Kynicism

Kynicism is a mode of thinking and acting against dominant powers, if and when those dominant powers rely on errors, mistakes, biases, lies (for short, “ideology”). It was first formalized in Ancient Greece. It’s first great representative was Diogenes of Sinope, also known as Diogenes the Cynic. However, today “cynicism” means the opposite of “kynicism.” This article focuses on the meaning of kynicism.
Specifically, kynicism is the performance of natural human thoughts and behavioral tendencies in excess of social conventions. It therefore involves speech and behavior that seems outrageous, but is in fact an honest, genuine manifestation of what most people would think and do if it were not for ideology. For instance, Diogenes would masturbate in public. When confronted by outraged onlookers, he said “I only wish I could be rid of hunger by rubbing my belly.” In other words, he is simply tending to basic and natural human needs, which everyone has, and which everyone seeks to satisfy, but usually in secret while pretending in public they never do such things. People promote themselves to power within the institutional order by this deceptive partitioning of themselves, they compete to appear morally righteous, not by being morally righteous but by hiding their base tendencies behind closed doors. But because single acts of radical honesty are punished, kynicism must be a whole way of life or else it is nothing. If someone does one kynical act, they will simply fall to the bottom of the normal institutional order. But if they do everything in their life in a kynical fashion, they can successfully constitute their own radically independent life — typically it must be frugal, simple, and independent, but it works because such individuals have a more direct, efficient, and accurate model of what they really need and how things really work. They lose social capital in normal society, but they save a lot of time and energy because they’re free of all the nonsensical, competitive lying.
See: Philosophy; Cynicism.
Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London New York: Verso.