Yes, I should have said that I’m assuming that public speech is idealistic. I guess “high motives” really means motives praised by public speech, not ones claimed to be common. And I think there have been societies that are cynical by that standard. So there is a factual question of whether there was an actual and/or perceived correlation in such societies.
Yes, deceit complicates things. My belief about current society is that optimism and idealism are socially accepted and pessimism and cynicism are correlated because they are signs of defiance of convention. This doesn’t depend on the words meaning anything at all, which is easier to analyze than deceit. But I guess it’s a cynical theory, in that I believe the statements of are signals of the low motive of conformity, rather than the high motive of truth. But once we’ve entered into the realm of deceit, who’s to say what motives are high or low?
Yes, I should have said that I’m assuming that public speech is idealistic. I guess “high motives” really means motives praised by public speech, not ones claimed to be common. And I think there have been societies that are cynical by that standard. So there is a factual question of whether there was an actual and/or perceived correlation in such societies.
Yes, deceit complicates things. My belief about current society is that optimism and idealism are socially accepted and pessimism and cynicism are correlated because they are signs of defiance of convention. This doesn’t depend on the words meaning anything at all, which is easier to analyze than deceit. But I guess it’s a cynical theory, in that I believe the statements of are signals of the low motive of conformity, rather than the high motive of truth. But once we’ve entered into the realm of deceit, who’s to say what motives are high or low?