Oh, cynicism! How my relationship with you has changed over the years.
As a young man, I was a deeply cynical person due to my life experiences and deep depression. Like many people, I confused cynicism with intellectualism and enlightenment. Like, look around! Can’t you see how terrible everything is? How terrible everyone is? How awful the world is?
Then I would look at media, content, and do things to reaffirm my own perspective. It’s a self-reinforcing trap with serious consequences, and you might find yourself in a similar trap if these thoughts sound familiar.
1. “People will reveal who they actually are, sooner or later.”
This cynical thought is not the deep observation about people that I once thought it was. Yes, we are all actors playing a role on the stage we call life, but most people aren’t terrible people. Most people are flawed individuals who are just trying to live their lives. That’s all.
The truly malicious people are few and far between. Many of the people we view as malicious aren’t; they’ve just had their own pain and suffering weaponized against them. Plus, news of malicious people doing awful things makes more headlines than goodness does.
Not everyone is some monster solely out for themselves at everyone else’s expense. Yes, most people are self-interested, meaning they care about their own problems first. But that doesn’t make them evil.
2. “People only help when they get something out of it.”
There’s a difference between self-interest and selfishness. Psychology Today shares that selfishness brings with it the negative connotation of putting your own interests ahead of everyone else, often. Self-interest, in contrast, is the natural state of most people. That is, they care most about their own lives before they care about others. There’s nothing wrong with that.
What is wrong is believing that every kind act needs to be completely and totally pure of self-benefit. I think about this every time I see someone complain about another person recording charity work to post on social media. Yes, you can argue that they’re just doing it for attention and clout. On the other hand, would you prefer that homeless person not receive the act of kindness?
It’s a short-sighted perspective, particularly once you understand that most people are self-interested and that it’s perfectly normal.
3. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Skepticism is healthy in limited doses. It’s bad to go through life, never considering what ulterior motives might be at work. However, it’s equally bad to think that every kind act comes with an ulterior motive. Sometimes, people just do great things because that’s what they choose to do.
Relationships aren’t supposed to be transactional. There should not exist a dynamic where you receive a kindness, and then that person comes back later to say, “Well, I did this for you! So you have to do this for me…” That’s manipulation, not a good deed. That’s a transaction, not an act of kindness.
You can miss out on good things if you lean too hard into this kind of cynicism. Years ago, I missed out on going to see a museum exhibit I would have loved because my partner’s professor had given her two tickets, and I didn’t trust his motives. I was so deep in my depression and cynicism that I couldn’t fathom that someone would just do that out of kindness.
4. “No one truly cares about me. They’re just being polite.”
The problem with this method of thinking is that it doesn’t reflect reality. The least that someone can do is absolutely nothing. So, I tend to view people who do reach out as caring, even if it could be interpreted as politeness, because I know they could just choose not to.
I did that myself several times when I was younger because I didn’t care all that much about other people. I could see something was wrong, and I chose to do nothing even when I could have helped. I was too deep in my own problems and suffering to even want to try. I didn’t want that additional emotional labor, so I just looked the other way.
I felt the same way about compliments. “They’re just being polite.” And then I would feel pressured to say something back to them, feel awkward and anxious, and then I’d make the whole thing awkward. But I eventually moved past that. To graciously accept a compliment, all you have to do is smile and say, “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
5. “The people who have succeeded either cheated or trampled on others to get there.”
Does this happen? Sure does. Does it happen as often as our cynicism would have us believe? Well, that depends. The thing with cynicism is that it causes you to focus on the negatives and see them as absolute.
Speaking as someone who used to engage in unethical work because I wasn’t a good person for a long time, I can tell you that the people who cheat to get ahead get their punishment for it a lot more than people realize.
Because when you’re an unethical person, decent, ethical people don’t want to mess around with you. They’re not waiting around for the moment that you knife them in the back. Instead, they’re going to erect a healthy boundary, say “No, thank you,” and move on.
Consider if that person is your boss, or someone you want to date, or even just a friend who doesn’t know you’re shady. What happens when they find out that you’ve cheated to get where you are? That’s right, they go away.
Unethical behavior closes so many doors, so it just doesn’t stand to reason that everyone who has succeeded is a shady character.
6. “People never change.”
The word “never” in this thought speaks to the absolute way that cynicism makes you think. As someone who has changed a great deal, I would amend that sentence. Most people won’t change because they don’t want to put in the time and the work required to actually change. But you can absolutely change who you are if you want to do the work.
What’s more, it’s just a natural part of life. Are you the same person you were 5 years ago? 10 years ago? 20 years ago? Of course not! You’ve learned new things, had new experiences, matured, and formed new opinions. Everyone changes, and it’s weird how helpless some people act as though they can’t guide their own changes.
In my case, I did a lot of shady and questionable things because my moral compass does not point north all the time. However, after years of therapy and a lot of self-examination, I decided that the best way for me to proceed was to adopt an external moral compass, which I found in the philosophy of Stoicism.
The more I made decisions through that lens, the less I had to focus on doing it. I essentially trained my brain to be better that way.
I changed.
7. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Again, this is another absolutist belief that the black and white thinking of cynicism creates. The problem with this way of thinking is that you tend to find what you’re looking for. It’s called confirmation bias. If you’re always looking for the punishment that comes after a good deed, you start overlooking the good deeds that didn’t get punished.
Kindness and goodness often exist in small acts that may not be rewarded, yet they aren’t punished either. The reality is that many good deeds go completely unnoticed, let alone punished. Still, many good deeds are rewarded, but you need to be willing to stop filtering those ones out.
8. “I won’t be let down if I don’t expect anything from anyone.”
I still struggle with this one at times. I don’t like to impose expectations on other people, but I also acknowledge that it may be an unwillingness to be vulnerable on my part. Because if I expect things of people, then there is a chance that they won’t come through for me and will let me down. Then I have to figure out how to deal with those negative emotions and the fact that they disappointed me.
So sometimes it still feels far easier and more tolerable to just never expect anything to begin with. After all, life is hard, and people are busy. It can be hard to put those expectations on other people. But in reality, after years of that mentality, you find that you don’t have that many close friends.
To have close friends and close relationships, you have to be vulnerable and give people the chance to show up for you.
In closing…
As you can probably tell, I have more than a little experience with cynicism. For a long time, I fancied myself as intellectually enlightened for recognizing all that was wrong in the world and with people. But in time, I learned that cynicism is a narrow-minded perspective that poisons my own happiness.
I now also view my cynicism as intellectual laziness, rather than enlightenment. Yes, awful things are all around us, all the time, so if I want to see the goodness in the world, I have to actually look for it or create it myself.
