The Responsibility to Avoid Cynicism

One of the concepts I've found most interesting and powerful in my classes this quarter is the idea of a bill of rights and responsibilities within families. The book, “Fast Families, Virtual Children” by Ben Agger and Beth Ann Shelton. The concept within this bill of rights that struck me as most important for future sociologists like myself is the responsibility of a parent to avoid exposing their child to cynicism. The authors contend that children are born open and optimistic, and, “Become cynical by watching corrosive television and movies and by hearing their parents talk about their own misfortunes in fatalistic terms - 'It has always been this way.' Sometimes cynicism flows from religions that portray people as fallen and immoral.” (167)

As a student of sociology I feel I will really have a hard time with this in my future, and here's why: in a field of study that emphasizes analyzing greater social trends with the intention of applying those findings to a personal level, we tend to get absorbed in our world of concepts and ideas. Also, since the emphasis of these studies is on social problems and not social successes, a varying amount of negativity is likely to become ingrained. As sociologists we frequently look at social problems, and by looking at social problems, our worlds become a little more jaded.In other words: as we create, so are we created.

The first idea, that we get absorbed in our world of concepts and ideas, is dangerous because our field of study has inherently flawed assumptions that we must be aware of: the relative unimportance of free will on a macrosociological level, an assumption that blame for personal difficulties almost always rests on higher levels of social organization, and the ever present ideal that, as scientists, we have some better idea of the “truth” of things than the next guy over. These ideals are just a short list of the faulty or flawed premises that are often encouraged or insinuated in sociological studies, and all tend to encourage fatalistic attitudes.

The second idea is that an individual is reflexively created: that people's ideas, values, and whatever else you want to call the sociological projection of the soul is influenced by how we act and how others respond toward those actions. This ties in to the above concern, with the added worry that focusing our life's work on removing negativity by analyzing its root causes in turn makes us absorb a great deal of negativity; another form of psychic scar. Wether this translates into cynicism or not is an interesting concern. However, according to the reading, “One becomes cynical through one's own misfortunes, which are often totally unjustified.” (167) The idea I just suggested implies that this interpretation of the cause of cynicism on an individual level is not necessarily just one's own life experiences, but rather, it can be influenced by interacting with unjustified misfortunes on a regular basis. This constant interaction with the gross power imbalances in the world influences our “sociological imagination” - our ability to imagine things a different way.

Knowing that we run the risk of absorbing the mental stress of the issues we delve into, how can we still carry on? How can we, in good faith, place our children's precious and impressionable psyches at risk by damaging our own? Well, I don't believe I have a ready, canned response. I am just a young man. But I can say that I have an unshakable commitment to this world I live in. How can I not? It makes us, just as we make it. I feel that, as a scientist and as a human, I have an option between two less-than-perfect options: to neglect studying, examining and constantly evaluating the outside world in favor of protecting my heart and soul, (a self-defeating process,) or I can sell my soul to improve the world around me for the next person to come along. Negativity may be an ever present struggle, but if the inherent flaws of the sociological perspective are not true; if I don't dream of the blame game and the irrelevance of free will, if I hold my beliefs loosely and treat my scholarly prestige like the joke it is, then hopefully I can overcome the effects of extreme negativity in my own life. And hopefully, by remembering that I do have the ability to imagine a brighter future, and that simply imagining other solutions is the first step to making them possible, I will be able to share with my children a world in which they can dream.