That's a very cynical way to live a life, isn't it?

What you choose to do with this information determines whether you are cynical or not, not the presence of the information itself.

You could throw your hands up and say the world is screwed up so I should start screwing the world, or you could say the world is screwed up so I'm going to choose to try to make things around me a little better while also protecting myself a little bit along the way.

I was taken advantage of by people before so this fixed my peasing/trusting people bug in me.

"Trust, but verify"

Used mostly in bookkeeping and nucleair monitoring, but very usefull outside it as well.