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One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and specula

One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and speculative optimism fail, one can just get down on it all. It is really hard not to succumb to this. It requires active effort and sometimes even a willful ignorance. "turn a blind eye" is the idiom here. Monty Python's "Always look on the bright side of life" kind of thing. Mr Rogers said it: look for the helpers. They may be few, but they are there. Find them and focus on them.

noir_lord 1mo ago
I think that's why historical education is so important (or just liking history as in my case), looked through the lens of history all of the current shit as bad as it is, is really nothing all that new either, the only constant is change after all. As the aphorism goes: History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.
- watwut 1mo ago
  The knowledge that 1932 was kinda similar is not comforting at all. Or whatever run up to historical horrible events we talk about. I genuinely dont like what history sais follows after times like this.
- AlexB138 1mo ago
  You're absolutely correct that history helps you see that none of this is new. However, is it better to be the person who sees the waterfall their boat is inevitably going to go over, or the person completely ignorant of it until it happens?
  - ChickeNES 1mo ago
    > However, is it better to be the person who sees the waterfall their boat is inevitably going to go over, or the person completely ignorant of it until it happens? Neither, it's better to be the person who realizes we're in for a bright future no matter what doomers think.
  - mindwok 1mo ago
    If we look at history, humanity has been through some pretty crazy shit and we haven't gone over the waterfall yet.
    - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
      On the contrary: we've fall off waterfalls every few decades or so. Humanity simply survives and moves on, taking maybe 2% more caution for the next waterfalll
    - watwut 1mo ago
      I dont want to go through ANY of that crazy shit. And I dont want my kids to go through it either. And based on hostory, violent, cruel, oppressive shit can take looong time a hit huge amounts of people.
      - mindwok 1mo ago
        Nobody in history wanted to either. Unfortunately we don’t get a choice.
        tremon 1mo ago
        If you're in the traditional West, you did get a choice. And many actively voted for violent, cruel, oppressive predator shit. And I don't just mean MAGA, that's equally true for AfD, FN, FdI, SSZ, Spartans, ReformUK, Likud, etc.
  - JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
    > see that none of this is new But this is. This sort of violent partisanship that self ensconces around identity versus issues is exactly what tears apart democracies and republics.
    - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
      This isn't new either. The tools and technology are new. The strategies and psychologies aren't. Even the identity part isn't new; even among Caucasian males only, see how many times society's woes will be blamed on whatever convinient immigrant there is in that period.
    - suttontom 1mo ago
      "B-b-but this really is new!" The USA did have a Civil War. It was so violent that it killed more Americans than all other wars combined.
      - card_zero 1mo ago
        Message unclear. You're saying the USA is an old hand at civil wars now and could do another one any time, no problem? Or perhaps I shouldn't look for a message.
        suttontom 1mo ago
        I misconstrued "new" with "this is the worst it's ever been."
  - II2II 1mo ago
    It's more like, is it better to be the person who: - sees a waterfall in every river, even when one is not there? - sees the waterfall, and is resigned about their fate? - sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be? - is completely ignorant of the waterfall?
    - rightbyte 1mo ago
      "sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be?" You could consider that a variant of the voter's dilemma.
- queenkjuul 1mo ago
  I would kinda be with you, except, climate change. And like, we didn't have nukes when the last world war started. This time we will.
- s1artibartfast 1mo ago
  And I think history provides some prophylactic counterbalance to the cynical narrative. To hear some people talk, people are inherently evil, and the US has been a downhill project to oppress since the days of the founding. History shows that things can and do improve when people try. The overall trajectory has been positive, even if bumpy.
  - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
    I've heard it described as a growing but fluctuating graph (think something like a logarithmic graph, with some noise added in). Progress is positive overall, but there are times of radical progress and decline. And people will feel both aspects. We're definitely in a decline as of now, where we arguably had progress from 80 to 50 years ago.
    - senordevnyc 1mo ago
      Are you saying we’ve been in a decline for the last fifty years? If so, I would agree, but for fairly narrow definitions of “we”. Globally, the median human is wildly better off than 50 years ago. Even in the US, I see your point for straight white men (of which I’m one), but would the median woman be better off fifty years ago? What about if you’re gay, disabled, black, etc? That’s not even getting into things like medical conditions, life expectancy, violent crime rates, etc. Infant mortality was more than 3x higher fifty years ago than it is now.
      - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
        In terms of US macroeconomics, yes. End of the gold standard and the Vietnam War put the US in a position 9f slumping it's post WW2 command of the world, and the 80's accelerated the breakdown of all the structures that gave the US prosperous times. Socially speaking, it's been a much better curve, albeit not without its own share of slumps. Especially recent updates on Roe v.Wade. There's certainly a conversation for that as well, but economics makes sure those marginalized classes remain marginalized.
- suttontom 1mo ago
  If you're able to, find a random NPR broadcast from 20 to 30 years ago and marvel at how it could be replayed nearly verbatim today. "Inflation", "war in the Middle East", "Congress stalled on xyz." Even the "unprecedented" political correctness and racial reckonings in the US observed around 2020 were not uncommon in the 1970s and 1980s (see the Stanford Beethoven poster incident which also left students literally fainting and crying in hysterics).
- pojzon 1mo ago
  Funny analogy. “The only constant is change”. Thats why humans constantly repeat the same mistakes we covered and wrote about in last 3000 years. The pace of learning for our spieces is devastatingly slow. We rather regress faster than learn. We are closer to idiocracy, due to knowledge and skills atrophy (not only due to AI).
eventualcomp 1mo ago
Thanks for commenting and acknowledging that it's challenging. My mates and myself have definitely fallen into this. Reminds me of that hackernews post about how doomerism is a siren's song for genZ, forget where it is.
api 1mo ago
If you can’t help, it’s okay to look away. People sometimes get mad at this, like it’s callous or privileged, but what’s the difference between focusing on problems you can’t help and slowing down to stare at a car wreck? If you don’t slow down are you being insensitive? Obviously if you can help it’s different.
- singingtoday 1mo ago
  I can't look away. It's everywhere.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
hypfer 1mo ago
I (self-servingly) don't think that cynicism is bad, nor that it would be a good idea to pathologize what is simply a healthy defense to a hostile reality. It depends on how you wield it. Cynicism shouldn't cloud your judgement. That's the actually correct point you wanted to make, I think.
- s1artibartfast 1mo ago
  Cynicism is a negatively biased view of the world. People should strive for accuracy. Sometimes accurate is also harsh, but that is different. Maybe this is the same thing you intended by saying it shouldn't Cloud your judgment.
  - hypfer 1mo ago
    Yeah, probably. It doesn't help that the clinical meaning and the colloquial meaning of the word are different, with the latter being used by people to hit you over the head with, pretending that it would be the former.
    - s1artibartfast 1mo ago
      What are the two?
      - hypfer 1mo ago
        > Cynicism is a negatively biased view of the world Is what you said. The clinical thing. > You're just being cynical Is cognitive dissonance forcing its way out of the mouths of people to shoot the messenger.
        s1artibartfast 1mo ago
        Maybe I'm being slow, but I still dont get the difference. Isn't the 2nd the same as the first? Isn't the first a product of generator of cognative dissonance? Doubling down on beliefs that pay rent, even when it doesn't fit?
s1artibartfast 1mo ago
I think this growth in cynicism really depends on where people start from. A lot of people were taught and reinforced a inaccurate model of the world. When confronted with reality, it can't stand up and the individuals become angry and disengage rather than working with the system as it is. I know this is painting with a broad brush but I see it basically everywhere I look. One example would be the expectation of a benevolent Authority that manages political and social life. Reality is that it is just messy humans all the way down. Some people assume that from the beginning and can work with it. Other people just break down with frustration and broken expectations.
dweekly 1mo ago
The last thing my father said to me before he passed was to keep people looking forward to the future. It's easy to romanticize the past and it can seem intellectually sophisticated to despair about the future, when in fact the overwhelming evidence is that things have gotten much much better for nearly everyone on just about any objective axis you can pick.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  Except they haven't.
  - orand 1mo ago
    Good one. Refute an unsubstantiated claim with an unsubstantiated rebuttal. I'm sure we can all learn from that. /s
    - inigyou 1mo ago
      You made the claim, you substantiate it.
  - wseqyrku 1mo ago
    Tech has gotten better, but people yeah, downward spiral to the bottom of hell, sadly. Hard to be not a cynic these days.
    - account42 1mo ago
      The fundamentals behind the tech might have gotten better but the implementations of it have also gotten worse in many significant ways for normal users.
lofaszvanitt 1mo ago
Good luck nurturing a garden, when every day someone tears down a tree inside or robs you of the fruits.
- queenkjuul 1mo ago
  Or the summers get so hot it all burns down
  - account42 1mo ago
    In that case you should amend your laws that burning down your garden doesn't make it easier to get permits for building the strip mall over it.
- lesostep 1mo ago
  The thing is you have to imagine a better garden in order to build one. Maybe you have to imagine bigger fence, or a guard, or moving house to a better part of town, or even a social change that would provide food for the hungry so they wouldn't feel the need to steal (You might think the last point is the most naive one, but in my experience the economic growth was the only thing that actually worked) Hopelessness has it's own self-fulfillment. In order to change a thing you have to wish for something, and if you can't imagine a better future, then you can't get one
II2II 1mo ago
> One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and speculative optimism fail, one can just get down on it all. It's even sadder when one realizes the world was always that way. The author more-or-less says as much, though they seem to suggest it is amplified. I'm not entirely sure the part about it being more amplified today true. Most of the ills mentioned existed when I was a youth, it simply took different forms and (of course) was spread by means other than the Internet. There never was a chance to get ahead because the cards were always stacked against us. Apologies for the cynicism.
rdiddly 1mo ago
I'm not sure why we're talking about cynicism all of a sudden. I hope it's not because we're framing this blogger's recognition of existing cynicism, as constituting cynicism in and of itself. Because if so, I would have to disagree, just as I would disagree that talking about racism makes one racist for example.
99954bb63ccc 1mo ago
> One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and speculative optimism fail, one can just get down on it all. > It is really hard not to succumb to this. It requires active effort and sometimes even a willful ignorance. I feel this very strongly over the past couple of years. As always, hackernews is full of extremely smart, well read people so I'd really appreciate any good reading material on this so I can better understand it. Tips are appreciated as well (healthy diet and regular exercise, good extended blood labs (think like Function health), good consistent sleeep habits).
- robocat 1mo ago
  Terrible domain, but okay article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust-games/202111/the-myth-the-cynical-genius https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust-games/202111/t... Or search HN for "cynical genius"
  - 99954bb63ccc 1mo ago
    Thank you! Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49493820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49493820 I totally missed this just a few days ago lol
j13k 1mo ago
Source for Mr Rogers quote: https://web.archive.org/web/20100125201022/https://www.pbs.org/parents/rogers/special/scarynews-thoughts.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100125201022/https://www.pbs.o... ‘Fred Rogers often told this story about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news: "My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people in this world."’
econ 1mo ago
I thought it was, become the helper.

noir_lord 1mo ago

I think that's why historical education is so important (or just liking history as in my case), looked through the lens of history all of the current shit as bad as it is, is really nothing all that new either, the only constant is change after all. As the aphorism goes: History may not repeat but it sure does rhyme.

watwut 1mo ago
The knowledge that 1932 was kinda similar is not comforting at all. Or whatever run up to historical horrible events we talk about. I genuinely dont like what history sais follows after times like this.
AlexB138 1mo ago
You're absolutely correct that history helps you see that none of this is new. However, is it better to be the person who sees the waterfall their boat is inevitably going to go over, or the person completely ignorant of it until it happens?
- ChickeNES 1mo ago
  > However, is it better to be the person who sees the waterfall their boat is inevitably going to go over, or the person completely ignorant of it until it happens? Neither, it's better to be the person who realizes we're in for a bright future no matter what doomers think.
- mindwok 1mo ago
  If we look at history, humanity has been through some pretty crazy shit and we haven't gone over the waterfall yet.
  - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
    On the contrary: we've fall off waterfalls every few decades or so. Humanity simply survives and moves on, taking maybe 2% more caution for the next waterfalll
  - watwut 1mo ago
    I dont want to go through ANY of that crazy shit. And I dont want my kids to go through it either. And based on hostory, violent, cruel, oppressive shit can take looong time a hit huge amounts of people.
    - mindwok 1mo ago
      Nobody in history wanted to either. Unfortunately we don’t get a choice.
      - tremon 1mo ago
        If you're in the traditional West, you did get a choice. And many actively voted for violent, cruel, oppressive predator shit. And I don't just mean MAGA, that's equally true for AfD, FN, FdI, SSZ, Spartans, ReformUK, Likud, etc.
- JumpCrisscross 1mo ago
  > see that none of this is new But this is. This sort of violent partisanship that self ensconces around identity versus issues is exactly what tears apart democracies and republics.
  - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
    This isn't new either. The tools and technology are new. The strategies and psychologies aren't. Even the identity part isn't new; even among Caucasian males only, see how many times society's woes will be blamed on whatever convinient immigrant there is in that period.
  - suttontom 1mo ago
    "B-b-but this really is new!" The USA did have a Civil War. It was so violent that it killed more Americans than all other wars combined.
    - card_zero 1mo ago
      Message unclear. You're saying the USA is an old hand at civil wars now and could do another one any time, no problem? Or perhaps I shouldn't look for a message.
      - suttontom 1mo ago
        I misconstrued "new" with "this is the worst it's ever been."
- II2II 1mo ago
  It's more like, is it better to be the person who: - sees a waterfall in every river, even when one is not there? - sees the waterfall, and is resigned about their fate? - sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be? - is completely ignorant of the waterfall?
  - rightbyte 1mo ago
    "sees the waterfall, then struggles for survival no matter how hopeless the situation seems to be?" You could consider that a variant of the voter's dilemma.
queenkjuul 1mo ago
I would kinda be with you, except, climate change. And like, we didn't have nukes when the last world war started. This time we will.
s1artibartfast 1mo ago
And I think history provides some prophylactic counterbalance to the cynical narrative. To hear some people talk, people are inherently evil, and the US has been a downhill project to oppress since the days of the founding. History shows that things can and do improve when people try. The overall trajectory has been positive, even if bumpy.
- johnnyanmac 1mo ago
  I've heard it described as a growing but fluctuating graph (think something like a logarithmic graph, with some noise added in). Progress is positive overall, but there are times of radical progress and decline. And people will feel both aspects. We're definitely in a decline as of now, where we arguably had progress from 80 to 50 years ago.
  - senordevnyc 1mo ago
    Are you saying we’ve been in a decline for the last fifty years? If so, I would agree, but for fairly narrow definitions of “we”. Globally, the median human is wildly better off than 50 years ago. Even in the US, I see your point for straight white men (of which I’m one), but would the median woman be better off fifty years ago? What about if you’re gay, disabled, black, etc? That’s not even getting into things like medical conditions, life expectancy, violent crime rates, etc. Infant mortality was more than 3x higher fifty years ago than it is now.
    - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
      In terms of US macroeconomics, yes. End of the gold standard and the Vietnam War put the US in a position 9f slumping it's post WW2 command of the world, and the 80's accelerated the breakdown of all the structures that gave the US prosperous times. Socially speaking, it's been a much better curve, albeit not without its own share of slumps. Especially recent updates on Roe v.Wade. There's certainly a conversation for that as well, but economics makes sure those marginalized classes remain marginalized.
suttontom 1mo ago
If you're able to, find a random NPR broadcast from 20 to 30 years ago and marvel at how it could be replayed nearly verbatim today. "Inflation", "war in the Middle East", "Congress stalled on xyz." Even the "unprecedented" political correctness and racial reckonings in the US observed around 2020 were not uncommon in the 1970s and 1980s (see the Stanford Beethoven poster incident which also left students literally fainting and crying in hysterics).
pojzon 1mo ago
Funny analogy. “The only constant is change”. Thats why humans constantly repeat the same mistakes we covered and wrote about in last 3000 years. The pace of learning for our spieces is devastatingly slow. We rather regress faster than learn. We are closer to idiocracy, due to knowledge and skills atrophy (not only due to AI).

eventualcomp 1mo ago

Thanks for commenting and acknowledging that it's challenging. My mates and myself have definitely fallen into this. Reminds me of that hackernews post about how doomerism is a siren's song for genZ, forget where it is.

api 1mo ago

If you can’t help, it’s okay to look away. People sometimes get mad at this, like it’s callous or privileged, but what’s the difference between focusing on problems you can’t help and slowing down to stare at a car wreck? If you don’t slow down are you being insensitive? Obviously if you can help it’s different.

singingtoday 1mo ago
I can't look away. It's everywhere.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

hypfer 1mo ago

I (self-servingly) don't think that cynicism is bad, nor that it would be a good idea to pathologize what is simply a healthy defense to a hostile reality. It depends on how you wield it. Cynicism shouldn't cloud your judgement. That's the actually correct point you wanted to make, I think.

s1artibartfast 1mo ago
Cynicism is a negatively biased view of the world. People should strive for accuracy. Sometimes accurate is also harsh, but that is different. Maybe this is the same thing you intended by saying it shouldn't Cloud your judgment.
- hypfer 1mo ago
  Yeah, probably. It doesn't help that the clinical meaning and the colloquial meaning of the word are different, with the latter being used by people to hit you over the head with, pretending that it would be the former.
  - s1artibartfast 1mo ago
    What are the two?
    - hypfer 1mo ago
      > Cynicism is a negatively biased view of the world Is what you said. The clinical thing. > You're just being cynical Is cognitive dissonance forcing its way out of the mouths of people to shoot the messenger.
      - s1artibartfast 1mo ago
        Maybe I'm being slow, but I still dont get the difference. Isn't the 2nd the same as the first? Isn't the first a product of generator of cognative dissonance? Doubling down on beliefs that pay rent, even when it doesn't fit?

s1artibartfast 1mo ago

I think this growth in cynicism really depends on where people start from. A lot of people were taught and reinforced a inaccurate model of the world. When confronted with reality, it can't stand up and the individuals become angry and disengage rather than working with the system as it is. I know this is painting with a broad brush but I see it basically everywhere I look. One example would be the expectation of a benevolent Authority that manages political and social life. Reality is that it is just messy humans all the way down. Some people assume that from the beginning and can work with it. Other people just break down with frustration and broken expectations.

dweekly 1mo ago

The last thing my father said to me before he passed was to keep people looking forward to the future. It's easy to romanticize the past and it can seem intellectually sophisticated to despair about the future, when in fact the overwhelming evidence is that things have gotten much much better for nearly everyone on just about any objective axis you can pick.

inigyou 1mo ago
Except they haven't.
- orand 1mo ago
  Good one. Refute an unsubstantiated claim with an unsubstantiated rebuttal. I'm sure we can all learn from that. /s
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    You made the claim, you substantiate it.
- wseqyrku 1mo ago
  Tech has gotten better, but people yeah, downward spiral to the bottom of hell, sadly. Hard to be not a cynic these days.
  - account42 1mo ago
    The fundamentals behind the tech might have gotten better but the implementations of it have also gotten worse in many significant ways for normal users.

lofaszvanitt 1mo ago

Good luck nurturing a garden, when every day someone tears down a tree inside or robs you of the fruits.

queenkjuul 1mo ago
Or the summers get so hot it all burns down
- account42 1mo ago
  In that case you should amend your laws that burning down your garden doesn't make it easier to get permits for building the strip mall over it.
lesostep 1mo ago
The thing is you have to imagine a better garden in order to build one. Maybe you have to imagine bigger fence, or a guard, or moving house to a better part of town, or even a social change that would provide food for the hungry so they wouldn't feel the need to steal (You might think the last point is the most naive one, but in my experience the economic growth was the only thing that actually worked) Hopelessness has it's own self-fulfillment. In order to change a thing you have to wish for something, and if you can't imagine a better future, then you can't get one

II2II 1mo ago

> One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and speculative optimism fail, one can just get down on it all. It's even sadder when one realizes the world was always that way. The author more-or-less says as much, though they seem to suggest it is amplified. I'm not entirely sure the part about it being more amplified today true. Most of the ills mentioned existed when I was a youth, it simply took different forms and (of course) was spread by means other than the Internet. There never was a chance to get ahead because the cards were always stacked against us. Apologies for the cynicism.

rdiddly 1mo ago

I'm not sure why we're talking about cynicism all of a sudden. I hope it's not because we're framing this blogger's recognition of existing cynicism, as constituting cynicism in and of itself. Because if so, I would have to disagree, just as I would disagree that talking about racism makes one racist for example.

99954bb63ccc 1mo ago

> One thing people go through as they age is an elevation of cynicism and general misanthropy. After decades of being disappointed when naive idealism and speculative optimism fail, one can just get down on it all. > It is really hard not to succumb to this. It requires active effort and sometimes even a willful ignorance. I feel this very strongly over the past couple of years. As always, hackernews is full of extremely smart, well read people so I'd really appreciate any good reading material on this so I can better understand it. Tips are appreciated as well (healthy diet and regular exercise, good extended blood labs (think like Function health), good consistent sleeep habits).

robocat 1mo ago
Terrible domain, but okay article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust-games/202111/the-myth-the-cynical-genius https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/trust-games/202111/t... Or search HN for "cynical genius"
- 99954bb63ccc 1mo ago
  Thank you! Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49493820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49493820 I totally missed this just a few days ago lol

j13k 1mo ago

Source for Mr Rogers quote: https://web.archive.org/web/20100125201022/https://www.pbs.org/parents/rogers/special/scarynews-thoughts.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100125201022/https://www.pbs.o... ‘Fred Rogers often told this story about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news: "My mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of 'disaster,' I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people in this world."’

econ 1mo ago

I thought it was, become the helper.