Yesterday, after the Carrotmob event (more on this soon), several people who’d been at the store came over to my place for a few beers. We started talking about cynicism, and why so many seem so attached to their cynical points of view, and what that worldview does to a person.

You won’t be surprised to hear that I came down firmly on the side of remaining optimistic and taking positive action. One of the people here played a little devil’s advocate with me, trying to convince me of the validity of a pessimistic viewpoint: “Cynical people would say that the reason they don’t do anything is because action is useless anyway. Nothing we do is going to really change anything, so why bother?”

But when you look at this statement logically, it doesn’t make sense. Our actions may or may not have a huge impact in the world, but when we take concrete steps to improve things around us, we are at least rolling the dice and participating in the game. A project may have a large impact or may have a small one, but will always have more effect than doing nothing.

Even worse, cynicism creates a false sense of separation between the cynical and the rest of the world. Cynics become like Waldorf and Stadler, sitting up in the box throwing zingers at the folks who are on the stage trying to put on a show. I love the curmudgeonly Muppets as much as anyone, but in the real world, the stakes are too high to prioritize awesome quippage over tangible participation in the creation of the future.

Lastly, a disaffected point of view allows the conditions it derides to continue to exist. In some sense, it even encourages things to get worse—the kind of thing that people are hinting at when they ask Jon Stewart if he’s sad that Bush is leaving, since it seems unlikely that Obama will provide as many opportunities for hilarity.

Like Jon Stewart, I would much rather have a functional President than a reliable source of jokes. And if the choice is between a functional world and a cooler-than-everyone-else attitude, I’ll choose the former. I can snark with the best of them, and changing the world doesn’t mean never laughing again, but when laughter is bound up with a feeling of justification in sitting on the sidelines throwing spitballs, it becomes more than a joke. It becomes a real live tool of The Man. Because while we throw spitballs, things continue to gallop down a path that we don’t want to travel. Cynicism = ever more spinning of wheels.

My sense, especially in the weeks since Obama’s big win, is that cynicism is transforming. We are finally getting disenchanted with disenchantment. Excitement is building, and we’re starting to be more interested in what’s possible than in what’s messed up. At least, some of us are, and it looks like we’ll be too busy to worry about spitballs ...