complicity ...
http://artdurkee.blogspot.com/2007/11/enough-with-cynicism-already.html
Monday, November 26, 2007
Enough with the Cynicism, Already
...
It's easy to be cynical.
(Entropy is always easier than extropy, just as sewage runs downhill.)
It's easy to despair.
Sometimes it takes all one's energy to like a plan for living.
It's easier to be mean than it is to be gracious; it takes less energy to
be self-centered than to be altruistic.
After awhile, you begin to believe that no-one cares about anything you
have to say. At which point, you have generated a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's also very easy to attack whenever your precious little ego is
attacked: a counter-attack, a counter response, even a pre-emptive attack,
is considered justified when it prefers the self above all others. Wilhelm
Reich wrote about this in 1948, in his little warning of a book, ''Listen,
Little Man''!
"Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human
relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They
assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in
accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to
healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great
danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional
plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of
thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men
are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie
and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation the living are at
an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden, they are
sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed".
...
The plague Reich referred to was (silent) complicity ...
It is complicity in believing that one has already lost the game, because
the adversary has told you so, and therefore one might as well give up and
not bother.
The roots of cynicism lie in frustrated and embattled hope.
The fruits of cynicism are death and hatred, especially self-hatred,
because underneath it all lies fear.
A fear of passionate engagement, as is done by little children, who put it
all out there, and take it all in, giving and receiving a hundred percent
of themselves to each moment.
Passion means commitment, and the cynical are afraid to commit, especially
to commit the sin of admitting they might be wrong.
...
Don't confuse me with shallow optimists or Pollyannas. I have no use for
"positive thinking" when it's based on denial or repression, rather than a
realistic assessment of any given situation. I have little patience with
those who would paste over every conflict with a false smile: as though
sweeping it under the rug ever really made it go away.
Telling the truth, being honest to oneself and others, is a life-affirming
act, and the opposite of ironic distance. A prophet cannot afford to be a
cynic, and probably was never in any actual danger of becoming one;
although even prophets have times of despair.
The antidote to cynicism is fearlessness, and an embracing of the freedom
to be honest with oneself, and with others. This implies the freedom to
make a fool of oneself, of course; but it also gives us the freedom to
think for oneself, to formulate one's own beliefs and opinions, rather than
have them served to you by others. The antidote to despair is a realistic
assessment that includes what is good as well as what causes suffering.
If you fulfill the role of a prophet, somebody will inevitably come along
and try to dismiss you with ironic humor—irony has become the dominant mode
of cultural discourse, reflecting an essential hollowness, and forgetting
that irony is an experience, not a critical-rhetorical stance—because you
will make them uncomfortable, if you are sincerely childlike in your
refusal to be cynical. Which is essentially a refusal to play along with
the gang.
No-one will like you once you break the unspoken rules of the gang, and
speak for yourself, as though you were your own person.
...
It's easy to go along with the gang: that too is a form of entropy.
The gang will tell you Resistance is futile, and expect you to believe it,
simply because they say, and because they believe in the sheer power of
their own numbers. But resistance isn't futile: those silly little humans
ended up defeating the gang.
Reich also writes, "You plead for happiness in life, but security means
more to you". That is the general miasma of culture at this point in
history. So, if you stand up yourself, you are sticking your neck out; make
no mistake of that. If security means more to you than a life of personal
responsibility, then the gang already owns you, and will manipulate you
with ease.
It's easy to be negative, to be dismissive, to dismiss without having
genuinely engaged. It's easy to be critical, rather than constructively
critical. It takes more effort to be actively a mentor rather than a
dismissive critic.
...
But no: most critics would rather have something bad to say. Perhaps it's
because they're so small, they can only feel larger if they tear everyone
else down, bringing them down to their level. ...
Lamenting it won't make it better, or make it go away. The proper response
is a shrug, rather than a diatribe. There were no Golden Days, that's just
nostalgia for an illusory and fantastical past. The cynic would have you
agree with him, and will fight hard against you if you don't. Cynics are as
convinced they are right as are most fanatics; differing worldviews are
subject to mockery of the tepid lameness typical of late-night talk-show
monologues. Dismiss what you can't accept; mock what you can't undertsand;
then it's easier to ignore. Entropy wins again.
But the antidote to entropy is life. The anodyne of cynicism is passion,
passionate engagement, a well-formed opinion that isn't afraid of either
commitment or being wrong. The opposite of love is not hate, but
indifference: hatred implies you still actually care enough to spend your
energy on it. No true cynic wastes any time on hate, because that would be
caring too much; they know this, on some level, even if they won't admit
it. An ironic shrug is their stance, because that keeps them safe from
actual engagement or commitment.
it's easier to roll downhill with the rest. But you're going uphill, not
down, when you refuse to become cynical. You're going to see the wizard, or
to see what the world looks like on the other side of the mountain. You
don't even have to have a reason to go uphill. The mere fact that you feel
you have lost your way, anytime you don't feel like you're going uphill, is
a reliable inner barometer for taking the true path in life. Even if you
feel like your life and your art is being drowned by a huge wave about to
break over you, you have the choice to surf rather than give in and just
drown. It can be a struggle that seems to take away all your life-energy in
an instant.
...
So, go uphill. It may be a sisyphean task, and it may in the end be
pointless. But any action that slows down entropy, even locally, even for
just a little while, is divinely blessed, and sheds light and life on all
who witness.
posted by Art Durkee at 9:38 PM
