CYNICAL IDEALISM

I’ve seen this term over and over in books and trust me, I believe it’s a paradox and I know a few others that will agree with me. 

We Have To Understand “Cynical” and “Idealist” first before we’ll be able to determine further if the CYNICAL IDEALIST is indeed a paradox or I just haven’t been able to understand the concept vaguely.

In Understanding “Cynical”, we’d have to come in contact with terms like “Cynic” and “Cynicism” and in understanding “Idealist”, we’d have to refer to the term Idealism. I’ll define each of these terms separately to begin with and ref to the OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNER’S DICTIONARY (9th Edition) .

•CYNICAL : (adj)

-Believing that people only do things to help themselves rather than for good or honest reasons 

-Not believing that something good will happen or that something is important 

-Not caring that something might hurt other people, if there is some advantage for you

•CYNIC : (noun)

-A person who believes that people only do things to help themselves rather than for good and sincere reasons 

-A person who does not believe that something good will happen or that something is important 

•CYNICISM : (my own terms)

The act of being cynical 

•IDEALISM : 

(noun)

-The belief that a perfect life, situation etc can be achieved even when this is not very likely 

(Philosophy)

-The belief that our ideas are the only things that are real and that we can know about 

•IDEALIST : (my own terms)

A person who practices Idealism

Now that we have our definitions, we’d ask ourselves, can an Idealist be a Cynic or can a Cynic be an Idealist ?? From my perspective, hell no ! 

Why ?

Because a Cynic is like a realist, he sees life the way it is and lives it like that, he knows people, he doesn’t want to change them, he’d rather just live with them and an idealist ? Aims for perfection, he sees life the way it is and is not satisfied and would do anything to change it.

Hold on !

Let’s rewind a little bit

Let’s give a proper definition of a REALIST ref “a Cynic is like a REALIST”

•••ACCORDING TO THE OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNERS DICTIONARY (9th Edition);

A REALIST (noun)

-A person who accepts and deals with a situation as it really is and does not try to pretend that it is different 

-A writer, painter etc whose work represents things as they are in real life 

 A cynic is not always necessarily a realist but is like a realist, a cynic is actually what an idealist would call a realist in most cases, majority of the time ! Cynics are actually seen as bad people and I don’t get why, they’re the type that “cannot come and kill theirselves” (Nigerian saying) .

Somewhere while writing this, I was trying to decide if I was a Cynic or Idealist, and I was like most times I’m a Cynic and other times, I’m an Idealist and I was trying to find a term for that and just like the Holy Spirit came on the disciples, it dawned on me, “CYNICAL IDEALIST” , could this be the actual definition of a CYNICAL IDEALIST and the term is not so as PARADOX as we’ve thought it to be ?

Warriors and Angels

I’ll drop my pen here

And let you think over it 

Are you;

A cynic ?

An Idealist ?

A cynical idealist ?

Or do you stan the cynical idealist as a paradox ?

I’d appreciate contributions in the comment section !