There is no doubt that demoralization and cynicism have been strong in American society in the last number of decades. It spreads on its own between people, being contagious, spreading regardless of whether there is an independent reason for it to do so or not. Its power makes it contagious, as it feels attractive to people who been burned by it, because it gives them commiseration and support from others and is hence reinforcing. This demoralization and cynicism increases significantly as a result of this pandemic, which is a very complicated situation with no easy answers. Depression and anxiety are on the rise.
People with a tendency to look for simplistic cause-and-effect answers will be attracted to cynicism, as will people with an emotional attachment to cynical thinking. Cynicism has been in the collective subconscious of society for a long while now and its presence and contagion enables the populace to catch more cynical feelings and corresponding thoughts more easily. Demoralization and cynicism are abstract, vague concepts that are difficult to tie down and this adds to the likelihood that they can be contagious, especially with all the dishonesty, self-centeredness and corruption in society. One or more occasions of such events seems to reinforce and strengthen the presence of rampant cynicism in others’ minds. Corruption and dishonesty have unfortunately been around forever, as problematic episodes in society that only are undertaken by some people. The hurt and distrust that comes from these scandalous episodes are emotional in nature, and effects people negatively in many ways, affecting employment opportunities and financial aspects. These negative emotions cause people’s fear to spread, likely more than it should, causing cynicism. But we don’t need cynicism, as that suggests helplessness and pervasiveness.
Historically, demoralization had very gradually entered into American society over the past number of decades and was not immediately noticeable. For example, since the Kitty Genovese episode in New York in 1964 where no one helped a woman who was being attacked and murdered while entering her apartment to the present time, demoralization and cynicism have increased a thousand fold. The New York Times published an article claiming that 38 witnesses saw or heard this attack, almost 60 years ago, and that none of them called the police or came to her aid.[1] This story was questioned many decades later, in that the number of witnesses was not corroborated, and some may have indeed attempted to call the police for help at the time. But the point is that the newspaper reported the absence of many people, who were not trying to rescue her or call for help, and this lack of apparent helpfulness shocked many people in society at the time, over one woman’s life, which should be the case, as life is precious. As a result, the bystander effect was developed by psychologists who tried to explain why very few or possibly no one helped this poor woman. The American Psychological Association explain it as “a phenomenon in which people fail to offer needed help in emergencies, especially when other people are present in the same setting. Studies of this tendency, initially described in response to well-publicized failures of bystanders to render aid in emergencies, have identified a number of psychological and interpersonal processes that inhibit helping, including misinterpreting other people’s lack of response as an indication that help is not needed, confusion of responsibility, and diffusion of responsibility.” This explains the social – interpersonal dynamics likely present at the time of one of these incidents, along the lines that observing people may think something like “this is risky so we will wait for someone else to handle it, and if someone moves forward maybe I will too.” Cynicism and demoralization may already have been present in embryonic form, possibly started or increased by the assassination of the U.S. president in 1963 and the conspiracy theories attached to it.
Now, almost six decades later, they have increased by a million-fold, or so it seems. The populace is now used to thousands of people just dying on the streets. At least 680 homeless men died on the streets of Los Angeles in 2019, and thousands are reported to die on the streets of the U.S. annually.[2] The same phenomenon occurred to a lesser degree in Canada.[3] This has to effect morale even if people get used to it. When you are used to it you don’t notice it because it doesn’t stand out and it creeps up on you gradually and still affects you subconsciously. It enters the collective subconscious. You can only close your eyes so long until it comes back into your field of vision. You eventually come to accept it as real and actual and start to take it for granted but many don’t realize that there is an emotional cost to it for us even though we accept it. We accept it as a fact but likely feel sad, demoralized and helpless. We may accept it in a helpless way and the emotional residue stays with us as a prolonged sadness and helplessness that leads to cynicism, divisiveness and conflict as people disagree over how much money to spend helping the homeless. It contributes to divisiveness.
Demoralization and cynicism have been strong and contagious and have had a significant role in causing the election of the orange headed president in 2016. This came partly because of cynicism about politicians only being interested in themselves. People saw his apparent genuineness and used that feeling to justify voting for him because they saw him as different from the average politician, about whom they were cynical. They didn’t check his record or his history which would have shown that the genuineness was significantly compromised and nullified by many conflicting characteristics.
They perceived him as genuine likely because of his non-verbal behavior and his voice tone, which were vaguely consistent with that of a genuine person, when only those qualities as perceived in the moment were perceived. In fact, taking a greater perspective, it would appear that as a true narcissist, he believed fully and only in his own thoughts and beliefs, felt that he alone created the truth, and so would have come across to casual observers as genuine. A person who lies knows internally that they are making a statement that goes against the reality of the facts, and the truth, even if this knowledge is subconscious, so they will not come across as genuine in voice tone. However, a person who believes that they alone create the truth do not believe they are lying when they speak and so sound genuine. This describes the orange-headed president. In fact, however, the Washington Post stated that he made 16,241 false or misleading statements as President over four years, or at least 14 a day.[4] Making a false statement doesn’t mean it’s a lie, as the person uttering the statement may believe it’s true although their source of reference for truthfulness is lacking in substance, as seems to have been the case with this man. But the internal awareness was lacking, as he may have believed most of his statements to be true, as he judged their veracity against his own distorted judgment. It was distorted because he spent his life living in a bubble of alternate realities unlike that of most people, and lacked the critical thinking skills necessary to discern truth from reality.
In 2016 some people were demoralized and cynical after many previous years of having been exposed to actual lies by politicians. They likely thought the dark-skinned president was an exception to this rule of corruption and lies since he had a good approval rating all along and seemed genuine and real. But there were those who disliked him because of the color of his skin and his party affiliation. They were seeking someone to rely on and found him lacking. The orange-headed president, being authoritarian in style, appealed to them as a rescuer from their self-perceived plight of powerlessness and victimhood, as if he were like a white knight. They thought it didn’t matter that this man had no experience in government since he sounded genuine to many people, a new perception about a politician. This was indeed refreshing to those who believed it and they became devout followers, desperate for someone telling the truth. But his lack of experience and training in this type of political and government work proved to be fatal.
Also, his lack of critical thinking ability and over-reliance on his own limited ability at reasoning, knowledge and foresight failed him, as he over-relied on his instincts. His administration’s decision in 2018 to dismantle a National Security Council directorate at the White House charged with preparing for when, not if, a pandemic would hit the nation alarmed a number of people. There was no foresight in this decision. Its first director said in March 2020 that the directorate had been set up to be the “smoke alarm” and get ahead of emergencies and sound a warning at the earliest sign of “fire” — “all with the goal of avoiding a six-alarm fire” she said. In fact, she said it’s clear that eliminating the office contributed to what she called a “sluggish domestic response” to the onset of the pandemic. They weren’t on top of things.
This was probably because there had been no such thing as a pandemic for a century, so it was like it didn’t exist to a man who had little actual training. So since the pandemic was not right in front of us at that time, it was thought of as non-existent. It was thought to the untrained eye as being unlikely, unnecessary and expensive. Even when it came he couldn’t accept it. In the age of cynicism these views as to its supposed non-existence would likely be widely accepted by the cynical who thought many expenses may have been unnecessary for what they called a hoax. This is fast, simplistic thinking caused by emotional thinking. There is little, if any, depth, skepticism or perspective to these thoughts.
Emotional thinking likes immediate and obvious things to happen, like thinking that everything you see at one time is all that there is to see about an issue. This is simple, fast thinking which appeals to the emotions, which like simple, straightforward messages. This is conducive to emotional contagion. This simple, fast thinking was likely the reason that the pandemic directorate was cancelled. His base supporters would likely have been in the mood for something like this cancellation to happen due to cynicism toward ordinary politicians who plan for such things. But for them because it was distant and theoretical they didn’t think it was important, and they didn’t trust experts or scientists, probably because they were too cold and clinical and made a lot of money, so their cynicism clicked in. It was contagious. They trusted him but not these other politicians. The electorate as a whole were kind of in a rebellious mood, related to their cynicism, so they thought there was no risk in doing this and we need somebody new in government who would change the ways of doing things.
Probably they felt like he was a normal politician who would just do things for the economy and rev it up and create more jobs and that’s all that mattered. That’s emotional thinking because it implicitly suggests panic about the economy crashing and with it jobs drying up. That is understandable, because we are always striving for fulfillment of basic needs, according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The emotion would likely ramp up their estimate of the percentage of likelihood that the economy would really crash. But emotions don’t think and give our false estimates. And they get emotional voting, which is not smart voting. They weren’t thinking about other topics, and how relevant they were, like pandemic planning, like systematic reasoning might suggest. So they decided to vote emotionally, allaying their unnecessary panic. They got the orange headed president. The result of emotional contagion.
[1] Gansberg, Martin (March 27, 1964). “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police; Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector”. The New York Times.
[2] https://insp.ngo/there-are-literally-thousands-of-people-dying-homeless-on-the-streets-of-america/
[3] https://www.megaphonemagazine.com/dying_on_the_streets
[4] Fact Checker (January 19, 2020). “In 1,095 days, President Trump has made 16,241 false or misleading claims”. The Washington Post.