3: of false pretension and living in accordance with your nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, Diagenes was not the first cynic and to
Speaker 2: s Thinnes Roughly who live roughly four forty six through
Speaker 2: three sixty six BCE, a pupil of Socrates and said
Speaker 2: to be the teacher of Diagenese, is often considered the
Speaker 2: founder of cynicism, though even in antiquity, Alan points out
Speaker 2: it was thought that cynicism dated back to a time
Speaker 2: before Heracles, connected to the cunning intelligence of the gods.
Speaker 2: And I did find it interesting that Heracles was referenced
Speaker 2: here because it seems like a good name to invoke,
Speaker 2: even indirectly, because, as we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 2: the son of Zeus wasn't just raw muscle, you know,
Speaker 2: throwing stones at monsters and so forth. He was also
Speaker 2: clever and cunning. He used his I guess, his high
Speaker 2: wisdom scores and overcoming the various obstacles. So they had
Speaker 2: kind of bar kind of barbarian wisdom that you see
Speaker 2: in some of these examples a figure from outside the
Speaker 2: system that is opposed to the system, and inhericle is
Speaker 2: this case, you know, often opposing mortal tyrants, and Alan
Speaker 2: points out that this idea likely does extend pretty far
Speaker 2: back in Greek thought as a kind of lifting up
Speaker 2: of an outsider figure as a critic of society.
Speaker 3: So then, what actually are the tenets of cinic philosophy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is interesting because I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of the tenets we can still recognize in the world
Speaker 2: today in forms that we don't necessarily call cynicism. Like
Speaker 2: I was thinking of various biker movies I've seen where
Speaker 2: you see some version of this, and again couldn't help
Speaker 2: but think of you know, various things from like the
Speaker 2: punk scene, or like metal lyrics and so forth. We
Speaker 2: often see some of these ideas, you know, idealized in
Speaker 2: music and film. But the ancient cynics, again exemplified in
Speaker 2: the figure of Diogenes, absolutely rejected conventional values and societal norms.
Speaker 2: They absolutely did not care about your society, your obsession
Speaker 2: with fame and wealth. They saw the absolute hypocrisy of
Speaker 2: it all, and they openly dragged it like they they
Speaker 2: were gonna you were gonna know they were a cynic
Speaker 2: on site, and they were going to let you know
Speaker 2: they were a synic because they would they would preach
Speaker 2: to you about it. They would tell you about it.
Speaker 2: They lived simple, self sufficient lives while also seeking to
Speaker 2: expose the folly of the mainstream world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a tendency to UH, to simple living,
Speaker 3: to asceticism, to and to calling out ostentation. And it's
Speaker 3: interesting I think you point out that cynicism was often
Speaker 3: a philosophy you could see embodied on the person in
Speaker 3: the way they appeared and in the way they were living,
Speaker 3: which is less true about some other schools of philosophy
Speaker 3: in which you might have to like talk to the
Speaker 3: person and like hear about what they think in order
Speaker 3: to figure out what their their philosophy is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you wouldn't be going on a blind date
Speaker 2: and then halfway through the day realize, oh, I think
Speaker 2: this person's a cynic. Now you would know at first
Speaker 2: sight because they're surrounded by dogs, they're wearing rags. Well,
Speaker 2: oftentimes they were said to wear old cloaks and carry
Speaker 2: a staff. But there would be there. You would know
Speaker 2: immediately if you were about to go on a blind
Speaker 2: day with a cynic. It wouldn't be like halfway through. Oh,
Speaker 2: and then I realized that they were you know, you know,
Speaker 2: a nihilist you know, came up in conversation like, No,
Speaker 2: it would be very apparent in your face. So again
Speaker 2: absolutely in your face anti establishment vibes here. But it
Speaker 2: would be a mistake to assume that this was just
Speaker 2: about young yucking the world and seeking to drag everyone
Speaker 2: down into sort of a miserable nihilistic existence, which I
Speaker 2: think is an easy mistake to make when you look
Speaker 2: at some of these factors. But in reality, the ancient
Speaker 2: cynics praised virtue above all else. They believe that true
Speaker 2: happiness and peace could only be achieved by following a
Speaker 2: virtuous path close to nature, an authentic, natural human life
Speaker 2: 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. Today, I am exposing hypocrisy. I'm
Speaker 3: exposing how you know, you're not really as good as
Speaker 3: you say you are, that there's something more base lying
Speaker 3: underneath you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Now one thing that Alan points out another
Speaker 2: difference here, though, is that the ancient Cynics were also
Speaker 2: thought to consider themselves rather a cosmopolitan They saw themselves
Speaker 2: as citizens of the world rather than members of a
Speaker 2: local society or group. I don't know. You might be
Speaker 2: able to bin that in certain ways and make a
Speaker 2: case for like modern cynics just thinking like that, but
Speaker 2: I don't know. I would. I would imagine that a
Speaker 2: modern lower case C cynic who is thinking about themselves
Speaker 2: as a citizen citizen the world, is also thinking of
Speaker 2: it in a very dreary sense.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, a less universal brotherhood and more like, uh,
Speaker 3: we're all you know, we're all going to the same place.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the big differences that Alan
Speaker 2: points out is that the ancient cynics, again, they believed
Speaker 2: in virtue. They believed that the world could become a
Speaker 2: better place because they were preaching a philosophy that they
Speaker 2: believed I proved human lives. And this is really key too.
Speaker 2: He points out that it was a joyful ethos It
Speaker 2: wasn't just like I'm sitting here in the dirt and
Speaker 2: I'm miserable, be miserable with me, No, it was it
Speaker 2: had a like radical, joyful energy to it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So philosophical cynicism, big C cynicism was primarily practiced
Speaker 2: from the fourth century BCE to around the fifth century CE,
Speaker 2: though gradually declining after the third century BCEE. And this
Speaker 2: of course leads to a question that I think we
Speaker 2: may come back to a little bit more as well,
Speaker 2: But what sort of transformation takes place from capital C
Speaker 2: cynicism to lowercase cynicism from the ancient world and the
Speaker 2: modern And to put it very briefly, to summarize some
Speaker 2: of what Alan gets into, First of all, the transformation
Speaker 2: involves a radical engage in an even joyful philosophy, becoming
Speaker 2: this more corrosive, passive, and miserable way of looking at
Speaker 2: the world. So again, you had to really be engaged
Speaker 2: to be a capital C cynic You were making definite
Speaker 2: life choices, going out in the streets and doing it.
Speaker 2: Whereas lowercase C cynicism that we have today, it's in everybody,
Speaker 2: it's ambient, it's just at what level is it going
Speaker 2: to manifest in our worldview and our speech and our actions. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: So it went from something that was very activated and
Speaker 2: optimistic to something that just kind of festers, and they're
Speaker 2: like a number I guess sort of lips and points
Speaker 2: you can single out. The stoics later took elements of
Speaker 2: cynic ideas and tempered. There are more radical elements than
Speaker 2: much later on, during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, cynic
Speaker 2: ideas were reinterpreted and utilized in ways that often eroded
Speaker 2: their critical edge. And then in modern times you have
Speaker 2: to also factor in the perceived complexities and failures of
Speaker 2: modern systems, and this, you know, further squeezes some of
Speaker 2: these ideas into the current ambient form. Though at the
Speaker 2: same time, again, the energy of ancient cynicism continues to
Speaker 2: thrive in other areas of rebellious thought. So you could again,
Speaker 2: you know, I can think of numerous examples, certainly from media,
Speaker 2: but also from the real world. People who are you
Speaker 2: speaking out against societal norms and engaging sometimes in speech
Speaker 2: that may feel at least like its lowercase cynicism.
Speaker 3: A lot of the best cases of that, I think
Speaker 3: it actually is not cynical in the dispositional way we've
Speaker 3: been thinking about, because it requires a lot of trust
Speaker 3: and cooperation and belief in the possibility of good things
Speaker 3: coming out of human nature and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So again, we may come back to more of
Speaker 2: this as we go, but I think that is a
Speaker 2: proper grounding in ancient capital c cynicism that allows us
Speaker 2: to move forward into more discussions of where.
Speaker 3: We are now. Whichever way you come down on the
Speaker 3: cynic versus the non cynics accuracy in modeling the world,
Speaker 3: I think what is absolutely clear at this point, based
Speaker 3: on a lot of research, is that there are tons
Speaker 3: of straightforwardly negative life outcomes correlated with cynicism. You know,
Speaker 3: I sometimes try to stay away from like strong normative
Speaker 3: claims of this sort on the show, but I think
Speaker 3: it's just like it's almost definite, like it is bad
Speaker 3: for you in lots of ways to be cynical. It's
Speaker 3: not good for your physical or mental health, it's not
Speaker 3: good for your ability to attain goals. It's just like
Speaker 3: across the board, pretty bad for you to be highly cynical. Now,
Speaker 3: since 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 treated as what
Speaker 3: a couple of authors Stavrova and Ilibroct 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 cogni main
Speaker 3: cognitive part of that. It's the thought patterns and belief
Speaker 3: structures underlying hostility. So in these papers, cynicism is often
Speaker 3: called 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 chronic. Now, normally,
Speaker 3: when we have a stressful experience, the body tends to
Speaker 3: acclimate to that stressful experience by desensitizing us to the
Speaker 3: stressful stimulus. So what really freaked us out the first
Speaker 3: time is old news by the seventeenth time, and we
Speaker 3: just don't have the same stress response anymore. You can
Speaker 3: think about this. A common example used in these experiments
Speaker 3: is like public speaking tends to be really stressful the
Speaker 3: first time, but if you do it again and again
Speaker 3: you get used to it, it becomes less stressful each time, apparently,
Speaker 3: except when cynicism comes into play somehow. Cognitive cynicism, this
Speaker 3: lack of trust in other is a belief that other
Speaker 3: people are bad, that they're self interested, and that their
Speaker 3: morals are fake. Cognitive cynicism seems to prevent the body
Speaker 3: from chilling out about stressors upon repeat exposure. And here
Speaker 3: I'm going to quote from the lead author, Alexandra Tyra.
Speaker 3: She's quoted in a Baylor University press release about this research. Quote. Essentially,
Speaker 3: when you're exposed to the same thing multiple times, the
Speaker 3: novelty of that situation wears off, and then you don't
Speaker 3: have as big of a response as you did the
Speaker 3: first time. This is a healthy response, but our study
Speaker 3: demonstrates that a higher tendency for cynical hostility may prevent
Speaker 3: or inhibit this decrease in response over time. In other words,
Speaker 3: the cardiovascular system responds similarly to a second stressor as
Speaker 3: it did to the first. So a really interesting question is, like,
Speaker 3: why is this Like when you believe everybody's in it
Speaker 3: for themselves and people can't be trusted and everybody lies
Speaker 3: and cheats to get ahead, It is apparently just harder
Speaker 3: for people to relax about the things that are causing
Speaker 3: them distress upon repeat exposure, even harder than it might
Speaker 3: be for people who have other other kinds of issues,
Speaker 3: like emotional issues with chronic anger, though of course those
Speaker 3: things can and do overlap. But yeah, really fascinating to me, like,
Speaker 3: why would that link be there? What exactly is the
Speaker 3: causal connection? But apparently it's not just heart disease. Another
Speaker 3: commonly studied example is depression. Cynicism is perhaps unsurprisingly associated
Speaker 3: with increased risk of depression. One paper on this subject
Speaker 3: is by Nabi at All from twenty ten in the
Speaker 3: journal Psychological Medicine called Hostility and Depressive Mood Results from
Speaker 3: the Whitehall two perspective cohort Study and so. This was
Speaker 3: a longitudinal study of data collected by a survey of
Speaker 3: a large group of civil servants in London beginning in
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties and then following up with the same
Speaker 3: participants many years later. In this particular study found that
Speaker 3: people with the most cynical hostility at ages thirty five
Speaker 3: to fifty five, as measured by a couple of common
Speaker 3: inventories such as the Cook Medley Hostility scale, also had
Speaker 3: the greatest likelihood of depressive mood nineteen years later, even
Speaker 3: after controlling for socio demographic variables and the presence of
Speaker 3: baseline mental health struggles. And so the authors conclude that
Speaker 3: cynicism on its own is a strong and robust predictor
Speaker 3: of later depression. And the negative effects don't stop there.
Speaker 3: There's also there are multiple studies going at least as
Speaker 3: far back as the nineteen nineties, maybe even earlier, that
Speaker 3: have found a link between cynicism and all cause mortality,
Speaker 3: so on average, cynical people tend to have earlier deaths.
Speaker 3: One example of this research is a study by Susan
Speaker 3: Everson and co authors in the American Journal of Epidemiology
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety seven. This investigated a group of twenty
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty five men between the ages of
Speaker 3: forty two and sixty over a period of nine years,
Speaker 3: and it found that men in the top quartile, so
Speaker 3: the top twenty five percent of cynical hostility scores, were
Speaker 3: more than twice as likely to die in the next
Speaker 3: nine years as men in the bottom quartile, the lowest
Speaker 3: twenty five percent of cynicism scores. And in this case,
Speaker 3: the authors found that the correlation with all cause mortality
Speaker 3: disappeared when the analysis factored in behavioral risk factors things
Speaker 3: like smoking and levels of alcohol consumption, and some other
Speaker 3: risk factors, which suggests that at least within this sample
Speaker 3: the way they looked at it here, it might not
Speaker 3: necessarily be that cynicism kills you directly, but that cynicism
Speaker 3: is a associated with behaviors and lifestyle and conditioned responses
Speaker 3: that worsen health outcomes and lead to earlier deaths. And
Speaker 3: so of course you could factor in things like the
Speaker 3: later finding that cynicism does appear to be bad for
Speaker 3: your cardiovascular health. Now here's another question. There appears to
Speaker 3: be a wide consensus among experts cynicism it comes with
Speaker 3: bad health outcomes. But are we sure which way the
Speaker 3: effect goes? Like does poor health make people more cynical
Speaker 3: or does cynicism lead to poor health? Well, I found
Speaker 3: a paper looking into that, and it seems like the
Speaker 3: effect probably goes both ways, creating a vicious cycle. So
Speaker 3: this paper was by Olga Stavrova and Daniel Elibracht called
Speaker 3: Broken Bodies, Broken Spirits How poor health contributes to a
Speaker 3: cynical worldview in the European Journal of Personality from twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: A note that we'll encounter these author names repeatedly in
Speaker 3: the series. That seems like they've done a lot of
Speaker 3: research on cynicism. Stavrova is a professor of psychology at
Speaker 3: Tilburg University in the Netherlands and Daniel Elibracht is at
Speaker 3: the University of Cologne in Germany. Now this one I
Speaker 3: thought was pretty interesting. This paper opens with a little
Speaker 3: historical anecdote that I don't think I'd ever come across before.
Speaker 3: It's talking about King Henry aka Robert Barathian. Yeah, Henry.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: On January twenty fourth, fifteen thirty six, the English King
Speaker 3: Henry the Eighth was knocked off of his horse during
Speaker 3: a jousting event at a tournament, and he lost consciousness
Speaker 3: for a few hours. And as a result of this fall,
Speaker 3: he sustained a number of injuries, which essentially led to
Speaker 3: pain and various downstream health problems for the rest of
Speaker 3: his life. I think he lived another ten or eleven
Speaker 3: years after this. And what's interesting is that around this time,
Speaker 3: records and chronicles of Henry's reign note a shift in
Speaker 3: the king's personality. It seems that sometime around here Henry
Speaker 3: really started to become more paranoid and suspicious and increasingly tyrannical.
Speaker 3: Now there are multiple historical hypotheses to explain what was
Speaker 3: going on with Henry.
Speaker 2: 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 problems in
Speaker 3: the years that followed made him into that type of person,
Speaker 3: made him into a person who quote believed everyone, including
Speaker 3: his court members and close ones, were untrustworthy and mean spirited.
Speaker 3: So coming to the actual experiment here, we already have
Speaker 3: evidence that cynicism tends in multiple ways to lead to
Speaker 3: poor health. But to read from the author's abstract quote,
Speaker 3: the present research proposes that poor health might represent both
Speaker 3: a consequence and a source of cynicism. Using cross lagged
Speaker 3: path analyzes, we documented bi directional associations between health and
Speaker 3: cynicism in a nationally representative sample of Germans study one
Speaker 3: and a large example of the American Elderly Study two.
Speaker 3: Cynical individuals were more likely to develop health problems, and
Speaker 3: poor health promoted the development of a cynical worldview over time,
Speaker 3: and so these health status evaluations were done both with
Speaker 3: self report surveys and with objective physical measures by third
Speaker 3: party administrators, and they found the effect was robust even
Speaker 3: when the author is controlled for the effects of depression.
Speaker 3: So in their analysis, the authors actually propose a mechanism
Speaker 3: by which cynicism and poor health ratchet one another up
Speaker 3: in a vicious cycle. So cynicism tends to lead to
Speaker 3: your health getting worse. When your health gets worse, it
Speaker 3: imposes constrains on your life. You know, this is a
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people probably like when you've
Speaker 3: had a medical condition or something. It's not just like
Speaker 3: the direct pain caused by the condition, it's also the
Speaker 3: way it limits your freedom to do what you want
Speaker 3: to do. That can be so frustrating and so painful. So,
Speaker 3: you know, medical medical problems can directly limit your freedom.
Speaker 3: They can take away your sense of control over your
Speaker 3: own fate. They can make you more dependent on others.
Speaker 3: And this constrained status, the authors think, may in turn
Speaker 3: activate quote self protection strategies including suspiciousness and hostility, contributing
Speaker 3: to the endorsement of a cynical worldview. So in this model,
Speaker 3: health problems make you feel constrained and vulnerable, which makes
Speaker 3: you defensive, which in some cases makes people cynical and
Speaker 3: of course, the increased cynicism will tend on balance to
Speaker 3: make health outcomes even worse.
Speaker 2: And I'm doing some of the other part of that then,
Speaker 2: is yet you're not going out then and like making
Speaker 2: new friends, engaging in friendships and you know, family relationships
Speaker 2: that you already have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're taking part in activities that make you feel fulfilled.
Speaker 2: 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 watered by the feeling that you are
Speaker 3: not free to do what you want and do not
Speaker 3: have control over your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's one more thing I want to talk about before
Speaker 3: we have to wrap up this part today, and that
Speaker 3: is cynicism and other life outcomes. So here's a kind
Speaker 3: of irony. If you were to ask me, is there
Speaker 3: any realm in which is correlated with better outcomes for
Speaker 3: a person? Does cynicism ever like help you? I might
Speaker 3: have guessed without reading anything, maybe in like material success
Speaker 3: in career and business, you know, because there's like an
Speaker 3: archetype character we all have in our heads, the cynical
Speaker 3: materialist shark, like a business leader or career ladder climber
Speaker 3: who trusts no one, has a dark view of human
Speaker 3: nature and who will do anything to succeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like the TV reality show trope of
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: One study by Stavrova, Ilibract 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 alebract 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 opportunity 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 2: Yeah, it's like you're you're always on the defense, right,
Speaker 2: You're like, nice, try trying to get me to go
Speaker 2: out to lunch with you coworkers. You're just stealing my
Speaker 2: 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? Yeah? Okay, they want to be friends? Yeah,
Speaker 3: so however, here I there is also an interesting example
Speaker 3: in this study that illuminates the question of wind as
Speaker 3: being cynical actually benefit a person, and the authors say
Speaker 3: quote using survey data from forty one countries, it revealed
Speaker 3: that the negative effect of cynical beliefs on income is
Speaker 3: alleviated in sociocultural contexts with low levels of pro social behavior,
Speaker 3: high homicide rates, and high overall societal cynicism levels. Holding
Speaker 3: cynical beliefs about others has negative economic outcomes unless such
Speaker 3: beliefs hold true. And so this connects to something that
Speaker 3: we may have to explore as we go on. But
Speaker 3: I think there's some truth to this idea. Cynicism is
Speaker 3: harmful to the cynical individual in a cultural environment that
Speaker 3: is less cynical, But cynicism appears to be more or
Speaker 3: less harmful or maybe even helpful to the cynical individual
Speaker 3: in a cultural environment that is more cynical, which should
Speaker 3: obviously trouble us if we like, since increasing cynicism within
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, so like the more life becomes the movie RoboCop. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not just in terms of you know, technology obviously
Speaker 2: and the you know, the crime that is a that
Speaker 2: exists in that view of a futuristic Detroit, but also
Speaker 2: just like it's a very cynical world and it seems
Speaker 2: like the kind of place where where I mean we
Speaker 2: see examples of this where the cynic rises and yeah,
Speaker 2: you can imagine cynicism perhaps would protect you a little
Speaker 2: 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 2: Like yeah, yeah, like I feel like you do see,
Speaker 2: I feel like in many of your more cynical worlds
Speaker 2: in a work of fiction. And to be clear, there
Speaker 2: are works out there that are just like ultimately very
Speaker 2: very cynical and maybe very nihilistic in their vision. But
Speaker 2: a lot of times, like ultimately, I mean, you've got
Speaker 2: to invest the viewer, the listener the reader in some way,
Speaker 2: and so therefore they often involve a cynical figure coming
Speaker 2: out of their cynicism a little bit, you know, like
Speaker 2: maybe it's a noir you know, hard boiled detective story.
Speaker 2: You have a very like world weary, cynical detective. Like
Speaker 2: there's there's often got to be something, some light that
Speaker 2: is bringing them out of that darkness at least for
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, unfortunately, I feel not unfortunately, I guess, I mean
Speaker 3: I like these stories too, but oh, I think the
Speaker 3: shape of a lot of these noir stories is like
Speaker 3: somebody is cynical at the beginning, they put their trust
Speaker 3: in someone, there's a light at the end of the tunnel,
Speaker 3: and then the light is snuffed out and they end
Speaker 3: up even more cynical at the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's Chinatown.
Speaker 3: But hey, can I can I offer I think an
Speaker 3: actually really positive spin on a lot of this research
Speaker 3: about all these negative effects of cynicism. There is an
Speaker 3: implied inverse in most of these which is that it
Speaker 3: really emphasizes how much mutual trust and cooperation benefits our lives.
Speaker 3: That like, when you cut these things out, here is
Speaker 3: all of the negative consequences that flow in mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so these are these are things we need
Speaker 2: to value while we have them, and and nurture them
Speaker 2: while they're in our lives and seek them out of
Speaker 2: there if they're missing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and try to grow them where they're where they
Speaker 3: are faltering.
Speaker 2: Don't skip game night this week or whatever is game
Speaker 2: night in your life, you know. Yeah, these these are
Speaker 2: things worth holding on.
Speaker 3: To by God, trust somebody this week. Yeah, Okay, Well
Speaker 3: should we cap part one there? We're definitely going to
Speaker 3: come back for more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot more to discuss, so we'll be
Speaker 2: back in part two. But I think already there's a
Speaker 2: lot of food for thought here, so already feel free
Speaker 2: to write in if you have thoughts on capital C cynicism,
Speaker 2: lowercase C cynicism, or anything else that's come up in
Speaker 2: this episode. We'd like to remind everyone out there that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 2: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays,
Speaker 2: we do a short form episode, and on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on weird house cinema. Of note, if all
Speaker 2: goes according to plan, This Friday we will discuss the
Speaker 2: two hundred film selection for Weird House Cinema. We picked
Speaker 2: out quite a doozy, so tune in for that if
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.