frelkins—that might have been true of the original Cynical movement in antiquity, but that’s not what the word means now, surely. Though perhaps even the common cynic has some trace of that will to live truthfully and that boredom with considerations of life, death, and happiness.
When I wrote my comment yesterday, this post seemed to be an idealist’s gambit, designed to attenuate the impact of cynicism by associating it with status-seeking rather than with truth, and I wanted to produce an emphatic reminder of the reality of everything bad in life. Even as I wrote it, I knew I was deviating from cautious empiricism into aphoristic intuition, and was therefore at risk of producing propaganda rather than truth. Today I cannot be bothered trying to assess how true it is, but in the spirit of something-or-other, I thought I would at least note these psychological facts.
frelkins—that might have been true of the original Cynical movement in antiquity, but that’s not what the word means now, surely. Though perhaps even the common cynic has some trace of that will to live truthfully and that boredom with considerations of life, death, and happiness.
When I wrote my comment yesterday, this post seemed to be an idealist’s gambit, designed to attenuate the impact of cynicism by associating it with status-seeking rather than with truth, and I wanted to produce an emphatic reminder of the reality of everything bad in life. Even as I wrote it, I knew I was deviating from cautious empiricism into aphoristic intuition, and was therefore at risk of producing propaganda rather than truth. Today I cannot be bothered trying to assess how true it is, but in the spirit of something-or-other, I thought I would at least note these psychological facts.