Where is the line between cynicism and pragmatism?

[Twisted Crow]

Created somewhat with this Vekseid thread in the back of my mind. I have been contemplating this today over a discussion with a couple of relatives. I started to ask myself: If cynicism is indeed cowardice... then where is the line drawn between that just being pragmatic?

So, where would you folks draw this line?

[Saria]

It might help if you clarified whether you mean philosophical cynicism (I’ll capitalize it as “Cynicism” from here on) or just plain-old, regular cynicism, and the same for philosophical Pragmatism versus generic pragmatism.

(Philosophical) Cynicism is just about as far as you can get from cowardice… but I would argue that its morality can be questionable if taken to extremes. I can’t see any meaningful correspondence between Cynicism and (philosophical) Pragmatism; comparing them doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Cynicism is more about how one should live their life, while Pragmatism is more about how one should view or use knowledge; one is ethics, the other epistemology. I don’t see a lot of overlap, though I could be wrong (someone educate me on this!). But then, I don’t really take Pragmatism seriously at all, so maybe it’s just my ignorance talking.

So it sounds like you’re more interested in non-philosophical cynicism versus non-philosophical pragmatism.

In that case, if you’re asking whether cynicism is cowardice, you have to be thinking specifically about contexts where action is supposedly required. If no action is required, it’s impossible to be a coward.

Action has to be required, morally or logically, for cowardice to be possible, because if action is merely desirable, or nice, you’re not a coward for refusing to take it. If a child loses their balloon and and it gets stuck in a tree—you could reach it, but it would take a bit of effort—you are not a coward for refusing to help the child. You may be an asshole, but not a coward. If a child is in imminent danger of being bitten by a venomous snake—saving them would involve a small bit of risk to yourself, but not all that much—you would be a coward for refusing to help.

So the real question would be: is the action required? I can’t speak for the case of the video Vekseid posted, because I really can’t be arsed to watch a 15+-minute video, and especially one that dives back into Trump shit. Please, just let that shit be over. Please, please, please.

Okay, so speaking generally, I’d say, if some action is morally or logically required to avoid some bad outcome, then yes, mere cynicism—when used as an excuse not to do the action—is either straight-up cowardice, or functionally indistinguishable from it. (I’m assuming no deeper, nefarious motives, like not wanting to do the action because you actually want the bad outcome.)

Note that we might need a better word that “cowardice”, because cowardice implies that fear is the reason for not doing something, when in fact the real underlying reason could be stupidity, laziness, fatalism, or any number o things. But you could argue that, if you go deep enough, all of those things boil down to fear anyway.

If you’re cynical, but do the action anyway, that’s a different story, of course. That’s actually a very common thing. I’m always cynical about pointing out to someone when they’re being racist or sexist or homophobic or transphobic, etc.…because I know damn well that there’s very little chance the person will take the criticism in good faith, and a very good chance they will lash out at me instead. But I do it anyway, because it must be done. And there is always the slight chance that it will do some small good.

So cynicism is only cowardice if there’s an action that must be taken, and you’re using cynicism as an excuse not to do it.

Now, how does pragmatism fit into this? 🤷🏾‍♀️ That’s a good question. I don’t see how it really fits; I don’t see what the connection between cynicism and pragmatism is.

Are you thinking in terms of some action that needs to be taken, and both cynicism and pragmatism are used as excuses to not do it, and you’re asking what the differences are? Like:

• (cynicism) Why bother to do this? It’s not worth it because the world will still be shit even if we fix this particular problem.
• (pragmatism variant 1) Why bother to do this? This won’t fix this particular problem.
• (pragmatism variant 2) Why bother to do this? This might this particular problem, but it won’t solve the underlying issue that caused it in the first place.

Variant 1 pragmatism isn’t something I find objectionable, assuming the assertion is true. I’d ask, “okay, so then what will fix the problem?” but it’s really not up to the person who points out that something won’t work to come up with something that will.

So if it’s between:

• (cynicism) The world will still be shit even if we fix this.
• (“pragmatism”) This might fix this, but won’t solve the bigger issue(s).

then I’d call both of those positions cowardice (with caveats for the case of pragmatism, which I’ll get to in a moment). Using cynicism as an excuse not to make things better is just reprehensible. Using “pragmatism”—in scare quotes, because I don’t think that’s real pragmatism, I think that’s just cynicism masquerading as “pragmatism”—like this is cowardice, too, and the obvious response is, “yes, but it will fix this, so we have one problem less, and then we can work on the bigger issue(s)”.

If the “pragmatic” argument is that by focusing on this problem we’d be wasting resources we could be using to solve the bigger issue(s), then things get murkier, because they may actually be correct. But that would just be another flavour of variant 1 pragmatism… because in order for it to make sense, there already has to be a plan in place to solve the bigger issue(s), otherwise how is it possible to waste resources that don’t even have a plan for being allocated?

If you’re saying “don’t bother to solve this, solve that instead”, that might be a legitimate position… or it might be bullshit, like saying “don’t solve the disproportionate murder of people of colour by cops, solve the problem of ‘racial hate’ instead!”. (Because solving ‘racial hate’, even if theoretically possible (which is doubtful), is practically impossible… whereas stopping cops from murdering is actually quite trivial to solve, and the solution would be very, very meaningful (certainly to the future victims it will save).) This depends very much on the specific context.

So in summary, assuming we’re talking about a problem that actually needs for action to be taken to solve it, I’d say:

• Using cynicism to justify not taking action (“it won’t really make a difference; the world will still suck”) is always cowardice.
  
  
  
  • Being cynical while taking the necessary action is not cowardice. It may not be the healthiest attitude to have, but, sadly, sometimes it’s quite justified.
• Using pragmatism to justify not taking action (“it may solve this problem; the underlying cause(s) / bigger issue(s) will still exist”) might be cowardice, unless:
  
  
  
  • the person is proposing alternative action to solve the bigger issue(s)
  • the alternative action will suffer if resources are spent instead on the action being discussed (that is, you can’t work both problems in parallel without one or both suffering); and
  • the bigger issue is something that can be plausibly solved in a reasonable amount of time (relative to the direct problem; that is, it might be okay if we have to take a little longer to solve the bigger issue… but not ridonkulously longer—like, okay, if we can solve racism in 10 years, then maybe it might be worth dropping Black Lives Matter and doing that… but not if it’s going to take 100 years, because people are dying now).

[Fox Lokison]

It might help if you clarified whether you mean philosophical cynicism (I’ll capitalize it as “Cynicism” from here on) or just plain-old, regular cynicism, and the same for philosophical Pragmatism versus generic pragmatism.

This. Those are some pretty broad terms.