Why have I become so cynical?
You listen to someone talk about a new cause, a plan, or a person they love. Before they even finish, you already see the ending. You keep it to yourself, but the thought arrives faster than it used to. This was not always your default.
The definition
In Act III of Lady Windermere's Fan, Cecil Graham asks Lord Darlington for a definition:
“What is a cynic?” — “A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, Act III
This quote often stands alone as a final judgment. In the play, it is only half of the conversation.
The counterpart
Graham responds immediately. A sentimentalist, he says, “is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”
Wilde places these two figures side by side, and they commit the same error from opposite ends. The cynic sees price; the sentimentalist sees value. Neither can hold both truths at once.
The history of a cynic
These two lines suggest a sequence. Many people are sentimentalists before they become cynics. They assign immense value to an idea, a career, or a partner without considering the cost.
Then the bill arrives.
To prevent it from happening again, they begin to check the price of everything early and with suspicion. When someone says “I can’t believe in anything anymore,” they may be talking about a specific old payment that still feels too high.
This differs from why have I become so boring, where something fades. Here, something was overpaid.
What did I once overpay for, and stop trusting the price after?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.