As an optimist, I’m gonna read this later, and hopefully learn something. 
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I’m not inherently saying dark is a negative thing though lol. That is what I think the confusion here. I don’t see selfishness as negative. Dark is not negative. It just is. But I am saying that we tend to label these things as negative and such labels, creates a more negative perception and experience of reality.
I think this is why in my opinion, nonduality to this day has been the most consistent truth for me. It’s niether one or the other, none and both at once. Just like a wave-particle is also either one or the other, none and both at once.
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I don’t think it’s any more dark than gravity or WiFi internet. It just is what it is.
Homo sapiens behaves in certain patterns and possess certain traits
Just because you may wish to fly doesn’t make gravity dark
Scorpions stab other animals
Whales eat planktons
That’s the rule
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But that’s what I’m trying to explain. The negativity comes from something else. The negativity is due to pessimism, general outlook, general asshattery, whatever you wanna call it - it is not cynicism.
Cynicism is just the belief that the motivation is selfish. It does not paint the selfishness with a negative brush.
Sure, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and ascribing to cynicism may open you to other negative beliefs for whatever reason, but even at its roots in Ancient Greece, cynicism was for questioning the answers and understanding motivation.
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I was living with this dichotomy, irony and contradiction for a very long time.
And still do today sometimes, when I forget an important fact:
We as souls are all subconsciously telepathically interconnected.
This whole contradiction and dichotomy will start making logical sense when we realize that we exchange information about ourselves and our believes with EVERYONE else ALL THE TIME.
We are subconsciously downloading and exchanging information from each other all the time.
Which means others are always treating us (or not treating us) exactly according to the roles we play.
We are all like interconnected gears.
Everyone knows subconsciously at all times which role the others are currently playing and behave accordingly!
We might have certain views and perceptions from the perspective of our ego and waking consciousness, but in the ende may still do something completely else. Because in most cases the Subconscious Mind has decided based on its existing programming and the downloaded (!) input.
You behave towards others not just based on your beliefs about others but also depending on what you telepathically download from them.
So we might think we are egoistic but then act altruistic.
And vice versa.
It is never black and white.
It is all a COLLECTIVE CO-MANIFESTATION EXPERIENCE, that mostlly happens through the SUBCONSCIOUS MIND and its telepathic connection with everyone else.
It is not just “you decide” and the world is separate from you.
But you decide AND everyone else also decides.
…creating the perfect respective personal reality bubble for everyone according to their subconscious beliefs.
When you make a free will choice, i.e. your personal gear starts rotating into the other direction for example, you automatically co-influence the whole system too.
A lot of the things that don’t make logical sense from the “I” perspective, start to make sense when viewed from the perspective of a collective telepathic subconsciousness where every part of it co-manifests everything together.
A lot of the things that we do are SELF EXPRESSION.
Not because we consciously chose so, but because Source trought us wants to express itself this way and experience what’s it is like.
Our minds then invent a story around this self-expressions of why this and that needs to happen and be done etc.
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Are you sure you want to talk about this? HAHAHA
Let’s see, even though there are so many theories about the duality of being human, I understand that there is always a struggle because we don’t want to be both, we always want to choose. Even choosing the “absence” of both (which can be considered something else entirely… even if it isn’t, in essence).
Honestly, I think these are defense mechanisms we develop over time. Both of them. Optimism and cynicism (although the ancient Greek cynicism talks about happiness being achieved in oneself and autonomy, dedication to a simple life, without material needs and all that… since they considered that the less you need, the freer and the more happiness you have, “copying” animals and nature. Which makes all the sense in the world… And it has, I think, also a lot to do with wanting to achieve spiritual peace. Even though it includes labeling the “evils” of society as aberrations). And optimism… well, it really is always thinking in a way that is not always easy to pair with both actions and feelings (in all types of life experiences), but people even now call it “delulu” because it does not apply to that moment in time (because they cannot imagine the situation, for whatever reason, happening any other way). Being an optimist, in this society, can cause you to be seen as crazy, deluded, innocent, stupid… and things of that caliber. Not only by skeptics, but also by those who have experienced both “sides”. And this leads to having to isolate or seclude oneself, or find a group with which to be optimistic.
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Ah, well I’ll apologize to you and @DR_MANHATTAN as I’ve incorrectly attributed cynicism to pessimism. I’m aware of the philosophy but in general, the term cynic has taken a different turn in the past several years as I’m noticing lot of youtubers or tik tokers or people in general calling themselves cynics while expressing a distate/distrust of humanity in general. Moreso a cynical pessimism then. So I apologize to you both for mistaking what you were both inherently expressing.
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Would cynical pessimism be the right word for it?
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one’s judgement of cynicism is based on his ability to thrive despite it. Some people are not evolved enough to cope with this reality.
Inability to cope with it would make it pessimistic.
If you posses the skills you can be very successful and have a fulfilling life by being aware of people’s self-interest and being able to meet those desires, creating beneficial partnership on a material and emotional level.
If you accept that you are also self-fish you don’t judge people like asshole only because they are selfish. It becomes a game of managing everyone’s stakes and that’s what leaders do.
Doesn’t mean love is fake or that cooperation and entertainment lose their power
It’s kinda empathetic when you think about it. It promotes self-awareness. Nothing for nothing. Balance. Reciprocity become more rational and clockwork like.
There is clarity in human affairs.
You can also accept that society helps you and you help society. It’s not a 1-1 relationship. It’s us and the group as a whole.
Altruism takes a new meaning. I help the group, I expect them to help me when it’s my turn and I’m in trouble
There is an implicit social contract
That’s why people feel embedded and scammers use reciprocity by giving first by the way.
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No offense taken 
To be fair, I think the last 20-30 years of lingua franca needs undoing. A lot of it has been unhelpful, if not outright contradictory and has made communication difficult, even amongst close friends in regular contact.
As an answer to your original question. I agree with Drift. Whatever label truly applies, people start with “hope for the best”, transition to “hope for the best, plan for the worst”, fall into “expect the worst”, and then usually end at either “everything sucks” or “f*ck it we ball”.
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I can see that.
You see this less and less as people move away from “face culture” or far too deep into it. The balance point of “no one is owed, but everyone deserves” gets lost.
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Everyone mad when they lose lol
If you are cynical but don’t accept it and believe that people should be idealistic and you are owed something, you become Misanthropic.
But that’s an emotional reaction to cynicism
(Not exclusive though)
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The largest benefit of pure cynicism is in using “the ugliest truth” for shadow work and understanding yourself as a result. You recognize, as a universal truth, that whatever you’re doing is driven from self-interest… so you dig into the discomfort of it and find the most uncomfortable truth right before a visceral “nah, that’s not it”. And then you separate out the layers and figure out, aside from self-interest, what’s driving/influencing that behavior.
To give you an idea, I started doing it because I felt like an irredeemable asshole, years later, I “woke up” during a fight with my long time gf and realized I was saying some heinous crap just to win, stopped, and apologized. Realizing I was selfish and being okay with being selfish in moderation helped me wake up before I even knew wtf that was or what it could mean.
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Yeah, I’m a bit annoyed people in the internet got the word cynical mixed up in my brain. It’s just mind blowing to me right lmao. I can’t count the amount of times people would say things like ‘I’m cynical of people. I don’t trust any of them’ or ‘he’s cynical of everything people do’ and things like that, in thinking or expecting the worst of them. But that is certainly pessimism as pessimism is choosing to focus on the worst aspects of things.
But yeah, I’m not really in disagreement much with the philosophy of cynicism as per Manhattan’s post there. We are inherently selfish and understanding that helps us navigate the world better. As is the key to sales, is to understand what drives people and what they want, and deliver that to them. Society navigates more efficiently when we understand eachothers selfish needs and adhere to them. Humanity is as you both said, operating under the ego.
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Those egregores get real out here xD Seriously. I had it the other day when one of my brothers used “perverted” to describe something and I went on a white knight crusade and he literally had to google perverted and make me remember it translated to “to distort”.
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This was my first association to “perverted”:
Wonder if hentai is the same or it actually only means creep.
I’m not sure how it is in English but the German word “zynisch” (cynical) appears to have a vastly different meaning from the root of the word.
The definition for “zynisch” is more along the lines of “cruel mockery beyond human decency”.
Yet the original idea of the cynical philosophy appears to have been to find happiness through minimalism and independence from external factors.
So that’s probably a point of confusion.
So if it’s about pessimism vs optimism, I’d say they’re the same side of the coin. It’s a choice. Of course the choice can be influenced. But in the end it’s a choice. Another filter of reality. It can become a habit.
Since it’s a personal choice, I find the equation easy to choose optimism since it yields more direct and indirect potential benefits.
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Cynicism started as a skepticism about societal arrangements being in accordance with what’s best for people. It’s a critique that is, even in today’s world, still resented. It’s not against manifestation, at all, as manifestation is deeply destabilizing to the social order. I’m cynical vis-à-vis politics at the electoral and ideological level. Occasionally things work out for a bit, and then the worm turns.
I think most cynics are optimistic about themselves and other individuals, even groups, but are very questioning of the larger systems. That’s not pessimism.
I love pessimism, though, because large systems and societies have to push many of their programs in optimistic terms. Pessimism saves you from “chump” mode. It also gives you an advantage; sometimes being first to exits matters . . . a lot.
I would say that many people on the forum are cynics and pessimists about how the larger societal playbook will work out for them. That’s why they’re here. Now, if you believe that the world is rose colored, and by ‘world’ you mean larger society of human institutions, I think you are misinformed. If you by ‘world’, you mean our larger connections with the planet, each other, the great chain of being, the Universe, 42 and all that, then, yeah, I am an optimist and cynicism is how I got here. But don’t make the mistake of confusing which “world” you are talking about. That can be an expensive mistake.
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Also I think that if you are coming from a place of high self love and feeling already complete, you will simply accept and feel all the feelings you are temporary going through, be it optimism or pessimism, and then it does not matter in the end, because you are already whole and accept them all as just what they are: energetic experiences that your consciousness is making.
I guess, this is how the Higher Self experiences stuff:
It experiences the energy of those emotions and perceptions, but it does not get influenced by it or moved by it.
It experiences the qualia of something but is detached from it at the same time.
The judgement that optimism is “good” and pessimism is “bad”, comes from our human and incarnational self perception and perspective, because it is heavily interconnected with our astral and biological bodies and their programming:
These bodies profit from “optimism” because optimism is more negentropic and thus increases the chances of survival in an entropic environment and the chances for further growth of the soul.
At the end of the day, the Higher Self collects the experience of all of these emotions, from negative to positive. All of these collected emotions become new tools in the Higher Self’s giant collection of experiences and realizations toolbox.
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it is always good to trace back the origin of the philosophy to understand its purest or original meaning, otherwise it begins to become multiple things at once. Cynicism derives from the greek word for dog and was in reference to the mad philosopher, diogenis the cynic, who lived in a barrel in Athens. His beliefs were similar to buddhism in many ways. He lived an ascetic life because he did not believe in many of the values of athenien society. His forthrightness in his criticisms made him very popular, enough for alexander the great to meet and admire him
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