On cynicism

Having gone over this morning to Midtown Miscreant's blog for another reliable good read (If you haven't seen it, you might want to as it's good, he's funny and he's right, I think:  http://midtownmiscreant.blogspot.com/2011/01/fast-eddie-friday-house-cat-with.html)

It got me to thinking about cynics and cynicism so I looked up a formal definition of cynicism.  I found this on Wikipedia:

Cynicism (Greek: κυνισμός), in its original form, refers to the beliefs of an ancient school of Greek philosophers known as the Cynics (Greek: Κυνικοί, Latin: Cynici). Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism.


Check that out:  "the purpose of life" is "to live a life of virtue in agreement with nature."  


Zounds.  


That doesn't sound very cynical, at least not by our current usage of the word, does it?  And "rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health" (I don't understand that last one) "and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions."  "...happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which" is "natural for humans."  "...the world belonging equally to everyone..." and "...suffering...caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society."


Far from our current ideas of cynicism, this sounds positively virtuous, positive, supportive and democratic (in the bigger, older form of the word, having nothing to do with any political party).


How did this word turn in usage?


Or, to be more specific, how did we get so cynical?


Link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism