Cynicism Isn’t (Always) Wisdom

filled the 1990s. Even if authoritarianism resurfaced, Fukuyama wrote, it would undoubtedly be triumphed by democracy.

It might be abundantly clear by now that I’m in the middle of writing my government final papers. But, I present this example not to subliminally sell you on enrolling in a political science course or to argue about the merits of Fukuyama’s work — political scientists have been doing that since it was published in 1992.

Lia Sokol

My So-Kolled Life

Some of my fellow government major friends and I have a recurring joke about which of us is the most cynical. Competition is fierce: the state of global politics, it would appear, has not been breeding a strong sense of optimism.

While I can safely say that I was a cynic long before I was a government major, I’ve also started to question whether this default mindset of mine is doing much good. Does my skepticism — which I diplomatically prefer to market as realism — make me more equipped to confront the challenges of our world? Or, realistically, does it just make me sad?

To be clear, I think there is much to be cynical about. In fact, I would argue that my disillusionment is at least in part a product of our time — a time that is markedly different from the one in which our parents, for instance, grew up.

Tree decades ago, for example, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama ’74 wrote a book called Te End of History and the Last Man. In it, he argued that the expansion of liberal democracy marked an end-point in humanity’s ideological development. Te Cold War was over, the Soviet Union dissolved; an air of optimism