Cynicism is destructive. And it’s turning our society into something we don’t want. But solutions are all around us. We just need to listen to the voices which help us see them.
Listening to podcasts is like research. Most of the time, you get what you expect and it informs your worldview. But then there are these moments of electricity — POP! And you can’t contain the excitement.
Which makes you seem pretty weird wandering around Kroger talking to yourself.
Those moments are a lot like what NPR used to call driveway moments. Only now, I’m in the grocery store or walking by campus or doing the dishes.
And suddenly I’m making connections with something bigger than me.
Here are three podcasts which inspired connections in me. Precisely because they have something bigger to say.
Managed Retreat
In this episode of 99% Invisible, we explore a lighthouse on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This old lighthouse protected ships along one of the most treacherous stretches of water.
Thanks to climate change, the land is disappearing. Eventually, it will take the lighthouse with it.
What follows is a fascinating story about the process of dealing with this reality. And it involves a fascinating proposal — a Managed Retreat. A proposal that they stop shoring up the land and instead move the lighthouse inland.
You have to listen for yourself.
I spent the whole episode thinking about churches and cities and historical preservations. And especially how we refuse to honor a more integrity-rich approach to our communities. Instead, we’re stuck on a simplistic idea of fighting for survival. Even against the unstoppable.
And what wonderful opportunities are lost to this foolishness.
[Re]Launching Rockets
Rob Bell invites his wife, Kristen Bell on to The RobCast to respond to his teaching on parenting. Her job in this episode is to respond to his ideas with evidence from scientific studies to see if he’s right. Spoiler Alert: of course he is.
Listen to “[Re]Launching Rockets.
But what makes this episode into a must listen is that it isn’t just about parenting. It’s about how we interact with everything in the world.
At the 37 minute mark, they enter into a conversation about how we create our reality by evaluating each other. Kristen refers to a study of the effect of positive reinforcement and negative shaming on children’s behaviors and the outcomes are remarkable.
So connect that idea with the world beyond the home and the shallow individualism of our culture for a second and see how this impacts all of us.
The fear and pessimism many parents have over their children creates the dysfunction they develop in life.
Then they get to school and act like the bad kids they’re told they are. Now the school thinks they’re bad. And then they’re community. Before long, these kids are acting out. Forever proof that they must have been bad all along.
Impoverished communities continue to cycle in more poverty as the circumstances fail to change from without or within.
In other words, all these cynical voices of parents, community members, public officials drives the disorder in our communities.
Believing that nobody can be trusted creates untrustworthy people. By belittling our children, we create criminals. And by imposing bad identities on marginalized groups, those who tear down the patches of the poor are the ones maintaining the poverty.
This makes real solutions more obvious than we think.
Back to the Future
One of my favorite shows, On the Media had an interview I listened to three times this week. Adam Fletcher is the co-founder of the Freechild Project and he shares the central role children and youth have played in social movements, from child labor laws to Civil Rights to the current movement around gun control.
Listen to “Back to the Future” from On the Media.
And we can’t talk about youth movements without discussing the extreme hostility toward youth. Not just for speaking up for justice, but in general. The term for this is ephebiphobia, or the fear of youth.
“You have fewer adults than ever before voting to support school levies. You have more adults than ever before voting to support mass incarceration, the prison-school pipeline, and the disproportionate lockup of young people of color. You have more adults than ever before showing less and less interest in the succeeding generations than ever before.
“And…the only logical reason behind that (and it isn’t even logical) is this sense of cynicism and disregard for the generation and absence of concern and well being for the future.
‘“And it’s not necessarily that we have an authentic and real reason to be scared of youth. It’s that we don’t want to see the transfer of power from one generation to the next.”
Fletcher and Brooke Gladstone, co-host of On the Media, explore how the media demeans young people. Especially in the media’s maligning of Generations X and Millennial, how the history of social change is full of youth empowerment, and how the experience of GenXers has inspired us to take on roles as shepherds of youth empowerment.
The Scourge of Cynicism
You should probably listen to the podcasts before this reflection. But you’re old enough to make you’re own decisions.
What’s common among these three podcasts is the central role cynicism plays in modern politics and cultural norms. And really, it’s most explosive effects: distrust, ambivalence, and at it’s worst, cruelty.
In the case of the lighthouse — we don’t see cynicism toward the environment, but toward the process, the leadership, the state. The people display massive amounts of unwarranted distrust with a lack of willingness to engage in a real conversation.
The people aren’t thinking about the future or respecting the dignity of those involved in the present.
Far more striking, however, is the unlikely pairing of the modern cynical ideal: distrust of the government (with powerful) and youth (without power).
And how this most manifests is distrust for the powerful and cruelty toward the powerless.
The pairing of this deep cynicism toward the powerful and the powerless can be found in our approaches to guns (fear of state & mentally ill), economics (animosity toward the state & the poor), race relations (government initiatives & communities of color), and countless others.
Cynicism is Dishonest
The problem with this kind of cynicism is that it disregards both reality and different experiences.
It isn’t exactly pessimism which we can fight with optimism. Or distrust which can be countered with trust. Cynicism is a narcissistic rejection of hope and communal empowerment.
The opposite of cynicism isn’t trust, its intentional engagement.
It’s making the personal part of the bigger story, engaging in the public experiment of getting along with those around us. It’s eschewing the calls for isolation and entrenchment of past ideals which speak no hope to the present.
We must engage with the life and health of our society; not as the cynical Wild West or economic dystopia of division, but the real, true, hopeful world; full of people who love nostalgia and change, both. Truly and honestly.