Deleuze and Guattari famously put these two at odds in Anti-Oedipus. I'm thinking about them in a slightly different way today, vis a vis some things I've been chewing over about our predicament as humanists.
D&G say they are the only two choices available in capitalism. In so doing are they being cynics, or hypocrites? I hope the latter. See, I'm a hypocrite, and here's why. Cynics are really just disguised hypocrites. Hypocritical about hypocrisy, as it were. “SHE is a hypocrite, YOU are a bit of a true believer, but I am fully cynical. Oh joy!”
Cynicism is a form of hope: you hope that by being as sneering and as nasty as possible that things might change. Only you don't admit this to yourself. Oh no. Hope is for losers. Hope is so not cool. Never ever say hope.
Take Kermit the Frog. He's a symbol of hope. Let's laugh at him as he sings about how not easy it is to be green. But eventually, after all is said and done, let's secretly hope that he's saying something that matters. But let's only hold that out to make ourselves feel extra guilty for laughing at him. Let's sneer at our mocking laughter. How cynical we were! How not cynical enough!
Let's mock CEOs who use the phrase “It's not easy being green.” What fools. They should just admit how cynical they are. Like us. They have no business saying that shit and—horror of horrors—making things. And advertising them. Like who needs the present? The far future is so much easier, I mean profound.
These companies make things that contain nanoparticles. Green nanoparticles—the very notion! Nanoparticles that won't kill Professor Morton's kids when they smear the sunscreen on their faces. How hopelessly naive. Poor nanoparticles! Having to be green just to not kill Professor Morton's kids! They should be liberated into the ultrademocracy-to-come. Not shackled into obeying some lame greenwashing thing to do with being safe.
No. Those bad CEOs are sellouts. They make capitalist products to sell in the capitalist marketplace. Take the Toyota Prius. Does it reverse entropy? See? It's all a huge scam. Just another product. You might as well put roller skates on a leaf blower and drive that to school, for all the good your Prius will do. Let's have a good laugh at the Prius drivers. Those idiots. Little do they know. They've been totally fooled by the ads. They think their precious cars save the planet.
“But...I know that...I just want to not pollute so much and save some money...”
Ha! You pathetic hypocrite. So uncool. Did I mention global warming? No, I didn't! Too inconvenient.
Sixth Mass Extinction Event? Come again?
“Okay. You think the ad sucks. Why don't you try making an ad that's half as good as the Prius ad? I'll give you a theme. How about, oh, I dunno...Why the Humanities Should Not Be Eliminated?”
...
“The Dean is waiting...”
“And while we're on the subject, can you successfully distinguish the net effect of your cynicism from the Bush Admin's mockery of the Prius?”
...
I'd rather be a hypocrite than a cynic.
3 comments:
smashing writing style. cool, objective, functional and humourous..... "funny earth" ain't it?
Don't have an answer myself (though I could venture a guess either way), but: where do believers in underground culture fit in? They don't want to sell out and be hypocrites, but they don't just sit around and sneer, either, so they grow vegetables, publish zines, organize housing co-ops and community print shops, teach free classes, etc., etc. The usual criticism is to call them "hopeless idealists". Is that an indirect form of hypocrisy? Or an indirect kind of cynicism?
This reminds me of an essay I read a while back by Roger Scruton on forgiveness and irony, where irony--like your hypocrisy--is the willingness to be both committed while realizing the sheer idealism of commitment. Key quote:
"The late Richard Rorty saw irony as a state of mind intimately connected with the postmodern worldview—a withdrawal from judgment that nevertheless aims at a kind of consensus, a shared agreement not to judge. The ironic temperament, however, is better understood as a virtue—a disposition aimed at a kind of practical fulfillment and moral success. Venturing a definition of this virtue, I would describe it as a habit of acknowledging the otherness of everything, including oneself. However convinced you are of the rightness of your actions and the truth of your views, look on them as the actions and the views of someone else and rephrase them accordingly. So defined, irony is quite distinct from sarcasm: it is a mode of acceptance rather than a mode of rejection. It also points both ways: through irony, I learn to accept both the other on whom I turn my gaze, and also myself, the one who is gazing. Pace Rorty, irony is not free from judgment: it simply recognizes that the one who judges is also judged, and judged by himself."
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