Today's Challenge:
What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?
Today's entry:
I believe in world-changing ideas, but I'm not a fan of bumper-sticker philosophy – the nuance of any message seems to be lost when it's compressed to a sound-bite, and the more complex and important the message, the bigger the data loss. Of course, the alternative is a rambling manifesto, which I fear this is about to become.
We're a culture of cynics. We've come to believe that cynicism is somehow smart, even morally superior. I think that skepticism can be smart. Thinking for yourself is smart, if you do it honestly. Too often, though, cynicism is a knee-jerk reaction – our default method for dealing with any new idea, unfamiliar face, or foreign attitude.
The problem is that we're indoctrinated into cynicism in 21st-century America. Our leaders are cynics, are movie and TV heroes are cynics, and we're bombarded by a 24-hour news cycle that virtually demands non-stop negativism. No one wants to hear about how 6 Billion people are still alive or someone was nice to someone else, so teams of thousands scour the world to find the cynical angle.
If this indoctrination were an accident, maybe we could just write it off as a sign of the times. Over time, though, I've started to wonder – who does this culture of cynicism benefit?
Who benefits when we think that renewable energy is a pipe dream?
Who benefits when we believe that there's no money to make the world better?
Who benefits when we keep buying what we're told to buy?
Who benefits when we live in fear and reach out to powerful men for protection?
Who benefits when we know that war is inevitable and peace is impossible?
Any opinion, shallowly conceived, can be wielded against us. We're like the high-school skater boys who rebel against the status quo by all wearing the same clothes and listening to the same music. If enough of us follow along, our mutual nonconformity becomes the status quo.
Today, cynicism is the status quo. It's lazy and it's probably a trap.
Every generation probably feels like it's at a crossroads, but I can't help but see amazing things happening in the world. The internet is changing how we work and live – we already take it for granted, but the real revolution is still in its infancy. We have the freedom to redefine our lives in a way that was impossible 100 years ago, and yet very few people do.
We listen to people who claim to have broken free, and we're cynical. Maybe we should be, to a point, but for every ounce of justifiable skepticism we pour on a pound of influence from forces who want us to be cynics. They want us to believe that radical change in our lives and world is impossible.
Why? Simply because they profit from the way things are.
So, be a skeptic when you need to, but don't be chained by someone else's cynicism. It's ironic to me that so many people seem unhappy, and yet we insist on living the way everyone else does and having what everyone else has. Maybe the answer isn't quantitative – it's qualitative. You don't need more – you need to let go of what you have.
Don't be a cynic just because it's easier than living.
