Filtering

Cynicism is, to some extent, a form of utilitarian filtering. Contracting your beliefs, you filter out things that you see as likely to lead nowhere strategically, and focus on the practical. This filtering can help you accomplish more because it narrows the scope of your existance. It can also kill your creativity because you're effectively removing yourself from the inspiring and informative compost heap of evolutionary participation. At the root of cynicism is a lack of faith in the evolutionary process. You may accomplish more, but very likely more of the same.

Openness, alternatively, connects one to the process of evolutionary collective computation. The quality of the connection is dependent on personal development.