Half-penny thoughts | 29aug25

Takes one to know one, absolutely… But I’ve grown weary of the cynic.

It’s easy to be a cynic. It takes almost no effort at all to be one. Decide that the world is shit and there’s simply nothing that can be done about the matter. People who have a more positive spin on things are Dreamers and Sheeple. Those “in on the secret” walk into an echo chamber of like-minded cynics and we see a devil hiding under every bed. And, in that echo chamber, we tell each other that the devils are in cahoots and they are out to get us. To make matters worse, those devils are also between the sheets and every bed has multiple sheets and, just because those sheeple can’t see them doesn’t mean the devils aren’t at work making the world even more shit than it was to begin with. In secret. Then we remind each other: if you are not with us, you must be against us and you have therefore self-identified as The Enemy.

What claptrap.

I see too many people in thrall to this brand of devil worship. And yes, being an extreme cynic is a kind of devil worship in this vein, where you look for opportunities to experience schadenfreude, that guilty pleasure you feel at someone else’s misfortunes. The Enemy’s misfortune specifically. Even if it means people innocent of The Enemy’s deeds also fall victim to the misfortune.

Hell, I catch myself falling for the trap more than once in a while.

But I can see it for what it is now and I am tired.

Yeah, so things are going to shit. Are you just going to nonstop bitch about how things going to shit? Or are you going to stop worshipping your devils, get out of your office chair and do something that evokes change? At bare minimum, can you try to understand things from the devils’ point of view?

I double-dog dare you.