Cynicism. It's a Good Thing.

A friend of mine keeps getting swindled in various ways. Once it was by a crook who "borrowed" money. Another time he put his own rep on the line to secure a job for someone who's your basic standard-issue screw-up.

Since my friend used to be (many years ago) intimately connected with a certain criminal organization of Sicilian origin which shall remain nameless here, I'm always surprised and baffled when he gets shafted. How could these things happen to someone as knowledgeable in the ways of the world as he?

I think maybe he's actually an idealist.

And I know I'm not.

Is there such a thing as "human nature?" Christians think there is, and they believe it's nasty -- that human nature is essentially evil. That's the point of Chapter One, Adam and Eve in the Garden. Given a choice, they chose badly.

If our fundamental nature wasn't evil, there'd have been no need for Jesus -- no need for redemption. I'm always amazed how many happy, sunny, "think positive" Christians don't understand this underlying, unavoidable premise of their religion.

However, this knowledge, for knowledge I believe it to be and not merely opinion, isn't limited to the Christians. Buddhists are convinced of it as well, although they put the matter a little differently. Their founder declared that the natural state of the human being is not evil, but "delusion," which amounts to the same thing. A delusional person's behavior is destructive, and ultimately self-destructive.

As in the case of Christians, Buddhist cynicism is tempered by hope. Enlightenment (i.e., Christian "redemption") is possible, but requires an unconditional surrender of the the ego.

The same realization is reflected in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, for whom the natural state of the alcoholic is drunkenness. But there is a solution. See above.

I have no positive expectations of human behavior. I always anticipate people will behave selfishly and hypocritically, without realizing they're "digging up their own roots," as the Buddha is said to have expressed it.

This way, I'm always pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions when I see someone acting as he or she should, i.e., with the self-interest of others, and hence one's own self-interest, as the primary concern. And make no mistake, I don't act that way nearly as often as I ought to.

I think my friend is getting "hoist on his own petar," that his expectations grow out of an idealism which is a product of ego.

There are people who want help and people who need help. If I try to help people who simply need help, but don't want it, what good am I doing? For them or myself?

The first requirement for effective action is to see things as they are.