Complete issue can be found here: http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/assets/downloads/TCS_Volume14_Michaelmas_Issue7.pdf
Ah, week five. How good it was
to have you here, however brie fly.
A friend described you quite
philosophically as the ‘ultimate
leveller’. ‘How so?’ I queried.
‘Well,’ she replied, ‘it just means
that everyone is about as
cynical as me, for one week
only.'
It’s always nice to hear
people welcoming a bit of
cynicism into their lives.
Go on. Live wild. Do it. The
Oxford English Dictionary
(obviously my first port of call
for anything which calls
for a de finition)
informs me that
to be cynical
is ‘resembling
the Cynic
philosophers
in contempt of pleasure,
churlishness, or disposition to
find fault; characteristic of a cynic;
surly, currish, misanthropic,
captious; disposed to disbelieve in
human sincerity or goodness;
sneering’.
I’m now tempted
to trawl Wikipedia and
the darker ravages
of Google to find
out what a Cynic
philosopher is,
but I’m on a time
deadline with
this column as I
accidentally
took a
twelve hour disco nap yesterday from five in the
afternoon just before circuits
until five forty-three this morning
when my alarm alerted me to the
fact that my presence was required
on the Cam, so I’m just going to
leave it. You can look it up for
yourselves. at’s independent
learning right there, folks. That’s
what you’re here for.
Anyway, sorry, back to being
cynical. I think it’s good for you,
injecting some cynicism – mainly
because it makes the sunshine of
optimism all the sweeter when
experienced a fterwards. Human
sincerity? Pah. I spit on it. All
these blooming, darling Freshers,
with their open faces and earnest
vows of hard work – now is the
winter of our discontent in the
a ftermath of week five, now is
the time to realise that cynicism
will sneer with you at the missed
opportunities of the previous
weeks, will help you along the
way in the next two thirty a.m.
heartbreak, will lead you to a
place of misanthropy.
Think of it as a chrysalis. You
will emerge from cynicism’s
cocoon to the bright lights and
beautiful world of the almost-end
of term, revitalised by those hours
spent ignoring others’ happiness
and instead mainlining four
episodes of ‘Merlin’ on your own
in your room and eating your
weight in A fter Eights. My tenth
week five has been spent much
as my all my others – heartbreak,
chocolate, running. Alone, and
better for it. Don’t in flict yourself
on others when like this; it is
better for this introspection to be
carried out when the cynic in you
can yell in full ow, bothering no one else. Ideally at 3am I the
morning, fuelled by some wine.
Cry not for me, though,
Argentina. I take cynicism with
me wherever I am – and even
into week 6, following the OED’s
last de finition of cynical: ‘With
etymological allusion: Relating to
a dog; dog-like’. I think my disco
nap might have rotted my brain,
but I think it’s trying to tell me to
take a new brand of enthusiastic
cynicism into the coming weeks.
It sounds oxymoronic but I think,
like Tim Gunn always tells me,
that I can make it work.
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