I feel like, for the people who were once more idealistic and became more cynical, it's never "they aged out of it", but often "they got hurt and are afraid of being hurt again", "they were ignorant (often due to privileges they didn't understand they had) and as they learned more they got so horrified they overcorrected", and/or "they were proven wrong over and over and are afraid of feeling humiliated again."
Whatever the case, there are absolutely a lot of people who are just on a high horse looking down on those 'naive' idealists, but there are also a lot of people for whom it's rooted in fear. Sometimes the latter use the prior act as a mask, and sometimes it's just sincerely both. Sometimes it's also the clinical depression with or without the others, but yeah.
But the thing is, cynicism isn't inherently pessimism. Idealism isn't inherently optimism. As often as those overlap, they can be swapped. Mix idealism and pessimism, and you get... people with impossibly high standards incapable of finding joy in anything for what it is, who believe Perfect is not only possible but mandatory. You get people criticizing all representation for not being good enough, etc. Even those people can be motivating, but an oversaturation... isn't great.
The cynical optimist, on the other hand, is "expect the worst, hope for the best." And sometimes that hope is too passive, especially when surrounded by other cynics and especially too many pessimists. But the attitude inherently does believe things can get better, does want and will try to trust people, even expecting to get hurt more often than not, because sometimes they won't and that's still worth trying.
And we absolutely need idealistic optimists! We need the people with the most motivation to dream big and chase those dreams. The widest eyed idealists are so intensely powerful and we need so many more.
All I'm saying is, there's a solid step in between the misanthropic critics and the shining beacons. Often it's even beneficial to have both kinds of optimist. The cynic can sometimes help foresee and plan for problems, or help keep the scope of a project more attainable and sustainable. The idealist is more likely to see and take opportunities and motivate the cynic to act, providing direction. Just in broad stroke trends of course, but the point is, as long as it's rooted in optimism, in genuine hope, it can still be effective.
If people—if you, person reading this reblog—are skeptic and afraid and can't just let go of that, fighting through that fear is still good. The exhausted "fuck it, I may as well try" is still trying. "I know the odds are slim but they're Not Zero" is a workable mentality. "If I don't try I definitely won't succeed, where if I do I only probably won't succeed, and some chance is better than no chance" is a workable mentality.
And sometimes, if people can pick themselves up out of the pessimism pit and work on doing more of that, even just sometimes, then... they will start seeing things work out more. They'll see more things fail without it being the end of the world, more ways they can get up and try again or learn from it for something else. And the world starts to feel a little less scary. And obviously it's not a hard dichotomy, but maybe they keep getting even more optimistic, maybe they start leaning idealistic in some regards, too.
I fully agree that full misanthropy is ultimately a very immature attitude, regardless of anyone's actual age. Just, while some people will have a vivid wake-up call, others will need to work on it gradually, so I wanted to offer advice to them on how to do that. Start with hope. Out of exhaustion or even sheer spite if that's what it takes.
If morale wasn't important or powerful, there wouldn't be multi-billion dollar industries dedicated to trying to crush it. Don't let them win.
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