Resisting the tractor beam of cynicism

I was asked recently why I was still in advertising. A fair enough question, given that any hope I might have had of being eligible to enter those “30 under 30”, “40 under 40” or even “50 under 50” (oh wait, quelle surprise there’s isn’t one) lists has long since gone. I answered as I’m sure many others would have, that I love the variety, the people, the intellectual challenge, the satisfaction of building stuff that becomes part of millions of people’s lives, the pride in helping others realise their maximum potential, and the sheer fun of working in a creative industry.

But on reflection I don’t think that was what the questioner was really trying to get at. What I believe I was really being asked was why I was still able to be in advertising after all this time.

Why was I still able to be in advertising when we are not sole masters of our own fate? When we are not in charge or control of things? When ultimately we rely on the support, enthusiasm, and yes, sign off of others? When our own happiness, sanity, and sense of worth relies on the approval of those same people? Why was I still able to be in advertising when so many of the obstacles, prejudices, assumptions, and demands we encounter mean we can find ourselves having the same kinds of conversations again and again.

In other words I was being asked, how - when working in advertising can so often feel like some kind of Groundhog Day experience in which we encounter the same kinds of stresses, frustrations, and disappointments again and again - could I keep showing up and keep going?

Now I will be the first to acknowledge that I’m ill-qualified to dispense life lessons. I’ve made too many mistakes and failed too often to credibly peddle success recipes. They’re mostly (as I’ve argued elsewhere) the work of unreliable narrators anyway. I’m a slightly better provider of brand advice than personal development advice. That said, I think I can be bold enough to argue that if you want to have fun and be of help and value and do so consistently, over the longer (or even very long) term, then cynicism is the best strategy for failure.

***

We know what cynicism sounds like. Not least of all because it’s so exhaustingly public and tediously and desperately performative in its expression. “They don’t really mean it”… “I know exactly what they’re going to say”… “they’ll never buy it”… “what’s the point?” “It’ll never work”… “it’s the same old same old”… “it will never catch on”… Et cetera. Et cetera.

The weariness of the cynic might appear to have the glamorous sheen of some kind of hard-earned Bogart/ Eastwood-esque Weltschmerz. But we shouldn’t believe the sneering superiority that cynicism dresses itself up in. We shouldn’t fall for its claim to be possessed of a Marvel-like superpower that allows it to see the true, hidden, and invariably tawdry and disappointing motivations of other people. We shouldn’t be seduced by the too-hardcore/experienced/smart-to-have-any-dreams aura it strives to project. Show me a cynic, and I’ll show you somebody who is afraid.

The fact of the matter is that cynicism is not a sign of superiority, but of weakness. It is nothing more than a cowardly mask of self-delusion we wear to protect ourselves. Afraid of crushed hopes and failure, the cynic tells themselves (and anybody within earshot) that everything will inevitably end badly. It’s an aloofness as Roosevelt said “which will not accept contact with life’s realities.”

But for all its self-indulgent refusal to engage with reality, is it still extraordinarily powerful in its toxicity. Writes the journalist and author Caitlin Moran:

“When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes “No.”

It’s impossible to consistently create and give people (clients and consumers) stuff that’s interesting and/or useful and/or entertaining if you work so hard to despise the whole game and everyone in it. Furthermore, it will be really hard for your colleagues to be around that vibe. And you.

***

In her address to the 2016 graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, the creator of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) Maria Popova argued that:

“Cynicism is a poverty of curiosity and imagination and ambition”.

But these are merely the presenting symptoms, and exhorting the cynical to simply be more positive and curious is shitty psychology. It’s a bit like shouting at the first time skydiver paralysed with fear at the airplane door to “be brave”. As the American author, podcaster, and retired US Navy SEAL Jocko Willink has said:

“The solution to the problem is not going to be found in the problem. You have to get out of the problem”. 

The prescription of “be more curious” is not just shitty psychology. It sails dangerously close to being toxic positivity. Which really isn’t positivity at all but an encouragement to indulge in avoidance. Instead of actually making contact with reality and fully experience its agonies and blights not just its and ecstasies and glories, it offers vapid, calorie-free “dance like nobody is watching” platitudes that encourage complacency and passivity, not true engagement. George Carlin got it right when he said that “the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.”

There is of course, plenty of slightly better advice out there on how to unlearn the habit of cynicism. But much of it seems to start with some kind of encouragement to, in various ways, “count your blessings”. Now this is not to disparage the practice of gratitude (there’s a small but growing body of scientific evidence as to its physiological and psychological effects) but simply counting blessings and working harder to see the glass as half full does little to address cynicism’s unwillingness or inability to accept that like it or not, life is suffering. The fact is that as the writer and theologian C.S. Lewis wrote:

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

This is of course, ancient wisdom. The first of the Buddha’s Four Nobel Truths (Dukkha) teaches us that suffering exists: Life is suffering. Suffering is real and almost universal. Bloody marvellous. Except that the second of the Buddha’s Four Nobel Truths (Samudaya) teaches us that there is a cause of suffering. Suffering is due to attachment. It is the desire to have and control things. And it is the inability to control people and events (and thus very real the possibility of disappointment or failure) that is the fuel and fear that gives rise to cynicism.

The fact of the matter is that the Buddha’s insight and wisdom holds true for life, not merely the working life. Parent, spouse or lover… Waiter, architect, sex worker, account planner, flight attendant, tax adviser, plastic surgeon, or interior designer… None of us can control the thoughts, emotions, reactions and behaviours of others. There will always and forever be the chance of rejection, criticism, hidden agendas, personal chemistry failure, disappointment, empathy malfunction, last minute changes of mind, pet peeves, prejudices, divergent incentive systems, crossed lines, unaligned ambitions, hobby horses, fear, politics, bad moods, and the full and messy gamut of human behaviour in all its good, bad, and occasionally ugly glory. Control it we cannot.

Whatever.

For as the author Ursula K. Le Guin wrote:

“I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding - this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain… If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could… get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it.”

Happiness and usefulness over the long term, starts from accepting and making peace with - not hiding from - that reality.

And it continues with and is sustained by the exercise of hope. Not the reality-denying kind that’s optimised for Instagram. But the muscular, clear-eyed kind that knows full well that results are never guaranteed. That accepts results - when they do occur - may vary. That understands and faces up to the truth that to avoid risk and pain is actually to avoid living. As the American writer Rebecca Solnit urges us in her brilliant book Hope in the Dark:

“To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk… I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door...  Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. … To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable”.

And what, the determined adland cynic might ask, should give me any cause for hope and courage? To which I say - a) you OWE it to your consumer to give them stuff that’s interesting and/or useful and/or entertaining - as Howard Gossage famously put it “the audience is our first responsibility”; and b) the talent and brains and imagination and determination and creativity and resilience and generosity of your colleagues WILL BE ON YOUR SIDE.

***

So back to the original question. Why am I able to still be in advertising after all this time and remain happy, sane and useful? First, I’m lucky to be a white male who hasn’t had to struggle with the shit that those who aren’t have to contend with. And second, I haven’t given in to cynicism.

The American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr famously prayed for the serenity to accept the things he could not change, the courage to change the things he could - and the wisdom to know the difference. Timeless advice for life. And (should one choose it) a working life spent in advertising.

***

Sources

Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Serenity Prayer’

Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl, 2014

Maria Popova, address to the 2016 graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication

Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, 2004

Jocko Willink in conversation with Andrew Huberman, ‘How to Become Resilient, Forge Your Identity & Lead Others’