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At my most fragile and confused in life, I was also at my most cynical. When we feel that life is too big for us to handle and that our efforts don’t make a difference, cynicism seems rational. But that’s the vicious cycle that cynicism creates: the more you accept these beliefs, the more cynical they make you.
Today I run my own publication, have been interviewed by people I admire, like Africa Brooke and Melissa Chen, and given talks on how I overcame my cynicism at major conferences like FreedomFest and LibertyCon. Good things have continually come my way, not despite my earlier cynicism, but because I cured it.
Cynicism is a sticky trap. At my most cynical, I was also my most delusional. To deal with the turmoil of my cynical beliefs and not conclude that life wasn’t worth living, I held on to the fantasy that one day, things would magically change. Though I wasn’t working toward my goal of being a writer or creating the life I wanted (because why bother, since life is too big to handle and my efforts won’t matter), I still believed that one day, a pile of money would fall into my lap. After all, that’s how good things happen for those who don’t believe good things can be earned.
Hope is often dismissed as a delusion by cynical people, but there’s a key difference between the two. Hope naturally follows from taking action toward your goals and believing in the efficacy of your action. Delusion is holding goals while doing nothing to obtain them.
My metaphysical mess of a belief system was finally re-engineered once it led me to a painful enough low point to question myself. I started learning about and observing how much our actions and lives were downstream of our beliefs. I realized the leftists I had surrounded myself with were merely other miserable people looking for ways to rationalize their belief that life is oppressive and good things aren’t earned, but forcibly taken.
I started living based on a different paradigm, one that asserted my actions were the biggest factor in determining my life and the only thing that I could control. I saw a better path and knew I could follow it. I had hope—not the delusion of an outcome uncoupled from my actions—but genuine hope from believing my actions mattered. My sense of agency grew and other people recognized it, finding solace in the courage I had gained to reject a cynical ideology and affirm the power of my autonomy.
I noticed people noticing me and realized there was something even more powerful about rejecting cynicism than its impact on my life: the impact it had on others.
Lately I’ve felt a resurgence of cynicism, albeit a different strain. It’s not that I’m struggling again to believe in the power of my actions, but that I’m constantly bombarded with the cynicism of strangers who don’t believe in theirs. Don’t waste your time telling me to log off and touch grass—we all know that’s so often the solution. But as someone who works in social media and shares ideas online for a living, it’s not as easy to turn it all off.
I have turned some of it off; I’ve restricted my replies on X to mutual followers and comments on The Black Sheep to paying subscribers. It’s still not enough. The cynicism and defeatism in our culture seep through cracks like poison gas. I’m more affected by the world than most—not in a fragile, unhealthy way, but in an observant, sensitive way. I don’t want to change this. It’s a temperament that’s a challenge in some realms, but an advantage in others, and it’s the other realms I care about.