Which came first the Cynical or the Gullible?

[imood mood at time of entry: cynical]

First, I am glad to see that Brandon is still around in some form. I know that I can always go bug him on LJ on via email if I need him. *wink* Second, thanks for the advice, Chaos. I will try to keep a two week rule in mind when I start to stress. I have all sorts of things saved in my Inbox dating back at least to some time in 2004. Who says that I have commitment issues, I’ve fully committed myself to half-stepping where my Inbox is concerned.

I wrote a journal entry last night after watching Primetime, and I thought I’d post it here and in my LJ for safekeeping and for anyone who wanted to give me some feedback. It’s a little lengthy, but its already been established that I babble. Sometimes, its even coherent to other people.

I was listening to Primetime tonight, and the journalist narrating made a comment about how we as human beings are both cynical and gullible. He went on to present a segment concerning the lies, large and small, and hoaxes we are willing to buy into and help spread. The segment highlighted how Fox’s hit “secret autopsy” tape of an alien body from Roswell, New Mexico was later dispelled to be nothing more than clever trickery. It was even deemed to be an “immaturish” set up by some expert or another bought on to discuss the ploy. But immaturish as the autopsy was labeled by this prop maker, I believed it. Granted, I was still in grade school when it originally aired.

Nevertheless, I believed it then, and a desperate part of me wants to believe it now. Is it because I am dying to give into my imagination or am I simply looking for proof to justify my belief that there is something more to our universe? Perhaps it is a bit of both, but I don’t feel that anyone can soundly argue that there is absolutely, without a doubt, no “intelligent life” that exists outside of our own. That is unless the speaker was completely taken with their own supposed superiority complex, as so many on our planet are given to suffer from. Including myself, at times.

But more to the point, are we truly willing to believe anything we are fed? In the simplest answer I can think of, it would have to be “Yes.” I do see the truth in this conclusion, for how else would thousands of scams be explained? And by “scams,” I am referring to the every day con artists, the stories put forth through the media, and even our own government.

I am cynical enough to believe that no one could honestly trust any one country’s residents to be told the whole truth about their country’s Intelligence findings, business dealings, the agreements made between any number of its officials, or anything else for that matter. For why would citizens be freely told about any of this? They could easily be coaxed to accept a variety of half-truths, plain lies, and “self-evident” Definites. Not to mention the fact that National Security can be readily scapegoated as an answer for any inquiries surrounding each action enacted in response to every “terrorizing situation” we seemed to be forever faced with. Anyone remember the SARS, Mad Cow Disease, or Anthrax scares? I am sure that not nearly as many people remember it now, in comparison to when they were all Hot Button Topics. FYI, Bird Flu is the medical terror du jour.

So in all of this cynical gullibility, I sometimes wonder where the cynicism comes in. I am of the opinion that it makes its appearance in the sheepish behavior that causes “perfectly rational” human beings to reject new ideas and alternative tellings of events they know by memory. How could they trust anything different from what they already know? After all, our Definites were taught to us from childhood or at least was the single opinion we are consistently exposed to. This “common sense” feeds the question of how could anything consistent be wrong? Or, at least any situation or person which appears to be consistent on the surface.

That is the measure by which we judge our friends, our news sources, and countless other factors that influence our daily lives. If people or institutions come across as forthright and dependable, would that not lull many people’s natural and artificially ingrained, as the case might be from person to person, desire to revoke fledgling truths? I certainly believe so.

Science proves the equal existence in which cynicism and gullibility resides in us as a whole. At different points in our history, people came to believe ideas that seem comical when paralleled to our “modern” age of thinking. But, isn’t that what the people of Then said when theirs were the accepted knowledge of their day? “Our assumptions and scientific conclusions are the end-all in the debate over whether the Earth is flat or whether homosexuality is a mental disease?” Sounds familiar, yet still overwhelmingly removed from the beliefs of most people I interact with today.

I say “most people,” because I know for certain that there are people who continue to assume that homosexuality can be cured by a good jolt of shock treatment “therapy”, a beating, and/or vigorous prayer. How do I know this? These believers appear on my news programs and on my city’s streets. I have overheard or have had to remove myself from more than one conversation between individuals discussing their desire to beat members of the gay community or to send them Jesus, who will, apparently, cleanse them of their deviant sins. Right. As for the “most people” concerning the flat planet theory, I am simply leaving space for the few cultures Modern Science has yet to reach. But reach them, Science shall. Science has a peculiar way of creeping in to change Definites around when no one is looking. I do say that almost fondly, since Science and I usually get along so well.

The segment that started this entire entry went on to highlight the personal lies we tell and embrace as acceptable blurred realities. The journalist presenting his contribution to this week’s Primetime made a disclaimer stating that no one told any of the people shown in the story to lie. Yet, still I witnessed the ancient cell phone ruse. You know the one. The one where a person wishes to feel and look important, so they fake calls to nonexistent friends, lovers, parents, siblings, coworkers, and bosses. Perhaps their callers simply weren’t present, but wanted to be there for them in spirit.

There was also a fascinating young man who blatantly lied about being in a band and just having signed a record deal. He later admitted on camera that he wasn’t even in a band, and that he only knew a few guitar cords. Even though most people go “Yeah right.” when individuals claim dreams of stardom, the person he was speaking to appeared to have fully believed him.

Despite all of this, I am certain, without a doubt, that someone somewhere will be making a profit as result of our fluidic gullibility. Does anyone honestly know what is considered hotter than chic “non-believers” who will only accept pessimistic and tragic spins on our world? And if we happen to fall into the willing pitfalls of automatic trust, there will be someone who will know what to do with that trait as well. Bun Slimmers, Thigh Masters, and Eat Anything You Want Diets anyone?