In class, I saw one of my fellow students exhibiting a great deal of cynicism about her ability to change the world. I found myself getting annoyed by her, perhaps only because her opinion differed so strongly from mine, then I reflected that I've felt a lot of the same things a lot of times, sometimes confident enough to say them out loud. I wonder if people looked on what I said the same way I looked on what she said.
Cynicism is an understandable reaction. It hardens us against pain. It hardens us against disappointment, and frustration, and hurt. The onus is reduced on us to defend our beliefs, or to alter them as need be, because there is always room for thinking the worst case scenario. We can always take comfort in certainty, and the same applies for worst-case scenarios. And if we should be proven wrong in some single case, well, we are pleasantly surprised, but under no need to rethink our cynicism, for there's no guarantee the same outcome will happen again later.
The alternative to cynicism, that which requires us to have faith in others to do what we believe is right, and faith in the world or in our own abilities to enact change, is very, very difficult, especially for people who have been hurt before. It's hard to believe we can get good outcomes when so often we do not. And every time we hope for a better outcome only to receive the opposite, we open ourselves up for hurt, often quite deeply. It is hard to have hope, because the world seems determined to undermine it at every turn.
Yet the world is not a ball of sheer human misery. Sometimes good things do happen. Sometimes the world changes for the better. Consider the causes of civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights. An astounding amount of progress has been made on all of those fronts in the past hundred years alone. Does that mean it is destined to stay here forever, and that we are to continually improve? No. But it does testify that, no matter what the situation, things can improve.
Of course, the cynics may be right, and there is not much we can change about the world we live in. Certainly sometimes the cynics are right are in various matters. Yet while cynicism may be a good personal defense mechanism, and even if most of the time the cynical belief is proven right (which is a big if), it is not quite so useful for affecting change. Cynicism implies, to one degree or another, a resignation. Of course one may be cynical and still work their utmost to obtain something, but I do wonder whether, if one believes their efforts to be ultimately futile, they do not hold back, consciously or unconsciously the degree to which they will try to affect change. If we believe that we have the ability to affect change, then do we not alter our behavior to try and accommodate that, and work all the harder to our desired ends?
One may see similar arguments used here to that in my previous post where I justified my belief system, which is quite intentional. In both cases, I invest myself in the possibility of a positive outcome, not because I know it to be true, for I don't, but because it carries the capability for me to change myself and how I interact with the world. Now in the prior case with my belief system, that affects change primarily in the here and now, as I don't follow the Pascal's Wager logic that my beliefs--or anyone'--will change my ultimate destination after life. In the case of society, however, that belief carries the potential to affect quite strongly not only how I feel and act, but also possible outcomes. By believing I can enact change, I raise the possibility that I will, for I gear myself towards actions intended to produce that change.
And I believe such a belief is more than warranted. In my other blog, I made the argument that hope is necessary for recovery in mental illness. I believe the same is true here. Hope--the belief that we can make things better in some way--is instrumental, for it gives us a goal to strive towards, and the belief that we can actually reach that goal, if we should strive hard enough. And we may fail, we may fall short. But how much farther will we have gone with that hope, than we would have gone without?
We can choose to be cynical. It is undeniably the safer option, at least for ourselves. But for the world to improve, I believe we need to have a disposition of hope, and believe that we don't know if we'll succeed, but dammit, we might.
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