Cyril the Cynic Crashes the Optimist Convention

"We welcome you all to the Optimist Convention. We hope everything goes well... I mean... Of course we do!" Sam, an older woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and large, gold-rimmed bifocals, addressed the crowd with her trademark smile, which (like all optimists' smiles) was more world-weary and wounded than it let on.

The crowd applauded and everyone looked around in the large gym for others they could talk to. Surely the people would all be fun to meet and pleasant - perhaps they would even offer unheard-of opportunities, both social and professional! You might even meet that special someone you'd been dreaming of! Maybe someone would have an extra blender you could buy at a heavy discount! It was a networking event, after all, and it seemed full of promise to all in attendance.

Well, not all in attendance. Cyril the Cynic complained about the loudness of the gym, the required tags and lanyards bearing names, and the lacking refreshments. Cyril wandered about the Optimist Convention and saw self-interested people of every shape and size, of every grift and grind.

"Hey," Cyril said as he tapped his first 'mark' on the shoulder, "Hey, what's your scam? What's your angle?"


"Gee, Cyril," the man with 'James' on his shirt would say, "I just wanted to have a good time with other people that looked on the bright side of life, for a change!"

"Are you looking for a job?"

"No."

"An employee, then?"

"No."

"Then what are you in it for?"

"Well, I'm really lonely, was hoping to find a girl or, you know, even a friend. No one I know really gets me."

"Maybe you're just unlikable, James. Maybe people accurately gauge that you're not capable of emotionally fulfilling them, etc." Cyril said, the devious gears in his head working.

"Maybe, Cyril. But I like to think I just haven't found the right situation."

"What are you looking for in a friend, James?"

"Well, I guess someone that will listen to my problems, someone that I can turn to when I want to go out to dinner and don't want to go alone, someone that can inject a voice of reason without being so damn cynical."

"Well, James, it sounds like you're only looking for someone that is going to help you. No one wants to hang out with someone that isn't going to reciprocate. Your ideal situation is almost exploitative and abusive, though to a much lesser extent. It's about you and not about the group, etc. You'll die alone if you can't change, and I was able to tell that at a moment's glance."

"Wow, thanks, Cyril, those are some good points!"

"On the real, James, most people are like you and are shamelessly self-interested, so you have to create a social strategy that is based primarily in serving others in order to serve your own needs. Law of the jungle... thin line between civilization and anarchy and all that. You're doomed."

"Wow, Cyril. I'll definitely have some thinking to do. But you're absolutely right. Very wise for your age. I'm so glad you're an optimist. This has been even more productive a conversation than this optimist could have hoped for. Thank you."

"YOU IDIOT, I WAS CYRIL THE CYNIC ALL ALONG."

"Cyril, are you alright?"

"NO, I'M NOT ALRIGHT, JAMES. YOU SHOULDN'T BE HAPPY ABOUT THE PROSPECT OF DYING ALONE, WHICH IS YOUR PRESENT TRAJECTORY. WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? YOU OPTIMISTS MAKE ME SICK."

"Cyril, ol buddy, Earth to Cyril! Heh."

"HAHA, GOOD LUCK FINDING MORE THAN SOCIAL BREAD CRUMBS WITH THAT NAIVETE, JAMES!"

"Gee, thanks. I'll try my best!"

"AHHHH"

Cyril had made his point. In the world was every manner of mental anguish, the prospect of unhappiness, poverty, coldness, loss, and humiliation. And that was if you survived. And in death, who knew what might lie beyond the sun: what tortures, what servitude, what awful second lives might await us in the great hereafter! And that, again, was only supposing there was something at all more than oblivion. Total non-existence would be far more likely, even (no, Cyril added, especially) for the cock-eyed optimists like James.

Walking across the room, Cyril devised a still more cynical theory - that this convention was held for economic reasons through and through. So that was rich: a convention for optimism existed to stave off the worst that could happen, through jobs and relationships sought (which are not precisely falling in one's lap if one has to go to a convention and meet as many people as possible to net them!), So not only are each of the people in attendance here for their own cynical reasons, but even the sum of those reasons is trumped by the cosmic cynicism of holding a convention at all!

The next one Cyril tapped on the shoulder was Sam, the ostensible czar of this convention. Cyril quickly laid out this paradox while trading greetings and pleasantries with Sam.

"Don't you think that's disgusting, Sam? The whole convention is itself a sham and a mockery of optimism," Cyril said, with a devious smirk.

"Something tells me you're not so upset about this, Cyril. Tell me, are you a pessimist by any chance?"

"Getting warmer..."

"Are you... a CYNIC, Cyril?"

"Yes. I am, Sam. Haha."

"Can you tell me why you're here, then?"

"Because it's funny to put a bunch of optimists in their place! It's hilarious. I've come here for the last 5 years just to do that, and every year it's been great. Since I was 15..."

Sam adjusted her wry glasses and said, "Cyril, I don't think you're being totally honest. If you were really cynical, you wouldn't give 'joy' and 'humor' as your primary reasons for driving out here in what I'll admit is an inconvenient location."

"But... it's joy and humor at the expense of others, it's sadistic!"

"I saw you talking to James, Cyril. Half the room did, if you couldn't tell!"

"Yeah, so what? It was funny to watch him twist in the wind as he tried to justify himself."

"You gave him constructive advice after listening to his problems, Cyril. You gave him a much-needed perspective on his loneliness. For someone that enjoys the suffering of others, you may have done the nicest thing for that guy that anyone has in years."

"I was mocking him, Sam."

"Sure you were, Cyril. Sure you were. Why do optimists bug you, anyway?"

"Uh... because you guys don't understand human motivation? Life is a dark tale of climbing in and out of slime and necessity, and optimism is merely a privileged perch for people whose particular eras of slime haven't caught up to them yet. But it will. It has to, Sam. It's the nature of things, and their ignorance is endlessly funny to me."

"Fair enough. Okay, I can see how you'd find that funny, I guess. One more question... So, let's recap. Everyone here is here for cynical reasons that they're hiding from themselves, and the convention itself is a cynical economic and social convention held essentially for gains by all involved to stave off the impending creep of death and destitution, right?"

"Yeah, I'm surprised you got that all right, Sam."

"Well, I'm no stranger to that feeling myself. Even if it is just a feeling for me."

"Okay, so what's your question?"

"If that's the case... isn't everyone here really already a cynic in practice, Cyril? Like, if they're acting identically to cynical people, here to satisfy their needs and the needs of those they meet, trying to maximize their gains, aren't they effectively acting cynical?"

"Uh... yeah, Sam. That's the whole paradox. Duh."

"Well then, how are they any different from you?"

"...Good question." Cyril paused for a good half-minute as he thought this through before smiling, "Well, for one, I'm actually aware of my needs and my depression and my motivations, and I'm perceptive of these things in others. Unlike your friends at this convention, I don't pretend like I'm always going to find the right breaks, that I'm always going to be able to cobble together a bridge across that horrifying void."

"So you're at a convention and the only thing you want to do is to laugh at those that are less aware and perceptive? That's your cynical motivation?"

"Exactly."

"Then... unlike these people who are looking for jobs to feed their families and relationships to warm their nights, you're looking for transient mirth in a feeling of superiority? That's all you get out of it?"

"Well, it's deeper than that, Sam. I see mistakes I can avoid, traps of reasoning that people use shamelessly to avoid addressing their actual problems, and how cynical motivations can dress themselves up in optimistic fronts. I feel like I learn from this convention a dark part of the human spirit, the part that tricks itself into hoping for an eternity of pleasantness that this life can never offer them. And then it's over for them."

"But... it's over for you at some point, too, right? You're going to die, too."

"Obviously, Sam."

"So, Cyril, if you're so darn aware and perceptive of what goes beyond, why not spend as much time, effort, and thought as you're capable of into setting the stage to end this life exactly on the terms that you want to, pushing back against the doom and making a life worth living, even if it's remembered by no one, sends you to hell or non-existence, and never lives up to your expectations? Why even debase yourself with this convention? Why waste your time?"

"Because it doesn't make any difference how I live. It's all the same."

"And that's where we differ, I think. Because for me, of course it makes a difference. There's a difference between, say, a world with basic human rights and one without. There's a difference between a movie I love and one that I only sorta like. There's a difference between a life well-spent and a life wasted on banality, Cyril."

"But it ends."

"Of course it ends. But so does "Songs in the Key of Life". That doesn't mean I'd as well have on some pop bullshit, Cyril. It matters how you live even if it's only your pleasure and your truth and your justice that you serve, even if it's erased immediately by your successors, even if this whole world ends, even if we're sent to hell. It matters because it does, and taking that on faith does not make someone naive, Cyril."

"It doesn't feel different to me, though. I sorta think people aren't ever really happy, whether they make it to old age and financial security or not, whether their 'rights' were respected or not. They find reasons to be unhappy. They feel unhappy whether they've done something great or terrible. And it doesn't seem like the differences are great. Just because you guys put a nice Christmastime spin on it doesn't fix the basic problem of unhappiness."

"But we're not optimists because we're happy all the time, Cyril. Every day of our lives we go through the day not always feeling great, but remembering those moments of pleasure - that 20 we found in our coat, that chance meeting with an old friend, that evening at a restaurant where we met a new friend, that convention, even. Surely something has made you happy in your life, maybe not for long, but maybe you can find something that makes you happy longer and puts you into the right position to live a better life. Until it ends, of course. But it was going to happen anyway."

"Sam, I don't know what to say... You have a point, don't get me wrong. I think I'm still a cynic, though, through and through. Maybe it's just my nature, but it's hard to see anything you say as anything but self-serving. Like you're cleverly decorating your deception with a self-serving tautology. It matters because it matters. Right..."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that."

"...but whatever, I think I can apply it a bit to my own life. And the first step is convincing one of these idiots on the floor to hire me so they can stop making such stupid decisions based on their terrible understandings of human motivation, etc.. Sam, I'm going to come here every year and every year I will terrorize your happiest convention-goers and show them the error of their ways."

"I look forward to it, Cyril," Sam said with a smile.

"If you're even alive next year, that is!" Cyril the Cynic smirked, tapped her on the shoulder and conventioned the hell out of that year's convention.