cynicism

Cynicism

            Cynicism means contempt of society: thus diogenes the dog, who might be called optimistic, cynical, the terms have grown wayward. What we mean now by cynicism is negativity. Let’s start with optimism.

            Optimism is the American virtue. Any optimism that does not comprehend all cynicism is itself a form of cynicism. Any optimism that believes you have to wear rosy glasses thereby acknowledges that it must disfigure the world to love it. This is worse than cynicism, for it is also blindness. But the true optimism recognizes the real goodness in all things, either as present or as potential.

            Thus, optimism is not mere interpretation, but an activity of optimizing the world. Optimism looks at hard facts and reformulates them to become sublime. Optimism is a way of acting, a way of changing the world according to its highest potential.

            Life is full of pains and sorrows. If you wish for the impossible, for some impossible ideal, some high perfect absurdity, then you make your life a failure. Loving the impossibly good is loving failure.

            Wearing rose colored glasses is cynicism. Optimism is optimizing the facts of life, reconfiguring them to a better present. Optimism is staring ugliness and monstrosity down, is outraging the outrages of life, is loving and focusing on the deeper good behind life. Optimism is cheerful because it sees through the monstrosties and uglinesses, to the greater love that lies in their defeat. Happiness is in the attack. Optimizing means being the highest you can at every moment; optimizing means choosing the best goals for a great life. Therefore, keeping one’s eye goalwise, and one’s other eye obstacle shrewd makes for continual growth.

            Optimism ensures success.

            There are two tyrannies to beware: the tyranny of normality and the tyranny of happiness. The problem with these terms is that they are generic and do not speak to the individuals unique place. A happy life is not Greek, who believed a man could be rendered unhappy for good if, say, he wasn’t buried correctly, or his grandchildren break the law. Happiness is a state of mind that makes the most out of lifes pleasures and sufferings. Happiness is possible to all men in all conditions, because it is not based on externals, but on maximizing our power in whatever conditions we are subjected to. Thus we can easily say that all the great tragic heroes were happy—Oedipus, Antigone, Prometheus, Hamlet—because they were true to themselves even if the external tore them down. What matters alone is your relationship to yourself: the external is merely a means.

            They tyranny of normality is dramatized in the mental institutes. The entire health profession is driven by a statistical-based interpretation of individuals according to their variance from “normality.” The system degrades everybody. A woman’s self image often is one of gloom that she is not “normal” let alone, “beautiful,” that her weight is “above average,” when in fact these abstracted numbers mean nothing more than the gloom she feels. There is no reality to them.

            Therefore, it is easy to imagine Sysyphus happy. With his cheek to the boulder, his calves arched in intent, his imagination wanders into inventing and fating the Gods of Olympus. It is easy to imagine Job happy, because his only God was goodness itself, which he found to be at last not above him but within him. Prometheus crucified with his liver torn out by God’s eagle is happy because the Titan came before God, created mankind, gave them fire, and the Gods can never take this back, for Prometheus will one day return the fire to heaven as Ragnorak.

I used to love a former flame for too long: she would never leave my mind--till I crucified her: know how to finish with love! A little cruel violence will cure the terror of undead love.

Cynicism of the variety Diogenes taught is indespincible for a man to own himself, for a man to shine like sun and lamp in the day. You must be cynical, and you must be something other than cynical. Jesus praised stupidity in absolute terms: “Unless you be incredulous like a child, you will be no means enter heaven.” Distrust this man. You must be willing to believe whatever the homeless preachers says, or you are doomed to eternal torment. Nonsense—just take a look where he ended up, fed to the dogs.

Your innocence, the part of you ever in nascence, the Natalie of yourself, is the purity you grow by: with a saving skin of cynicism over her. Crucify the liars and imposters. Love yourself.

“If you offend a child, you would best be drowned”—therefore, let every Christian parent in the world be drowned: your doctrine of hell is the greatest form of child-abuse yet invented. Be ashamed of yourself.

We are cynical, we are prankish, we are mockers, because we know you are thought by the ideas of calculating manipulators. Your religions were devised by blood drinking priests. You have not a single original thought in your head: the thoughts in your head have ceased your brain. You are the undead: your bite makes vampires, and those vampires make more bites.

“Man is born between piss and shit” said Augustine, and I suppose you to be a saint to hate life so much. What he means is that his very own Christ was born between piss and shit. As are most mammals, and insofar as we buy the garden of Eden, so would Cain and Abel be born between piss and shit whether or not Eve ate the apple.

So what does it mean when a Saint thinks it bad that men are born in the manner they were? Did Caesar have a more glorious birth than Christ?

Or is this like J. S. Mill who depressed himself thinking every musical melody would be exhausted in the near future, and therefore music was going to die? Or whatever stupidity thinkers invent in order to justify their depressions?

I myself am cynical, cynical enough to have gained the powers it holds; I am only cynical, yet because I am I have brought you many powerful innoculants, which you will feel soon enough; as bitter as they seem, they will save you much future suffering.

Children are cruel beasts and innocent as beasts. Nevermind Augustine blaming the twin on the left breast envying his brother on the rigth breast: Augustine would bash them both together, send them to unbaptized baby hell, and grab the breasts for himself. Children are innocent. They have no folds. An adult too is innocent on his interior, the so-called “inner child” for the child we are never goes away, but is ever there, but more and more protected, more outwardly cynical, cruel, rude, and icy – of course!

Who wouldn’t want a dog to protect him? There are enough twisted men and women who would drink the blood of an infant, the guilt-brewers or the out and out monsters. And as always, I mean this both literally in the criminal sense, and metaphorically in the spiritual sense: some of the most harmful monsters of mankind would get the gavellor’s blessing.

Cynicism stands for a distrust and disrespect of conformers to society. Skepticism stands for a distrust of claims to truth, framing as truth, but not to ideas themselves. One must ask of skepticism “what does it gain for me? how is it paying me?” For without that bonus, why waste effort skepticizing?

Lately I have been called cynical by family and coworkers due to my open contempt for Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Mormonism, the great four errors of Western thinking. All religions destroy creativity and apply best to a weak group that is only a full person as a group. Yes, I am cynical towards them, and aspecially the Western four.

Diogenes barked cynically at the nonsense his fellow Greeks conformed to, for they thought they were decent, good, respectable citizens, and he would not even call them men.

In that vein, I regard Western religions blameworthy in this regard: they each pretend to know that punishments awaits those who disbelieve their cosmic worldview. For most of them, there await eternal consequences for disregarding their brand of the after life. This terrorist tactic destroys the original innocence of thought, that you may believe and experiment with ideas with play, cheer, audacity, and joy. Instead, the dread of doubt, wrong-thinking, unorthodox thinking, prevents the joys of philosophy.

My experience of thought, the after life, the utter greatness of mankind, and the fullest greatness of the universe herself will admit no eternal punishment for any act or belief, least of all for experimental thinking, honest doubt, and rigorous testing of beliefs. In other words, in the strictest sense, there is no such thing as a Christian philosopher, only the Christian theologian. For whoever says that “God is the truth,” has lost the ability to think about truth.

On the other hand, I am much happier now that I disbelieve in any religion, have written about thre times as much in these last 4 years than the rest of my life combined, and written works I am prouder of than anything before. I have found love, deep love, and lasting love for the first time, felt stable, mentally healthy, more social, more open to others, and ultimately much less depressed and anxious than any other time in my adult life.

I am not an atheist the same way I am not anything other than a “freethinker” with regards to beliefs. I am free to think whatever I want, and nothing external can bind me to believe X, Y, or Z other than the facts of matter and the means of needs.

The deepest innocence is possible only with a skin of coldness, a bit of cynicism, a light mock of sarcasm. Without these, a man turns cold, hard, and cruel. Mock, laugh, taunt, and be happy. Because the “good and virtuous” people of the world are the child-rapers who would corrupt you, though they rape in the name of God, and use the force of “the holy spirit.” Beware! Be innocent and happy by mocking your enemies. We are free of your guilt and hate! And so we laugh and taunt you.