Interestingly enough, being cynical is often a far different thing, culturally, than being a cynic.
To be a cynic is, some have said, merely a realist who has not yet been proven right. It's a suspicous attitude which sees less than benevolent intentions and outcomes on all sides.
And, in fact, you can be the cynical curmudgeon and be quite respectable, and even useful at times.
But to be cynical is a crime, by all appearances. Perhaps Cynics themselves are not cynical, because they have not become anything, whereas for an ordinary joe to becoming cynical in outlook means a loss of hope in the universe.
We decry a cynical outlook. Cynicims isn't just pessimism, seeing the dark side of things, but in fact sees an outright indecency in people, looks for the conspiracy, the rot, the corruption in society which will bring us all tumbling down from our happy puppet play.
Perhaps what is most frightening, most terrible about the cynical outlook is that it's reflected deep inside each and every one of us who dares to actually truly look at the world around us...and we don't like what we see there, the possibilities which haunt us from the murky depths of "now".
We don't want reflections. We want rose colored glasses, we want the romantic action movie that we look into and see only the fantasy. Reflections cause us to see our peripheral, outlying barbarism, and make us question how steady the ground on which we stand truly is.
And the cynical nature, the cynical outlook, is a focued, intense expression of this occurence.