Your thought for the day:

This piece, and the piece that provoked it, have both got me thinking today.  Is our problem that we are too naive and idealistic, too moralistic, or too cynical?  Maybe I've been focused on the moralism and the rapidly polarizing hysteria.  It's easy to be "triggered" by our opponents, and it's a spiral down to nihilism.  The grease on the spiral is cynicism.

It is a fear of the future, a denial that there can be a future, perhaps.  It is dangerous.  Here's Schultz on cynicism in general:

we can't ask people to change and not give them the chance to do so. They're going to need us.

For years, I've thought of cynicism as just another word for laziness, and a blight on one's soul. But since that conversation with my grandson about his "ecosystem" of a relationship with his dog, I see it as something far worse.

Cynicism is not just about our mood, or a way to avoid another disappointment. It's a betrayal of the people who need us, the ones we swear we're fighting for and the ones we love. It weakens us as a community and a country, and leaves us untethered to hope.

If we keep acting like we expect nothing, that's exactly what we'll get.

Here's Matt Reed, applying this to educators:

Improvement is partial, uneven, and hard.  It requires effort. It requires accepting the possibility that the way things are right now isn’t the way they have to be.  It requires accepting the possibility that people can be more than metabolisms with feet. The world was built by people who actually tried.

Educators, in particular, have no right to the second kind of cynicism. None. Our entire line of work is premised on the future. We look at students who arrive, decide that they can be smarter/cleverer/more competent/better read/better spoken than they are when they start, and set about helping them improve. It’s what we do. Yes, we do it imperfectly. Yes, people need to make a living. Yes, some people lose sight of the big picture over time, and start acting from the wrong motives. It happens. But the core of what we do is about the future. That’s the point of the entire enterprise. If there isn’t going to be a future, or if it’s all just bullshit anyway, who needs education?  

But there will be a future, and the kind of future is up for grabs. Dark cynics will have the future happen to them. I’d rather have a hand in shaping it. It doesn’t have to be this way.

 

This seems right to me, and hard, especially these days.  All best to you in avoiding this as well.