Sep 18, 2021
That's well put, although it's not just the existentialists. The Eastern religions entail the same cynicism, especially Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. Platonism has the same conclusion, based on Orphism and thus on a kind of dualism you can find in most ancient religions and in esoteric traditions in Christianity, including Gnosticism.
In fact, as Leo Strauss implied, intellectual circles in general tend to pose this dichotomy between the insider's cynicism or jadedness, and the hoi palloi's delusional optimism. Elsewhere, I talk about this as an echo of the shift from childhood innocence to experienced adulthood. Not everyone who's chronologically older is mentally so. The latter requires a kind of reconciliation with disenchantment.
