Well, sometimes a lady needs a strong title. Here’s the deal: I want to call us to action: us, the cynics. Are you smirking at my earnestness right now? Hear me out.
I believe that Cynicism is the main form of dialogue in our culture (and many of our subcultures) in the US today and that it is hobbling The Left (let’s, for the sake of conversation, accept this imperfect title ' The Left' as a catch-all for politically left activists of all stripes). Cynicism takes the form of snark and sarcasm and irony. It is this political-dialogue-irony-humor which is dominating all political discussion in our media, especially pop culture. Do you see it? It is the overarching tone of every advertisement (is also on the tongue of most lefty activists I ask about our chances of ever succeeding).The thing to be is knowing and disaffected. The way to win an argument is to be cooler. The thing to do, whether on Facebook or on the street, is to have an opinion—any opinion. This looks a lot like critical thinking, but it is missing a really important element of engagement.
Cynicism says: “There’s a protest tomorrow? Yeah, great. We’re going to go out and stop the war?. Sweet, is three good for you? Because three in the afternoon would be a really good time for me to dismantle capitalism and build a better world. I’ve got something around eight. I’ll bring my COEXIST bumper sticker, you bring the big, unattractive banner, the puppets, and the panicked, outraged pleading, okay?” Cynicism may go to the protest anyway.
The snark is really gratifying; extremely emotionally engaging—it touches on something very real and vents some righteous outrage. On the surface it appears to serve our purpose of calling out injustice. It looks like living a politically-informed life. But I believe the attitude behind the actions is devastating us: I believe that cynicism is a complex form of apathy. I think cynicism is counterrevolutionary. Like a little, tiny agent provocateur in your mind. Like a Hoover of the heart. COINTELPRO for soul. Cynicism would have us stop before we even try.
I want to make clear: I think there is a very important (and sometimes very slippery) line between cynicism and engaged, critical thinking. I think the latter is an utterly necessary skill that is harder to develop than one expects and that we all could use more of—in fact will not survive without. The former, in effect, is still critical of injustice, but its response is different. Cynicism knows better. It's a basic too-cool-for-school attitude, but when measured cumulatively it shows itself to be devastating to our ability to effectively fight injustice and build movement. A habit of cynicism is degrading our connective tissue.
I want to change this habit of cynicism. I want us to change it. I have my own myriad qualms with how the activism I see is being done, but I feel like our commitment to making a better world at all is flagging under the weight of poor expectations.
At its core, cynicism is trying to ask a very valid question: “How could we really change anything, anyway?” And in this brave, new world of late-stage capitalism, who could blame a person doing activism in the United States, the belly of the beast, for arriving at a cynical conclusion: maybe we can’t. Somewhere along the way the question we’re always asking when we do social justice work (“Can we change this?”) was answered with too many times with what felt like a resounding “No.” (there’s always something new: oppression and injustice keep happening, always harder and stronger, it seems, and the people in power have so. much. power.). This leaves the Left in a state of depression. Maybe not as individuals, but for the sake of metaphor, let’s consider the left as an intelligent entity unto itself...a sort of super-organism.
Widespread cynicism is a clear sign of a depressed person—they will go through the motions, but in conversation, they always talk things down. They seem to take a certain pleasure in finding the faults in a person or argument and deftly breaking them or it apart. They keep trying, but the spirit is not in them.
Depression signals a need for change. We, the left, need to do things differently or we will remain in this downward spiral of failure after failure. Just keeping at it won’t change the pattern. We need to evolve.
We keep trying, but the spirit seems to be leaving us. No one expects to win their fight against oppression, say, tomorrow. Or next week. Or next year. The world’s too fucked up. But setting goals is a clear route out of a slump, and every goal must be broken into attainable pieces. That’s easy to say, but hard to do when it comes to, say, ending sexism or dismantling the ill-effects of globalization. So failing a clear roadmap to a better world for all of us (though we do write roadmaps for this. There are amazing groups around the country doing wonderful, long-term planning.), we need something that is still ethical, but maybe a little less bound to the purely logical.
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A story, come to me via Ruth, my friend and coworker: In the late 60s, Ruth was listening to the radio and heard an interview with a liberation theologist who was from Central America and had been doing work in either El Salvador or Guatemala. This was the sort of work that could get him killed. Work that had, literally, made him bear witness to comrades and colleagues tortured and murdered, individually and en masse, in ways that I, personally, am not capable of truly grasping. The wretchedness of US-backed civil war was his daily. He was on a progressive program raising consciousness on the issues and on how people might help, describing the immensity of the repression and the difficulty of the task at hand.
As he spoke, the host of the show kept interrupting him in disbelief: “What are you doing? You’re in the priesthood, you could transfer out. You could stay here. Why are you doing this dangerous shit?” The priest would respond, shruggingly, “I’m a revolutionary,” and keep talking. Over the course of a few minutes, the host broke in a few more times, still disbelieving: “But how can you get up in the morning and think you can change this? How do you know you’re doing anything?” And the priest would shrug him off, mumbling, “I’m a revolutionary.” Finally, the host interrupted again, same question: “How can you know you’re changing anything?”
Apparently, you could almost hear the guy look the host in the eye: “Listen. I’m a revolutionary. I’ve seen a lot of hard shit and I have a lot of hard work to do. I get up every day and work harder than I know I can. I go to bed and get up and do it again. But the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, I do every single morning. I get up and I find hope. That is what it means to be a revolutionary. To believe that I can create change in this world. And if I believe I can change things, then I have a responsibility. So how do I get up in the morning? I find hope. That is what makes me a revolutionary. That is what keeps me going.”
Hope, beyond logic but bound by ethics.
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A lover of mine, years ago, was stuck in the middle of her own depression and having a real hard time shaking it. She found a book in a free pile outside a bookstore. It was called The Down Comforter, and it was about breaking depression. Hilarious and secretly useful for her, it had this to say near the beginning:
When you’re depressed, every small thing feels like a failure. In small ways, you can break this every day by making every small thing a victory. Got out of bed? Go you! Brushed your teeth? Score! Turned on the radio to see what’s going on? That’s not nothing! Went on a dismal blind date? Good try, they were just a dud anyway!
Like most self-help books, it felt goofy but it had a point: we need to feel like we’re winning. If we deny ourselves the buoys of smaller victories, we eliminate the possibility of greater success. The difference between depression and (r)evolution is a surprisingly subtle, attitudinal shift—something that is nearly autonomic. I’m calling us all out (me, too) for our habit of cynicism. We have to find a new way of reacting.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not trying to convince you that the interminable International ANSWER protest you were at was charming and profoundly effective. I am not saying that writing letters to congresspeople changes the military industrial complex. I think we need better, more glamorous and cunning strategies than we are employing and I will get to that in future posts.
What I want to leave on is this: we have a choice. We all look at a problematic world and think: What can be done? We are all, often, trying to do something. And when that something fails, or at least doesn’t succeed, we can either try something else, or we can keep trying the same thing. We seem to be picking a middle ground: keep trying the same thing and keep complaining. I want more. I think we need to engage the psychology of the left and see what needs retooling.
So, are you willing to do some homework? It's easy: Identify cynicism. Examine it. Keep track of it. In you, and in others. Start a political conversation or a discussion of someone’s new project. Keep an eye on the cynicism and start to think what an equally critical but totally un-cynical reaction could be.
Next week: utopia!
