(The audio to these rants is posted at 4:20 EST on Substack. This is a long one today, so I’ll only post half. You can get the full length LP on the stack, or on Hive.blog)
Super Power Tuesday. Flex’em up Mi Gente. This is the day you flex your super powers and your super defenses. Especially this Tuesday. Since yesterday was a Federal Holiday, in the US, peeps might be coming to the gig with some Moonday Lunatics vibes. “Ain’t nobody got time for that!”
You should know by now, except maybe new subscribers, whenever I write, “Here’s what no body tells you about,” [insert popular fad, or topic], I’m being a smart ass. I’m mocking the subculture that uses this line as a hook to reel your into their, mostly empty rhetoric.
Here’s what nobody tells you about being a smart ass. It can keep you alive, and others as well.
“Is he joking? He’s not serious, is he? Hey! Where’d he go?” And speaking of “Hey.” If I hear one more “inflewencer” start a conversation with, “Hey,” I’m going to get my TV brick out of storage and there’s gonna be trouble.
It’s time to grow up. Hey is for horses. That salutation is played out! Time to grow a vocabulary chillins.
Fractured Nostalgia. The optimistic cynic. Chapter One.
Someone, I thought it was Me, dropped this “optimistic cynic” label on an earlier version of this vessel. I distinctly remember telling someone who I was trying to go home with that night, that I was an “optimistic cynic.”
“What’s that?” She asked, inquisitively. (This was before all the mysteries of the ages were at our fingertips).
“Well, it’s like, for example, I can convince you to, take me home tonight, (I started singing Eddie Money, off key), but it won’t be worth it.” A little bit of self sabotage. Something else nobody tells you about being a chronic smart ass, there’s no way to shut it off. Not only did I have rum on the brain, after that remark, I had it all over my face as well.
I was not too inebriated to realize that optimistic cynicism has to have a flip-side. The “cynical optimist” arose simultaneously, as sure as up arrives in the same moment as down.
As I was explaining what happened to the host of the party, I was already trying to remember which came first. What the hell is a cynical optimist? That’s the guy who expects shit to go sideways, but does his damnedest to keep it from doing so.
“Not on my watch!”
With a couple of more decades of life under my belt since dropping that knowledge. The definitions have gotten clearer, because there have been examples. Maybe theoretical, and theatrical, but examples nonetheless.
Oh, and by the way, this was not a self-styled identity, this was dropped on your boy by Universe. It played like a jukebox with one selection.
“I’m a cynical optimist. But I’m also an optimistic cynic.”
Cynical optimist usually got top billing. Somehow humans found cynicism worthy of further questioning. It was one of those “hooks,” like, “here’s what they don’t want you to know.”
“Oh, please tell me. Please!”
Sometimes you can see “educated” humans thinking about the contrast. It shows on their faces. They give you that dog look. The one when a puppy hears a new sound, and she tilts her head just so. That’s so cute. It’s just as cute when humans do it. An unexpected moment of authenticity. Trying their best to hold back the, “Huh?” It’s an authentic sign of interest.
Back in those days your humble vagabond was more “ass” than smart. I was smarter than the average bear, so you can only imagine the size of my ass. However, I wasn’t smart, intellectually speaking, or socially speaking either. I was full of demons. But that’s another story.
I didn’t know it at the time, (well, maybe instinctively), but interest equals attraction. But that’s another story too.
Anyway, for a handful of years, I’d tell everyone I met, at some point in our conversation, that I was a cynical optimist.
What’s that? Explanation leads to conversations. It’s like a stand-up routine. You have your opener, you entertain questions from the audience. Then the closer.
What’s the closer?
“But I’m also an optimistic cynic. It’s like Yin & Yang.”
Throw some mysticism into the mix and they’re demanding an encore.
The last example I remember for optimistic cynic, is the idea that humans can have all the technology of the cosmos laid before their feet, and they will still find a way to fuck life up. And blame someone else for it. Why? It’s a human thing. Don’t try to understand.
It has to do with the 99 sins of man.
“But there are only seven sins.”
“There are seven, “deadly” sins. There are 92 others that have been identified since Dante’s Divine Comedy.” They won’t kill you. But you’d be surprised what you can live through.
[Note” Dante did not originate the list. The deadly seven were first enumerated by St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century. Thought you’d like to know.]
This optimistic cynicism is more optimistic than it appears on the surface. Because humans are inherently treacherous, impatient, fearful, hateful and stupid, their attempts to exterminate “sub-humans” from the planet continues to fail. Meanwhile, what We call, “human wild cards,” speak to the cynical optimist side of the coin. While cynical of the herd as a whole, there are individuals whose dharma is simply to confound the best laid plans of the overlords. Perhaps, for example, replacing death jabs with saline solutions. Saying, “they did” when they didn’t. Erasing data-bases and setting latrines on fire, and backing up the plumbing of aircraft carriers. You know, lil acts of kindness that keep their ships from being sent to Davey Jones’ locker.
But as we were saying, t’was not I that tagged this vessel as a Cynical Optimist. It was Universe. And in hindsight, as we recalled, we can map the route. From smart ass comment, to what became a mantra, to a de-facto archetype the Jung never dreamed of, to where we are now. The label flows through my veins and out of my fingertips onto the screen and into this daily blog. Every other paragraph flows with cynical optimism, while ever other, other-one contains optimistic cynicism.
It’s the perfect balance for a perfect world at a perfect time.
Epilogue.
Way before I knew anything about Milton Erickson, self hypnosis, The Red Queen, and long before the manosphere ever existed, I learned this crazy lesson. That somehow became codified in the Pick Up Artist’s handbook, (which to my knowledge, doesn’t actually exist. But what do I know?)
Anyway, Girlfriend, the one who made me wear her drink, showed up with one of those party napkins, that’s almost thick enough to be a cloth, and starts dabbing everything that had already become dry and sticky on my collar. I sort of apologized. Like, one of those, “Just being a smart ass. My friends tell me I should come with a warning label.”
She laughed. And asked how I got to the party.
“I came on the bus.”
“Wanna ride home?”
Stay sane, stay strong, stay safe, stay savvy, stay serene, stay sovereign, stay subscribed.
PEACE.