Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Cynicism is the new hope

In the last few days, I've had a chance to chat to a few of my students about the state of the world, about the bad and the good out there, and about the mysteriousness of and inevitable difficulties in the future that we all face. Overwhelmingly, most of the students I speak to – most of whom are just about a decade younger than I am – are unabashedly, out-and-out cynical. 

In all honesty, I think it's easy to feel really cynical about life on planet earth. Generally, we human beings are good at making war, good at messing up our relationships, good at squandering the earth's resources, good at doing next-to-nothing about the rise of displacement and xenophobic violence and the increasing distress caused by the AIDS pandemic. It seems we're good at everything except being good. And this, I guess, is why my students are cynical. Who wouldn't be cynical when the message plastered all over the media is one of a world in turmoil.

But something rather surprising is evident in the cynicism of so many of these twenty-year-olds. It's not the sort of cynicism you would find in a jaded old businessman who has squandered his life in pursuit of mamon, nor is it the sort of cynicism you would find in someone who has spent their whole life going from one heartache to another. In fact, the cynicism I find is a mask for something far more profound, which you could even call hope. Underlying this apparent bitterness at the state of the world and the fallibility of human beings is a profound and deep desire for something better. Underneath the sorrows expressed at the pain that people cause each other and the environment is a yearning for something that could help them to transcend this madness. Not only is this a yearning for what is not-yet, but a profound sense of what ought to be. My question, as always, is where does that sense of 'oughtness' come from? Perhaps it is the echo of a voice from a distant memory that has existed since long before we were even born.







1 comment:

  1. "But something rather surprising is evident in the cynicism of so many of these twenty-year-olds. It's not the sort of cynicism you would find in a jaded old businessman who has squandered his life in pursuit of mamon, nor is it the sort of cynicism you would find in someone who has spent their whole life going from one heartache to another. In fact, the cynicism I find is a mask for something far more profound, which you could even call hope."

    That's encouraging: we could almost say hope is proof of its own basis at times like this. I always think hope is proof of itself. I was thinking much about young people today: I can be prone to pessimism but we forget we are still human (still animal): there has to be limits to our endurance of that which is not human. Moreover, at times of such social, moral, political confusion we are turning back I hope to the empathetic, emotional and existential certainties which much better reflect human life as it is experienced, so there is real cause to hope (I hope!)

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