Maria Popova essay, Some Thoughts on
Hope, Cynicism, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves, places cynicism on the
polar side of Hope. This identified kind of raw cynicism is “that terrible habit of mind
and orientation of spirit in which, out of hopelessness for our own
situation, we grow
embittered about how things are and about what’s possible in
the world. [Hence this sort of] Cynicism is a poverty of curiosity and imagination and ambition. . . In
its passivity and resignation, cynicism is a hardening, a calcification of the
soul. Hope [on the other hand] is a stretching of its ligaments, a limber reach for something
greater.”
She advises,
Today, the soul is in dire need of
stewardship and protection from cynicism. The best defense against it is
vigorous, intelligent, sincere hope — not blind optimism, because that too is a
form of resignation, to believe that everything will work out just fine [or other sentimental blah, blah, blah] and we
need not apply ourselves. I mean hope bolstered by critical thinking that is
clear-headed in identifying what is lacking, in ourselves or the world, but
then envisions ways to create it and endeavors to do that.
