https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ONi8j0S_gmU
What I’m covering today is Socrates and his skeptical cynicism. So I’m going to go over why this is important to understand, what it might mean both for Socrates and for your own thought and how to spot this. Let’s first start with an idea of why Socrates and what cynicism or being cynical means and what skepticism means. So Socrates seems to be the historical figure. If he was a real person, we actually don’t know by the way, it could just be Plato’s imagination. It seems unlikely, but you never know. He’s the one that everyone points to as the great questioner. You know, oh, I know, I know nothing, right? Which I believe when he says that he’s being sincere. And there’s a reason for that. And it’s right in the definitions of these words. So let’s go over some definitions. Cynical is believing that people are motivated by pure purely by self-interest, right? It’s just pure self-interest all the way down. And that makes you distrustful of human sincerity or integrity. So sincerity and integrity are pretty important values, I would say. And if you’re distrustful of them, there’s trust, there’s another sort of value that they could be a problem if you’re going to talk to people, if you’re going to communicate with them. And that’s sort of like the top definition, at least on Miriam Webster. And you know, the other definition is concerned only with one’s own interest and typically disregarding accepted or appropriate standards in order to achieve them. What does that mean? I mean, on the one hand, these are these are two sides, right? On the one hand, one of them is your belief with respect to the statements of others. And the other one is all about your belief in relation to yourself. So believing that people are motivated by self-interest, that’s your relationship with them, right? And then being concerned only with your own interests is totally different because you’re ignoring them. So your approach to them, on the one hand, and their perceived approach to you, on the other hand. So it’s the difference between ignoring somebody, right, outright and never talking to them and listening to them, but not believing them. That’s very important. You don’t you don’t want to be cynical. And skeptical is interesting, too, because it has the same interesting property, right? So definition number one is not easily easily convinced, having doubts or reservations. Fair enough. So something’s happening to you, right? It’s coming from the outside. And then, you know, you’re you’re resistant to it, right? You’re rebelling against it. And any other definition is relating to the theory that knowledge is impossible. Well, that sounds like it came from Socrates. I know that I know nothing. Well, if you if you’re dealing with Socrates, I would say, yeah, you it’s going to seem like you know nothing. Why? Because that’s his whole attitude. His whole attitude is to break down what you think you know. So it’s not like when he says, I know, I know nothing. He doesn’t believe it. He acts that out. He acts that out. He goes to other people, lets them make a statement, an axiomatic state, and then he cuts it down. And look, I mean, I’m a relatively big fan of Socrates. Socratic math is very powerful, right? But also, any three year old can do it. It’s really just ask why until you run out of questions. I don’t think that’s actually an unfair way to think about Socrates. So what are the signs of this skepticism and this cynicism and this skeptical cynicism that sort of come together? Well, I think they’re first of all, arrogance. You’re not being moved by the world in either case, right? At least along some axis. And the two tend to go together for reasons which will which will become clear, I think. The question is, does the skeptical cynicism cause the arrogance or does the arrogance cause the skeptical cynicism? I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. To make you a worse person, just just in case that wasn’t clear. That’s not to say there aren’t advantages to not being easily convinced or too easily convinced. There are, of course. But the question about your openness to new ideas, because ultimately it’s not just about people, it’s also about your own ideas, because to you, part of you is a separate entity, a person. You see this in personality theory, in psychology. You see this in internal family systems, right, which is another psychological tool that you can use. So the arrogance prevents, right, and is also encouraged by this skeptical cynicism. But it prevents you from being open, right? It prevents you from understanding that, you know, maybe people are just being nice. Maybe businesses give you coupons not to make money, but to cooperate with you. Maybe these things happen. Oh, it certainly seems that way to me. The world’s a better place when you look at it that way. You know, maybe when people don’t cooperate with you, it’s not about them or you. They’re just not able to. They’re sincere, but incapable. And maybe most people are incompetent, and that’s what you’re seeing and reading as a negative. Being skeptical and cynical about incompetence just means that you see evil people everywhere. But most people are just unable to do the things they want to do and say they can do and say they’ve done. Like most resumes are just full of lies. I was at an interview years ago, and you know, I had some obscure technology on my resume that nobody knows about, by the way, and I worked with it at some banks years ago. And they were like, well, you know, not that we don’t believe you, but can you explain token ring? And I did this, you know, two minute explanation of token ring, which, you know, with technical stuff, you should be aware. You can ask me while I’m distracted and I can give you a pretty good answer. So I gave this guy an answer, token ring anyway. That was the best brief explanation of token ring I’ve ever heard. And I was like, oh, thank you. Uh huh. Yeah, I know what I’m doing. That’s why it’s on my resume. But that can easily turn into arrogance. In this case, it didn’t. You just asked the question. And when he got an answer, he was grateful. And he was kind in his critique. And that’s part of what skeptical cynicism causes you to be, is not kind in your critiques. And you should always be acknowledging the good things along with the bad things. It’s a big thing that’s missing nowadays. So another thing that’s going to happen is narcissism and narcissism and arrogance are hard to tease apart. But, you know, the skeptical cynicism or skepticism or cynicism is going to lead to this narcissism because you’re insulating yourself against the outside world, right? While at the same time, you’re insulating yourself against internal change. It’s right in the word definitions. I don’t think the word definitions are actually incorrect. The fact that they have these two sides, this inside and this outside, this place where what you’re believing about the outside world and what you believe about the things that come at you from the outside world. Right. So if you approach people with a cynical, a cynical attitude of mind, that can be a problem. Right. If everything that comes at you, even when it’s will say not valence. So in other words, if you get hit by a baseball and you’re cynical or skeptical, you’re like, oh, this happened, you know, because somebody’s did this to me. It’s like, well, maybe not. Maybe it just kind of happened. Whereas if you approach somebody, that’s different. Now you’re in an adversarial relationship. So there’s an inside and outside aspect. It’s very dangerous. So that that feeds the narcissism. And it really also causes an insufficiency. That’s another sort of sign of this is this insufficiency because the insufficiency is there. You are insufficient for so many things in this world. I couldn’t possibly think to list them all. Right. And it’s okay because we all are. We all have that, that, that in common. Right. This is one of those human universals for sure. It’s okay because you can team up with people and get sufficient sufficiency right through that. It’s part of the distributed cognition. Right. This is part of being in a culture. It’s the advantage of being a society. It’s the advantage of having a culture that you’re born into. Right. So this insufficiency need not cripple you, but it will if your attitude towards everything is skeptical and cynical. Right. It’s going to lead to that insufficiency. The other thing that happens is it causes a form of projection. It’s right in this dual nature. Right. You’re caught up not just in your aspect to the outside world and how you think other people are approaching things, but also how you think things happen. So there’s a deliberate aspect. I’m going to talk to somebody. I’m going to be cynical and skeptical about what they’re saying or what they’re going to say. Or you don’t have to do that. You could say, oh, I’m going to seek and see what they know or what they don’t know. Because it’s OK if you’re not getting positive information out of somebody. Right. You’re not learning something. It may be that you can teach them something. And teaching people things is wonderful. So that’s great. You know. Which is different from agreement. Right. You’d also be like, oh, this person is smart. I’m just going to believe what they tell me. Because that happens. Sometimes that’s the right thing. But there is that middle state. It’s not a dualism. You don’t have to be stuck in the dualism. You can take that third route of seeking. You can be a seeker. It’s very much an Eastern spiritual thought, too, which I find weird. All these Western Buddhists kind of ignore the seeking aspect of Eastern Buddhism. It’s one of the hallmarks of Western Buddhism is that they ignore that. I’ll probably have to do a video on that someday. So this also affects the structure of our thought. So skepticism and cynicism because of this internal nature where we’re anticipating things that are coming at us. Right. So again, it’s one thing if you’re approaching people as if the information they’re giving you is suspect or untrustworthy or, you know, not to not to be taken at face value. That’s one thing. It’s another thing if all of the information that comes to you, because some of the information comes to you comes from inside you and you don’t realize it. And some of the information that comes to you comes to you from nature. Nature doesn’t know or care about you, by the way. Sorry, it just doesn’t. If you approach that with cynicism and skepticism, now you’re assigning agency with a valence to the world. Very dangerous because you’re definitely going to end up in this closed world system. So it forms the structure of your thought, informs your thought. Now your thought structure is now fundamentally negative. So in your head, you’ve got this closed system where you’re preferring the current answers to things. You don’t want new information. New information is painful. You’ve got to re-intrigue all the other information around it potentially. You’ve made a box from which nothing can escape. And so the goodness of yourself, your feelings, your sadness, whatever, can’t get out to other people. So even if there were such a thing as proper empathy, it couldn’t be applied. And this is, of course, a block to intimacy. See my videos on the intimacy crisis? I’ll link one of them here. The other one’s on the channel. The skeptical cynicism blocks intimacy. It doesn’t block you from kind of cooperating with people, but it blocks intimacy. And nothing can get in that box because you’re skeptical. And you know, maybe not nothing, but it’s hard to get things in that box, right? Where you’re getting people to the point where you’re giving them a piece of information that would be helpful to them if they could just receive it. And then you’re trapped getting the right information and not being able to hear the message. And you see that all the time with people, right? This is the whole, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Show people the water. Here’s the thing that will, you know, take care of your thirst and then just don’t drink it. And that’s where you get into eyes to see and ears to hear and all that. And you get into modes of thought where you prefer formulations in your thought. And so when people give you different formulations, you can’t make the connections anymore because you’re cynical and skeptical. And so you’re preferring your own thought patterns and you’re not really seeing a broader picture in some cases, or you’re not seeing an obvious connection because it’s not obvious to you. And fair enough that we all have that, that blind spot. But this is what the skeptical cynicism leads to. This is what the Socratic method leads to. Not saying ditch the Socratic method. I’m seeing it has to be placed healthily within a larger frame. It can’t be the big frame, right? If Socrates is your Jesus, you’re going to end up a skeptical cynic and it’s not going to be good for you. And it’s not going to be good for anyone else because you’re going to destroy your own ability to have a quality relationship with other people. Right? That’s intimacy. You’re going to destroy your ability to engage with people at a level of honesty that allows them to know you so that they can help you better and allows them to help you better, not just through propositions. But look, I mean, if you’re skeptical and cynical and somebody comes up and tries to hug you, you’re going to back away. Why? Well, because, you know, and maybe it’s due to trauma, right? Maybe somebody betrayed you and now you’re like, oh, I don’t want a close connection with anybody because somebody betrayed you. Right? And that is inevitable. So you have a conflict there and skeptical cynicism can actually lead to that pretty easily. It may take years, may take days, who knows? But that’s a big problem. So that’s the problem of Socrates and skeptical cynicism. Socrates alone only teaches us skepticism and cynicism. He breaks down knowledge and makes it unimportant. Now I’m actually a big fan of knowledge is not the highest value. I did a video on that. So if you want an exemplification of that, please watch the knowledge is the highest value video because it doesn’t just exemplify that exemplifies politics is the highest value and the difference between them in the same frame with the same facts. And I’m going to do more of that. There’s some framing videos to that that talk about some of this. When your frame is closed off by skepticism and cynicism, even just a little bit, that grows over time because it changes the way you think. And now you’re not open to new ideas. You’re not even open to your own thoughts, feelings and emotions anymore. You will get reciprocally narrowed, narrower and narrower and narrower on your own self. The solipsism is going to happen and that solipsism is going to narrow you more and more and more. The world is going to be harder to cooperate with. And that’s not good for you. And it’s not good for everyone else. So I hope that clears up sort of my concept around skeptical cynicism, why Socrates is dangerous and good for him. He drank the hemlock. Good for him. He broke down knowledge. Good for him. He showed you good ways to be skeptical. But I don’t think the cynicism is warranted at all. And I think that you have to be careful when you employ these things. And if that’s all you’ve got, what you have is going to destroy you and it’s going to destroy the people around you. And maybe they’ll be smart and get out, but that won’t make it better for you. So yeah, just something to keep in mind. So I hope you found this helpful. And I’m glad that you’re watching. And I’m not skeptical or cynical about, we’ll say the fact that I don’t have 8 billion followers or the fact that I don’t have over a thousand views yet on any of my videos because I’m always just grateful for the thing I think is the most valuable in the world, which is your time and attention.