MIND MOVES:Energetic idealism needed to kick-start change
IT’S EASY to be a cynic, the evidence is stacked on your side. Stories of corruption, stupidity, betrayal and greed have reached epidemic proportions. Sometimes it feels like all of our gods, both the transcendent and the terrestrial, have let us down.
In reality, the key to our downfall is something much less sublime. A reverence for something greater than ourselves has been spoiled by deception in the very system that we trusted to protect and foster our faith; our confidence in the Celtic Tiger has disappeared as the emperors of our economy have been shown to have no moral clothing.
Our country cries out for reform in many sectors. The cynics look on with disdain – they’ve seen it all before; people demand change, politicians promise change; but everything stays the same. The idealist proposes a brave new world; the cynic sits back and waits for them to discover that the old one won’t budge an inch. While idealism may be the precursor to every new venture, cynicism is often what follows when things don’t work out as planned.
Cynicism is so common; it must serve some adaptive purpose. Fuelling comedy and farce, it can expose our collective propensity towards hypocrisy and self-deception and save us from taking ourselves too seriously.
Cynicism may also serve a protective function, making us less inclined to chase our dreams and risk heartbreak. The “I’ve seen it all before” smugness of the cynic may in reality be a proxy for fear. Our hearts can only take so much disappointment before they turn to stone. Sometimes it seems easier to give up on hope.
The danger of cynicism is that it carries undertones of bitterness that corrodes the human spirit and gives life a very sour taste. Cynicism, like jealousy, envy and paranoia, may have its place in the great drama of human emotion, but when we give it a lead role, the world turns into a wasteland.
I wonder if cynicism is an inevitable rite of passage for every idealist. We may lament the way things are and imagine a better world for those we care about. But when we turn our thinking into action and try to bring change to the way things are, we invariably meet resistance – sometimes from the very people we assumed we could count on for support.
When we commit to changing regimes, we invariably encounter the worst elements of human nature – self-serving greed for power, resistance to change, priorities that place self-preservation high above what best serves the very people we are meant to be serving. An idealist can suddenly experience the full force of the resentment of the multitude.
An image of this resistance comes from the lore of crab fishermen in Baltimore USA. When a visitor noticed that these fishermen left their crabs in open-top buckets along the harbour wall, he wondered why no one seemed worried that they would escape. “Watch what happens when they try to”, was the response when he asked a boatman nearby. And as he did, he noticed that just as the crab seemed to be making it over the rim of the bucket, his companions beneath would drag him back inside.
These thoughts struck me as I listened to someone recently whose inspiring commitment to reform had run into the forces of opposition and resentment. He is a man who carries the hopes of many, but someone who discovered to his cost that human beings resist change with the same ferocity that the body resists an invading organism.
Listening to this man, it struck me how much we need the energy of idealism to kick-start any significant change strategy. Sometimes, a person in the early stages may have little more than a tenuous vision of how things can be better.
This country is hurting and the danger is that we let our feelings harden into a cynical take on the world. Our great need is to appreciate those who have not given up on our capacity as humans to imagine new horizons and turn them into everyday realities.
Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – the National Centre for Youth Mental Health (headstrong.ie)