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Sep 27, 2011, 08:38 AM
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When Bitterness Is Bad For You
Don't stop parroting Daily Show host Jon Stewart just yet, but a cynical outlook really can take years off of your life. Thanks to their nihilistic bent, cynics tend to engage in more self-destructive behaviors than their sunnier peers. Research has shown that they smoke and drink more, and are more likely to commit suicide.
Cynics also suffer and die from heart problems in disproportionate numbers. Cardiologist Donald Haas at New York's Mount Sinai Medical School found that suspicious people who suffer from heart disease are more than twice as likely as their more optimistic counterparts to end up gravely ill or hospitalized for their condition. Haas speculates that cynics may be less likely to follow doctors' orders—either out of spite or despondency. http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/20376
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What cynicism means today, and why cynics need a sanctuary.
Telling the truth can get you into hot water. As much as the world needs its cynics, it still doesn't REALIZE that it needs them. Cynics today are habitually castigated by politicians, corporate chieftains and other productive citizens with tidy lawns; they know that we're on to them, so they lump us with the lowest of the low. We're generally cast as the heavies in the black hats, counterproductive miscreants who broil babies when we're not spray-painting obscenities on public monuments. We're portrayed as masters of chicanery and intrigue, untrusting and untrustworthy. Since we're neither leaders nor followers, we're expected to get out of the way -- and the tidy-lawn folks get furious when we don't. Nobody loves a cynic, except maybe another cynic.
Even the dictionary definition of a cynic makes us look like scoundrels: "a faultfinding captious critic; esp. one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest."
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http://www.i-cynic.com/whatis.asp
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