I woke up this morning needing a place to put my cynicism. I'm not a cynic by nature, but there it was, dark and scary, drooling in the corner of my cozy bedroom next to the pile of unexamined and un-shredded junk mail. I tried to tell my cynicism that I was too busy to deal with it now (simple denial usually works – at least it does with my procrastination and my various other fears, and especially my phobias) but there it was, flinging unspoken theories and far-flung what-ifs into my pre-dawn consciousness:
What if?…the war in Iraq was just a distraction, contrived to stir up our patriotic fervor in the name of "all that's holy": our security, our future, our children, our land, yada-yada… meanwhile, oil companies jack up their prices; banks and investors bet on our loyalty and our patriotic fervor in order to make a "killing" of their own; banks lose money, investors and CEOs make money – or take it all, as it were….
What if?Banks and mortgage lenders get this really good idea to make "good credit rating" a virtue. Then they provide credit cards and low-interest loans to anybody with a "good credit rating", and without a credit card we can't buy anything online, can't rent a car, can't get a plane ticket, can't put gas in the car, can't buy anything from a catalog or whatever. Then, to be sure that we stay in the credit loop (and because we have such a "good credit rating"), they raise our credit limit anytime we come near the previous limit. Then, they hike the interest rate up to 29%, even to 33%, and watch us scramble to keep up with the monthly payments by inching monthly revolving credit cycle down to 28 days or less. Meanwhile, they make it legally impossible to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy (the poor man's escape hatch) and credit counselors turn up all over the internet -- Suze Orman berates us on the evening news for having gotten ourselves into this mess.
But it's okay. I don't feel like a total shit because I've got a "good credit rating" and it's my next-door neighbor who's gone into foreclosure, not me. And even though gas still costs $3-fucking-30 a gallon, and while it only seems as if I pay $900/month in interest on these good-credit-rating credit cards, the balance remains $40,000 and climbing, but everyday the mail arrives with more teasers for low-interest (but very high APR) credit cards, and tantalizing offers for equity home loans, and no-guilt tickets to financial freedom.
I decided to look for other cynics with whom to commiserate. I wasn't exactly sure who they were, so I Googled them and lo! there they were in Wikipedia! Ancient Greeks! A whole school of them!! The Cynic's philosophy was that "the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature." (What happened to my "good credit rating"?) "...This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society."
Oh, my God, I had no idea! But why are they called Cynics, I wonder?
Again, Wikipedia: "...the name Cynic derives from the Greek word
κυνικός, kunikos, "dog-like" and that from
κύων, kuôn, "dog" (genitive: kunos).... It seems certain, however, that the word dog was also thrown at the first Cynics as an insult for their shameless rejection of conventional manners, and their decision to live on the streets."
(And here I was deriding and denying my inner cynic because I thought it was a bad thing….)
"…Later Cynics also sought to turn the word to their advantage, as a later commentator explained, "There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them."
What if!!?? We all refuse to be victims of this system?
What if ? Cynicism, in the name of all that's cynical, actually offers people the possibility of happiness and freedom from suffering in an age of uncertainty, as they so proposed 2500 years ago?
What about our capitalist ideals, I want to know!? What about our Global Market Economy? What about my mortgage payment? And how is all this different from Idealism, I asked myself (besides the fact that cynicism descended from Socrates and idealism from Aristotle and Ayn Rand)? Okay, permit me a moment's digression while I go back to the Wikis:
"…Idealism is the doctrine that ideas, or thought, make up either the whole or an indispensable aspect of any full reality, so that a world of material objects containing no thought either could not exist as it is experienced, or would not be fully "real." Idealism is often contrasted with materialism, both belonging to the class of monist as opposed to dualist or pluralist ontologies." (Okay, that's more than I wanted or cared to know.)
"What if?" (barked the dog in the corner).
What if? The average 21st century materialist cannon-fodder like myself decides enough is enough, and says: "I've been laid off. I'm up to my ears in good credit and I'll never be able to get ahead in this system. I'm going to stop buying stuff. I'm walking away from my financial responsibilities, moving into my hot tub, and the global market economy will just have to go on without me. I'm becoming... A Cynic!"
I'll tell you what if:
First, the stock market crashes, banks go bust, everybody's savings disappear, everybody's "good credit rating" turns to dust and all the CEOs retire and move offshore. Then, millions of illegal aliens come flooding over our borders to take all the jobs we no longer have, icebergs melt and Brazil fries, China goes bankrupt and returns to a repressive socialist society, great earthquakes will cleave the western hemisphere down the middle causing the Mississippi river to flood its banks and engulf all our crops; famine ensues, and the NAFTA highway is built next to my hot tub and 18-wheelers are roaring past me all night, every night, and God says, "Enough already, send in the Four Horsemen. This is the end of the world, people. Deal with it."
The world ends? All because I'd rather live in a hot tub than offer my whole being to the banks? I don't think so! I'm going back under my cozy blanket of denial. I'll just tell the cynic to shut up, I'm going back to sleep.
