First is cynicism. It is an often maligned and misunderstood word. To put it simply it's a critical mindset and look on life. The kind that does not just accept everything they are being told and make their own decisions and conclusions.
Cynics do not blindly trust social orthodoxy, our teaches or parents, religion or various other things that broader society agrees on. Cynics do not trust anything really. We see many flaws and issues with the dogma, society tries to sell us. Our high intelligence allows us to see it for a lie and a fraud it is.
We are smart, but in our own way. We are not type that would try to win approval of superiors without making sure first they can actually reward us with something meaningful. We are not dumb like puppy dogs.
This is the kind of intelligence that is disliked by certain people. Certain people want to see subordinates simply working for status quo without raising questions or criticizing anything. They want gofers and flatteres to pander to their egos. We are not the type who can be satisfied with such humiliating role.
Various "respected" people in society tell you various good sound things such as work hard or tell the truth. However, how true any of that. Will you really be rewarded for doing all that. It will sure benefit them if you do so, but will it benefit you.
Reality of life is that far not always good guys prevail, hard work rewarded and so on. Just like with that example about "fake explementary" from a humor article. Certain people, favored by establishment get ahead and we are simply fed lies about how they earned it.
They want us to work hard, but they will divert our efforts to themselves and their favorites, and we get nothing out of it. We are too smart to work for nothing and they are angry with that, decrying our cynicism, nihilism, egoism and other such things. They are the real crooks and just angry they could not con us with their mumbo-jumbo. Though many of them are more of unwitting tools of the crooks who are far above pulling the strings.
The state, the school and even your parents all have some designs for you. However far not always these designs benefit you personally. When you flat out refuse to be their tool and be used by them, they get angry and hate you, decrying you for being a waste of their time and effort. Instead, they should blame themselves for being so greedy, selfish and dumb to begin with. Thinking that kids are just dumb tools who will do anything you want unquestionably is dumb and that is why they got burned with that.
More often than not, these so called "respected" people use moral as a tool to fool you into working without being properly rewarded. That is why we are mistrustful to downright hostile to moral.
Too much experience with that kind of unfair dealing is what makes one cynical and mistrustful of people around them and society in general. If you know you can be cheated out of your fair share and will not be given enough, then you will not accept offers easily. You cannot accept vague promises. You need a strong enough proof the deal is real, and rewards will be delivered.
There is other side to this however as well. We are not the type to be disgusted with that on some purity or honesty grounds. If we are the ones who cheat others rather the ones who is being cheated on, then we can get on board of the scheme. Ripping off others for our beenfit is not something we are against.
Once Fedya discovered how Catholic Church use to sell indulgences for the sins, essentially making money off people desire to avoid hell and go to heaven after death. Fedya labelled it "selling tickets to heaven" and for a while pondered who he can do something like that and make money selling tickets to heaven to modern believers. Nothing came out of it of course but you can clearly see where he and we come from. I myself sometimes thought of becoming corrupt priest of the greediest Catholic Church and make some money this way.
There are more examples. Olya tried to make money from Conrad Adenauer Foundation, and I came there with her for that reason once, hoping to get something for myself from that. Tsukasa wanted branded good for cheap and went to DFO, I went with him though did not buy anything as its still more expensive than K-mart. We are smart guys.
On the other hand, there is appeal of true meritocracy that can actually appreciate and reward intelligence and talent such as our own. In theory it's the way where we can do something useful for society while also being rewarded for it.
However, we are not the types who will forgive or forget if we are passed for promotion or being sidelined for benefits for privileges scion. People should not forget about what they owe us.
Cynicism is fundamentally highest form of intelligence. Just like satire it is a reflection of a great intelligence of a person.
However, there is two sides to this coin. If there is a good lucrative opportunity, then we will exploit it for our benefit. However, when there is no good opportunity then we are not stupid enough to do something that does not give us enough.
Our great intelligence allows us to see if there are good opportunities around or not. When there is no good opportunity, it is best to just wait for better days, even Charlie Munger agrees with that. So that is what we do most of the time. Just spend time in wait for a good opportunity. However, that is in the next article, escapism.
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