In Moscow, many people have grown cynical about the money evaporating in their pockets. Klein is simultaneously not only cynical about political leaders, but dismissive of them.
Death, to do him justice, he had met with none of the cowardice he had vaunted, and consistently with his arid cynical soul. There was a quiet, cynical smile on his face as he sat there beating a tattoo on his leggings with a hickory twig. That gratitude is the expectation of favors to come was, in the case of Aristide, a cynical and inapplicable proposition.
Something seemed to puzzle him, for he was frowning, but by and by the old cynical smile came back. His smile was cynical , and suggested a kind of contemptuous pity for the person to whom he spoke. The fact of our death, the frustration of our desires, the unintended consequences of our actions, the tweets of our political leaders, any or all of these could lead us to either nihilism or pessimism.
However, where these two roads diverge is over the question of whether we dwell on our despair or hide from it. To be with a pessimist is to know that you are with a pessimist. But you can be with a nihilist and have no idea.
Indeed you could yourself be a nihilist and have no idea. Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it. ALVY He moves up the sidewalk to a young trendy-looking couple, arms wrapped around each other : You-you look like a really happy couple.
Uh, uh … are you? ALVY: Yeah! So … h-h-how do you account for it? ALVY: I see. What is most illuminating about this scene is that it shows how a pessimist can reveal the identity of a nihilist, just as it might be argued that the pessimism of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer helped reveal to Nietzsche his own nihilism.
Before they are confronted by Alvy, they are just a happily shallow and happily empty couple. However, when he asks them to explain their happiness, they are no longer shallow and empty; they are instead forced to awaken from their reverie and to become self-aware. It is not that they are happy that reveals their nihilism; rather it is their attempt to explain to a pessimist why they are happy that reveals their nihilism.
On the surface, they are soul mates who have found each other. But surface is all that they are. The attempt to go any deeper reveals that there is nothing deeper. If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism.
To see the glass as half full is to think that we should be happy with what we have rather than focusing on what is missing. But being happy with what we have can also be a way of remaining complacent, of ignoring what is missing so as to avoid having to seek change. Similarly, to believe that everything will work out in the end, that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, is to believe that life is teleological, that there is some goal or purpose — whether God or Justice — operating invisibly behind what we experience.
It is by believing in the existence of superhuman goals and superhuman purposes that we lose sight of human goals and human purposes. Likewise, when we elevate someone like Martin Luther King Jr. If optimism leads us to be complacent, leads us to wait for something good to happen, or for someone else to make something good happen, then optimism leads us to do nothing.
In other words, it is not pessimism but optimism that is similar to nihilism. Today, a cynic is similarly someone who looks down on society and sees it as fake, though not because the cynic sees society as unnatural, but because the cynic sees the people who make up society as fake. To be cynical is to assume the worst of people, to think that morality is mere pretense, and to suppose that even when people seem to be helping others they are really only trying to help themselves.
Believing in only self-interest, the cynic appears to others to believe in nothing. What is the meaning of cynicism? What is the meaning of cynical person? How do I stop feeling cynical? How do you deal with a cynical person? What is the difference between stoicism and cynicism? What is a cynical optimist? What means pessimistic? What is a pessimistic attitude? Each person views life and the world differently.
While most people see life as a gift and the world as a wonderful place where everyone can grow and develop, some look at them in a negative way. There are two terms which are used to describe these negative beliefs, pessimism and cynicism. Pessimism is the state of mind wherein a person has the tendency to look at life negatively.
People who possess it always stress the negative or the most unfavorable factors in all things, believing that there is more bad than good in life. It affects every aspect of life, and people sometimes view it as something that will happen ultimately. Viewing life negatively will make an individual feel that everything will only get worse instead of getting better in time. It is characterized by despondency feeling depressed and hopeless , glumness feeling moody and dismal , dejection having low spirits , and despair feeling defeated and a sense of futility.
It views others as having questionable reasons for doing things and that they do them with only self-interest in mind. Cynicism does not believe in the sincerity of others.
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