An interesting thread! It pulls in a lot of loose ends I have been contemplating recently - the ideas of
heroism,
objective truth and
cynicism…
About a week ago, I nearly created a post which I was going to entitle “
Pollyanna and the Cynics”
I have always
hated the film Pollyanna as it portrays somebody who appears to think things are better than they really are. I just watched a
clip and it got me thinking - a lot! Pollyanna is an optimistic heroine, but she finds herself at odds with the dour, glass-half-empty types in the storyline.
On the other hand, If you play the Assassin’s Creed series of games, you pretty quickly notice the cynicism about all beliefs that it promotes in its heroism. The creed of the assassins is “
Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted” which seems to be an excellent distillation of philosophical nihilism.
I am a Brit and sometimes pessimism comes as easily as a drizzling Tuesday morning. Most pessimists I know see themselves as
realists. Few people in the world of conspiracy theory are Pollyanna types, but many are cynics, and their heroes are people who have “seen through” everything
I recently watched an intriguing talk by Dick Keyes from L’Abri on seeing through cynicism. I think the talk provides some interesting intellectual tools to consider the issue of this thread..
…which all leads me to the question, who is more in touch with
reality, Pollyanna or the cynics??