Better living through cynicism!

According to a passage in The Picture of Dorian Gray, a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Since being published in 1890, that little statement has enjoyed an attractiveness longer-lived than even Dorian's. It is approvingly quoted any time someone wants to castigate someone else for being a cynic.

Somehow the people who use this quotation seem not to have noticed that it's one of Wilde's characteristic paradoxes. It's a cynical remark about cynicism. So by quoting it to castigate cynics you become a cynic yourself. As Lord Alfred Douglas would have said, way cool.

So if it's contradictory to be cynical about cynicism, let's be consistent and be upbeat and positive about it! Wow! What a great idea! I can think of all sorts of wonderful things that the cynical community has given to the world!

• First of all, there's contemporary television! Cynical television executives realized that if they took the value, or quality, out of television programs they could reduce the price! When they reduced the value and price of television programs, they ended up with shows like Survivor and The Bachelor! And that's a good thing! How do I know? Because everybody likes them as much as those expensive "quality" shows they replaced! Wow! High ratings, low cost! I guess sometimes it helps not to know anything about value!

• Then there's contemporary fashion! Cynical marketers suspected that what people wanted in fashion was nothing more than a trademark that certified they'd spent a lot of money on a garment or accessory. How could they find out? Why, they marketed expensive clothes that were identical in every way to cheaper garments except that they prominently displayed the designer's trademark! That's how we got the $100 T-shirt! And you know what! Everybody bought them! Lower costs for designers, but higher revenues – who needs to know about value!

• And of course there's contemporary politics! Neo-conservative and neo-liberal politicians just couldn't see the value in democracy. For them, democratic values could be reduced to one question – how much did they have to pay? So they embarked on campaigns to cut social programs and to cut taxes. And you know what? Everybody loved the idea! They voted the slash and burn cynics into office, where they slashed and burnt! Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris, they all slashed and burnt! And after they slashed and burnt they all got voted in again!

And you know what else – the possibilities are endless! What if...we combined all three of these things! What if we selected ordinary citizens at random to run for the Calvin Klein party on a platform of eliminating government service and reducing taxes to nothing! Now there you have absolutely no value at all! And everyone'd love it!

Instead of having to fork out to pay for the pet projects of a bunch of fat old ugly politicians, you'd have the discretion to purchase any service you wanted from any giant transnational corporation that was supplying it! You wouldn't have to put up with clunky old government health care, government police services, or government electricity, you could buy designer health care, designer police, and designer electricity!

And once Parliament was eliminated the parliamentary channel would be freed up for reruns of Survivor!

So what are you waiting for! Those old outmoded bleeding-heart do-gooder attitudes are yesterday's news! For a better society, for a better country, for a new improved, more confident YOU, let's all get cynical!

Better Living Through Cynicism © John FitzGerald, 2003