"Who is the cynic?" - you ask. As Liliane Hellman, the famous American writer who survived both wars, said: “Cynicism is an unpleasant way to tell the truth.” I did not just mention the fact that this woman experienced not the best periods of the formation of mankind.
Who is a cynic - a child or a curse of society?
Cynics are not born, they become when modern foundations and traditions begin to harm common sense, when a person becomes disillusioned with current authorities, social mechanisms. If he is smart enough and brave, he will wake up, see everything from a position slightly higher than before. The rest, unfortunately, either continue to blindly follow what they are accustomed to trust, or are afraid to be misunderstood by society. Each “convert” will acquire such a useful property as critical thinking, the ability to evaluate, think and express aloud everything that is not customary to talk about, everything that ordinary people think about, left alone with themselves.
A cynic is a realist who despises optimism and pessimism, he accepts everything as it is and cannot be happy or sad about something useless. He is not worried about the loss of life, there are too many of them. He is not worried about the death of children, because this is just the offspring that did not see and did not achieve anything, an empty vessel, which, most likely, will remain empty. If he had to choose between the death of his child and the death of an outstanding scientist, he would have sacrificed a child without hesitation. "What is cynicism?" - you ask. This is just one of many labels hung on a person with “unconventional” views. You will never hear the phrase “I am a cynic” from him, such a person will consider his behavior to be the norm, since the behavior of the majority will most often contradict ordinary logic due to restrictions in the form of moral norms and generally accepted ideology.
Who is a cynic, and what is he like?
He is deprived of the multitude of feelings inherent in other people, he does not have a sense of sentimentality, because it dulls, he does not feel envy, because he evaluates everything objectively, that is, with the brain, and not with the heart. He is not religious, but believes that the biblical character Jesus Christ is his cynicist brother. Jesus unites people with the same views. For example, in order for good to exist, evil is needed for God to be, Satan is needed, for Paradise is, hell is needed. If you think that the opinion of cynics does not have a right to exist, think about what our world would be like without such creators as Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Nabokov, Jack London. And the list goes on.
Who are the unbearable cynics?
Do not forget about the reverse side of the coin: a cynical person is quite difficult to live. Seeing everyone through, speaking aloud the uncomfortable truth, meeting resistance in the face of the majority, you can lose the ability to think critically and start believing in what you want to believe. Charles Issavi (a professor at Princeton University) called such people unbearable cynics: the cynic is right in nine out of ten cases, but he is convinced that he is right in all ten cases, and that is what makes him unbearable.
If during the reading of the article you feel that you read something wrong that cannot be seen by people, something that you do not agree with, congratulations. Now you know what a cynic is.