Words tend to change meaning over time. That’s natural enough. Societies move on and grow and old words apply to new scenarios. Words can also be subtly manipulated outside of the natural evolution of language, manipulated to sway public perception in a particular direction that benefits the manipulator.
I was old enough in the 80’s to be aware of the change in public perception as Reagan and the 104th Congress began to modify the nation to their image. The movie catch phrase “Greed Is Good” was more than a line in a script. It was a mantra for the age. The idea that somehow acquiring wealth and power was good for the nation took hold and a lot of people bought in. The idea was certainly attractive. Because by definition the word “greed” is a negative thing, but it had been manipulated purposefully so that people confused “ambition” with “greed”. Whereas ambition is a motivation to strive toward excellence to better one’s self, greed is the ultimate extension of ambition when the point of striving becomes solely acquisition and power and no longer finds satisfaction in excellence. In fact, the idea of excellence disappears and the means to the end of acquisition fall to the lowest common denominator of human endeavor. Any activity that produces wealth, at whatever cost to integrity or humanity or decency, becomes an end in itself. That is why greed is inherently evil.
In the 80’s and after, I began to see words that once held a place of honor becoming vilified and recast as “lame” or “loser”. Courtesy became being a sucker. Community, compassion, sacrifice, integrity, honor, all words that once decorated the life of a person of quality and admiration became signs of a loser. The entire vision of what constituted a good person was stood on its head, and for a very clear purpose. The diminishing of the value of those words, those human qualities, opened the door to the exercise of greed and corruption and oppression without the likelihood of recrimination from the general public. It was business as usual. The mindless decision by the Supreme Court that corporations are functionally humans sealed that deal. No longer were human faces responsible for despicable acts, it was the corporations doing their job….their only job…of generating profits. Even though we know humans make up the working organs of the corporation, the faceless corporation became the focus, and corporations in this nation are accorded privileges that flesh and blood humans are not. So they have it both ways: the rights of a human and the legal protections of a corporation. A sweet deal indeed.
As the seemingly invulnerable politicians and corporations began to be publicly exposed as corrupt and disconnected from real society, the opportunity to implement another powerful tool of manipulation came into play. As ambition turns to greed, and perseverance turns to stubbornness, and assertiveness turns to bullying, and pride of accomplishment devolves to hubris, so healthy skepticism is easily turned to cynicism. Cynicism is easy, effortless, and satisfying. It is probably the ultimate cop out from the effort of being an involved human being. If the scenario is that all politicians are self-serving and corrupt, then every time a politician is shown to be corrupt it validates the easy assumption and can be extended to all politicians. No attempt needs to be made to weigh all politicians on the same scale, since the public perception has been reinforced to accept that all politicians are corrupt. If the scenario is that all pastors are greedy or hypocritical or pedophiles, then every time a person who is a pastor is exposed as one of those criteria, then by extension all pastors are tarred with that brush. No attempt is ever made to drag the cynic around to thousands of churches or missions to weigh those individuals, who dedicate their lives to bettering and lifting the lives of people in despair, by the self-righteous scale. And sadly it seems that as our society deteriorates, a cynic will be right more often than not since only the scandalous and flamboyantly despicable among those groups appears in our news media.
So cynicism is easy to foster in a society if one owns the news outlets and recognizes the rules of propaganda. A huge, outrageous lie will be more readily believed than a more modest lie. Anything repeated often enough from enough sources consistently will become accepted fact, however distorted or outright false it may be. Cry “scandal” enough times over years and the concept of scandal can be attached to an individual with little or no validity what so ever. And no proof or supporting evidence is necessary. Accuse your enemy of doing exactly that evil thing that you are doing and insulate yourself from accusations that you are doing it.
Cynicism is an extremely effective political tool because it rots the core of the qualities that most threaten the machinations of evil. Idealism and hope are the catalysts of change that threaten the carefully constructed comfortable nests of the parasites of society. Idealism leads to vision as people seek to construct a model of the world as it could be. Vision can be infectious, leading groups of people to work to put into effect the pieces of the vision into a working reality for a better world. Hope is the strength that sustains those visionaries through the difficulties and setbacks that will face any movement of change, whether natural obstacles or artificial walls set in place by the forces of status quo that resist the threat of change. The injection of cynicism into an entire generation can effectively darken the vision and drain the hope that might lead to change in a society, as movements sustained by vision and hope are a force that will not be denied. Rightful anger and outrage at injustices can be effectively emasculated by cynical abandonment.
Political cynicism has been very effectively put in place in the United States today and it is not by accident. The many movements supporting particular facets of injustice in our society are easily isolated from each other and kept fragmented, while public cynicism and disinformation keep the movements from gathering the critical mass to make a significant impact on the resistance of the parasitic power structure. The greatest fear and most effective threat against the stratified and fortified elitist status quo is a unified critical mass of citizens aware of the bonds tightening around them and demanding the rights they have by citizenship in this nation.
Change always comes from the bottom up. Leaders of movements emerge from the movement and rarely, if ever, generate a movement. The growing, critical mass of outrage and awareness must exist and ferment in the darkness until a trigger sets it loose. The time and the nature of the trigger are impossible to anticipate and even harder to manipulate. This is a force of nature. Or perhaps a force of “human” nature that is irresistible when it is unleashed, when pushed and compressed into ever tightening corners, an energy that is impossible to contain and difficult to direct in positive directions. This is a recurring theme of history, open for all to see. Yet it continues to be recast and played out time and again, as if the corruption of wealth and power always blind the powerful to the obvious. No, this time will not be different. No, your subtle plans and careful fortifications will not hold and you will be destroyed again. Cynicism will not bind the People forever. Even today with global climate change disaster on the horizon and global permanent war conditions keeping people afraid, the tide is inevitable, and it will turn.