Alien.
"How could man be a cynic? It's a sin."
In 2013, comedian Norm Macdonald was diagnosed with blood cancer.
In 2021, he died.
On April 17, 2018, smack dab in the middle of an incurable disease that shuts down your kidneys, compresses your spinal cord, and fills your bones with lesions, Macdonald posted a tweet:
“At times, the joy that life attacks me with is unbearable and leads to gasping hysterical laughter. I find myself completely out of control and wonder how life could surprise me again and again and again, so completely. How could man be a cynic? It is a sin.”
Cynicism is getting more popular.
In 1972, 46% of Americans agreed that most people can be trusted, according to the General Social Survey. By 2018, that percentage dropped to 31.9%.
That means for every 10 people you meet, 7 see the rest of the world as untrustworthy. As deceitful. Dishonest.
It’s not hard to wonder why.
Take two people.
Person A is an optimist. They see the good in people. They trust others. In general, they think things are pretty good.
Person B is a cynic. They find the flaws in others. They’re distrusting. They know there’s good in life, but they choose to fixate on the bad.
Person A: “I know the world has its problems, but isn’t life incredible?”
Person B: “How can you possibly be happy with everything going on in the world?”
Now take a second.
Who do you think is smarter?
Person A — the starry-eyed optimist?
Or Person B — the cynical pessimist?
I think most of us would say Person B is smarter, because optimism is often linked with naivete, while cynicism is mistaken for realism.
But the opposite is true.
Cynicism isn’t intelligence..
In fact, it’s the opposite.
In astrobiology, there’s a concept called the “Fermi paradox”.
The Fermi paradox deals with the likelihood of alien life, and essentially asks, “Given the vast number of stars and planets in the universe, why haven’t we heard from extraterrestrials yet?”
Basically: The universe is near-infinite. Shouldn’t there be something else out there?
But when you dig into the Fermi paradox, you’ll find an idea — it’s called the “Rare Earth hypothesis”.
The Rare Earth hypothesis suggests that the conditions needed to support intelligent life are so precise, so finicky, and so unlikely, that the universe has to be as large as it is to produce even one planet capable of supporting that life.
That’s us.
That’s Earth.
A miracle in every sense.
So how could anyone be a cynic?
It’s a sin.
Spot on, Adam. I have lived by and written often about the power of realistic optimism and the huge consequences of worry and cynicism. I appreciate the way you ended as to how it is a crime and a waste of the miracle that you even exist by being Donny Downer.