Cynicism is no less addictive for those disposed to it than gambling or drugs. Normals are perfectly capable of cynicism that is more damaging than the hard core variation for the reason that, whereas there is but a handful of militant psychopaths, there are many millions who manage to achieve, however inadvertently, far more damage to society than the collected sprees of all the available psychopaths combined.

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Originally Published on OpEdNews

I have never been a big fan of cynicism primarily because bipolar dysfunction renders a person prone to all manner of addictions. For example, the vast majority of especially obnoxious alcoholics are bipolars who haven't been correctly diagnosed and, to be truthful, require to be treated for their underlying condition if they stand better than a ten or fifteen percent chance of success with any alcohol treatment program. Personally, my kryptonite is Bailey's Irish Cream, but for good measure I keep no liquor at home. A smoker who loved every cigarette, I quit smoking only five years ago. Discretion is the better part of mental health as of valor.

Cynicism is no less addictive for those disposed to it -- and for others who come to the state through dejection, rejection or hopelessness -- than gambling or drugs. We've all had experience with someone who habitually complains, bitches or criticizes. Like a kleptomaniac, the lure of undeserved psychic reward, even for trashing or lashing out, can be all but irresistible. Plaintiveness on steroids, cynicism delivers the same comforts and satisfactions as any other addiction. The best parallel is actually "contempt" -- ridicule on steroids. Observable behaviors such as cat-calling, evident derision and overt efforts to maintain distance fall away to be replaced by silent, and frequently unobserved brooding. Contempt, because internalized, rarely offers a calling card. For the same reasons, neither does cynicism.

Suddenly and shockingly, seemingly from nowhere, outrage provokes outward and dangerous behavior. Psychopaths are marked by egregious contempt for whole categories of humanity. However hidden the contempt, they can't avoid it; and because they find it satisfying, they often willfully choose not to avoid it. Psychopaths are, not surprisingly,  every bit as cynical as they are contemning. What induces cynicism can easily become the trigger for a contempt-led outburst of militant behavior. Nothing here is rocket science. A trapped scared dog attacks. Cynicism entraps hope and optimism, replacing them with contempt which, given provocation, lashes out, projected at the source(s) of cynicism. We only learn from experience what to look for, those signs bespeaking the potential for mischief.

Normals are perfectly capable of cynicism of a lesser strain, one that is more damaging than the hard core variation. The reason?--there is but a handful of militant psychopaths, whereas many millions of marginally cynical people manage to achieve, however inadvertently, far more damage to society than the collected sprees of all the psychopaths in our midst.

Much of what we interpret as apathy is actually rooted in cynicism. While apathy adequately describes what is apparent, we are fooled by what is not. Apathy is passive whereas contempt is active, at first mentally, then outwardly. More to the point, apathy is more a matter of not caring, whereas cynicism derives from a sincere caring that, whether or not previously apparent, meets with persistent frustration. Another foil by which we fail to see the real source of damage is the charming and honest visage of scoundrels who hide from view a deep contempt for sorry saps (as they perceive those who would fall for their ruses), whereby their victims are nonplussed to discovery they have been swindled, - la Bernie Madoff. The inveterate members of this troupe are in fact bipolars, already disposed to both contempt and cynicism.

Even the indefatigable isolated scholar is not immune: a law book publisher emails the author of a paper titled "Common Denominators in White Collar Crime". The editor requests reprint permission, adding that the paper is to be included in a collection on the topic of white collar crime, the apparent interest being the demonstration of a bipolar linkage with conduct leading to the named crimes. Once, however, they saw that the author wasn't in the clique of professional lawyers, there was no further contact. A law school journal (focusing on religious elements) contacted the same writer, showing interest in a paper linking concepts of office and stewardship with the teaching of Jesus. Once they, too, discovered the author was not an academic, there was no further contact.

Despite evident merit, scholarship has no commercial marketability and thus no real prayer of exposure except through publishers specializing in it. How can one imagine, once realizing that the only outlet for one's work is a closed shop where independents are clearly off limits, that this is anything but an open invitation to contempt and cynicism that will require considerable moral strength to defend against? When that writer tried to enlist other independents to mass their efforts and lobby for a change, there was not only no interest, but negative interest--cynicism, pure and simple. Not apathy, for it is not laziness but rather frustration and dejection that so dampens prospects of success as to motivate those most able to benefit from a change in policy to reject involvement in effecting that very change.

Republicans privately point to the low moral caliber of urban black males (often also implying intellectual deficiency) who engage in drugs, larceny and all else that mars their families and communities, never willing to be mindful that their own economic policies created the conditions from which frustration and dejection, mediated by contempt and cynicism (but cynicism most of all) prompt all of these negative behaviors. The bastions of moral purity also enjoy denying that bipolar dysfunction typically follows from the kinds of stresses and exposures typifying ghettos and which therefore viciously augments that same cynicism and its results. Thus while a healthy swath of the adult black male population is in prison, authorities continually cite the pervasive incidence of bipolar disorder amongst this population.

Certain types of people are actually indisposed toward cynicism. Decades ago Eric Hoffer aptly referred to them as 'the true believers'. Those able to nourish an all-embracing ideology seem uniquely immune to cynicism. They are too absorbed in 'what is' and 'what can be' to remain subject to whatever frustrates, denies or ignores. In today's terms these are Republicans and those Christian who are also fanatics.

Whereas many liberals are getting more and more cynical -- there is even fear of low voter turnout for 2012 -- Republicans and their uber religious contingent cheerily and reliably man the phones, walk the streets and then vote, down to the last person. You begin to see a few threads interweaving: those who are level-headed but understandably prone to cynicism when society and politics appear unmoved by reason become, are brought into battle lines against an opposition that appears unbeatable because willing to do what no ordinary person with ordinary interests and wherewithal will do without being pressed to the extremity, the same extremity rarely reached because of the reigning cynicism.

Both Presidents Sarkozy of France and Barack Obama promised everything to everybody with high phrases, manicured locutions and studied tones. They were announcing to their respective electorates that they were simply the right people for the job (parties and planks would have little bearing on their governance -- that stuff is old hat). Sarkozy lost reelection because the people acted against the fomenting fear of cynicism lest it devour their values, triggered by the frustration at getting none of those promises delivered. Obama broached some few of his promises but was never happier than when treating industry to perks in return for crumbs (albeit tasty). As more than one Democratic Senator would later acknowledge, Obama got the healthcare legislation he had wanted all along. When you combine that with the steady stream of feigned outrage, and all the warm fuzzies he kept up for the masses, well, we are made to look like what in fact we now are: Dupes. And therein lies a serious cause of endemic liberal cynicism.

This is a cynicism of great potential harm. Republicans will have us turn back the clock, restrict liberties, ignore dignity and foster cowboy capitalism as well as an absence of ethics across the board. Today's Republican Party wants local wealth to rule the roost everywhere. And they are winning. They employ, shamefacedly, bald-faced lies calculated to warm the base with hyperbole that announces how instinctively and unstintingly the candidate cares about what they care about. Works like a charm. How dull-witted must people be to vote for these freaks? But that is still another source of cynicism -- how do you change the minds of those whose minds are officially 'closed'?

An especially wearisome, and equally nefarious, mixture of liberal cynicism and Republican doggedness fosters a positive feedback reemphasizing both cynicism and doggedness, further worsening prospects for change. Mass killings make for manifest liberal cynicism that prevents much of the necessary grassroots massing that Congress requires to do anything of consequence, while Republicans have demonstrated that they can block virtually anything liberals bring to the table, ensuring that bad guys are armed. ll of which would justify the arming of everyone else, and further nourishing cynicism.

In a variation on the same theme, 'at risk' (capable of going haywire) mentally ill persons are not required to be in a program that ensures their fundamental freedoms in return for their ensuring protection of the public in a supervised treatment process. Let me assure you of a sad fact that even some clinicians don't want to face up to: all of the mass killings are effectuated by bipolars. There is a bevy medications available (to treat ups and downs together or separately), and while meds cannot by any means cure this protean condition, they nearly always stabilize mentality so as to prevent the worst possibilities.

Local authorities refuse to create such programs because the Supreme Court is said to deny any attempt. How silly can we be? Do we honestly believe that the Supreme Court sits back and gets a good belly laugh out of mass killings? They will accept any program honestly attempting to assure as many rights as are compatible with public safety, where it is increasingly more and more clear that reality demands medications be taken on a supervised basis for those most in need. Only one thing (outside of cupidity or fear) prevents such policies, and that is cynicism stemming from a desire to ease up on bloodshed, mingled with a realization that guns have to be allowable and that we don't like forcing people on meds. When there are competing frustrations that only compete for attention, both arguing the same result, the mental conflict results in cynicism, which renders otherwise realistic plans dead in the water even as they are tendered.

Iraq and Afghanistan veterans return home, many with scars, to a country unwilling to ease their way, unwilling to assure them at least temporary employment, unwilling to offer to enough businesses the incentives for hiring them, and perhaps worst of all, a public hardly of one mind as to our military commitments. This is a recipe for cynicism. If part of the scaring is mental illness, that only raises the ante for cynicism. When no care is felt for what one does to or for others -- because people by their callousness appear not to deserve the care -- this defines the content of contempt. The next stage finds one doing what is desired rather than what society would prefer. Whether the evident result is adopting drugs, taking up crime, or worse, cynicism has infected these veterans. They and their victims will remind us that cynicism hurts, damages, and kills.

One remedy for cynicism is activity in movements that offer outlets for meaningful work and outward expressions, not to neglect the contempt otherwise bottled up. The Occupy Movement was wonderful for these reasons (amongst obvious others), and I believe the results were wonderfully salutary. Perhaps it was the impending successes benefiting the mental health of the citizenry that spooked authorities to clip them, then smash them. The movement is still yet alive, but barely, and only in a few places. There is internet communication, but that hardly counts as a movement as here described, though such contacts are helpful and I would not want to be thought of as wishing to discourage them.

While these vets remain in the combat zones they avoid the signs of cynicism, but not the tendency to feel contempt for the enemy, which leads invariably to horrible wrongs. Warriors deal with stress by forming strong bonds of camaraderie, as effective in warding off cynicism toward the goals of war as any ideology keeping Republicans free of the cynicism and sleeping soundly despite the harms their ideology presupposes. Soldiers see what they want to see, as do Republicans. Liberals, when they are forced to see reality for what it is, turn increasingly to cynicism.

There are but two remedies for cynicism, both very powerful, but both very difficult to achieve. Strong bonds of attachment, say to the Occupy Movement, are as effective as the bonds formed in combat zones. And why not? Do not the plagues of society create a combat zone so far as stress and exposure to harm are concerned? But of course, and of course the authorities were aware of the fact and pulled out the stops to stop this dangerous movement, for dangerous it was indeed to those in power who understand the wellsprings aback such things. Dictators put a harsh and quick stop to anything that so much as smells of the ilk. But keeping up an Occupy movement is fraught with a thousand little, and a few major, problems, making them difficult to sustain for long enough periods to reap the desired results.

The other remedy entails adopting a stewardship attitude toward our offices, which amounts essentially to a developed sense of responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Stewards are enabled to form an attachment to professional principles no less than soldiers in their camaraderie. Professionalism can and should be a self-sustaining source of pride. What we call stewardship is what Thorstein Veblen referred to as 'workmanship'. The psychology is identical as between them. The pride in doing right by others is an essential ingredient in a civilized society.

But don't be telling that to Republicans, for it is precisely what they do not want to hear. Today's brand of Republicanism reflects a generalized me-me-me impulse, which their ideology places upon a pedestal. Only a self-centered and narcissistic attitude can spawn so many who to this day worship Ayn Rand as a hero. She was no hero. She turned Adam Smith on his head in presuming that self-centered selfishness does everyone good. It does nothing of the kind. She was a vicious fraud, no less venomous than Madoff, and a good bit less charming, if more persuasive for those wishing to play at being a cowboy capitalist, a cowboy ethicist.

Real cowboys were neither of these things as any historian will tell you. Cowboys broke the peace of saloons only for the same reason that the Occupy movement might engender minor vandalism. Only miscreants or those pushed to extremities did then what Republicans of all stripes presume to claim as their god-given rights in today's me-me-me world.

Put simply, Republicans require to grow up, and liberals require to nourish the spirit of stewardship especially in their own dealings, thus illustrating by their own example how an American ought to live and represent herself to family, friends, community, nation and world. The Founding Fathers understood stewardship, but we have come close to losing touch with the idea, absent which we should not be surprised at the degree of current cynicism and the staggeringly awful consequences in its wake.

Authors Bio:
Mr. Herrman is a liberal philosopher specializing in structural metaphysics, where he develops methodologies enabling him to derive valid and verifiable answers not only in matters of the ontology of reality, but also in real-world concerns for everyday people.

Herrman has made contributions in legal, behavioral, sociological and logical theory and is challenging assumptions about the universe in recent work on the metaphysics of number. His publications include The Office and Its Stewardship (VDM 2009) and articles at openDemocracy, The San Francisco Sentinel, and the scholarly directory SSRN (Social Sciences Research Network).