I think of Diogenes as the Original Gangster! I don’t know if there was ever a human being who lived with as much SWAG, as my man D!
Diogenes was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.
Nothing is known about Diogenes’ early life except that his father was a banker. It seems likely that Diogenes was also enrolled into the banking business aiding his father.
At some point Diogenes and his father became involved in a scandal involving the debasement of the currency, and Diogenes was exiled from the city and lost his citizenship and all his material possessions.
(Daily guided meditation – FREE)
According to one story, Diogenes went to the Oracle at Delphi to ask for her advice and was told that he should “deface the currency”. Following the debacle in Sinope, Diogenes decided that the oracle meant that he should deface the political currency rather than actual coins. So he traveled to Athens and made it his life’s goal to challenge established customs and values.
Diogenes arrived in Athens with a slave named Manes who escaped from him shortly thereafter. With characteristic humor, Diogenes dismissed his ill fortune by saying, “If Manes can live without Diogenes, why not Diogenes without Manes?”
After losing his wealth, his citizenship and his slave, Diogenes embraced a life of austerity. He considered his avoidance of earthly pleasures a contrast to and commentary on contemporary Athenian behaviors. This attitude was grounded in a disdain for what he regarded as the folly, pretence, vanity, self-deception, and artificiality of human conduct.
Diogenes believed that society was corrupt, and maintained that all the artificial growths of society were incompatible with happiness and that morality implies a return to the simplicity of nature. So great was his austerity and simplicity that the Stoics would later claim him to be a wise man or “sophos”. In his words, “Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods.”
The stories told of Diogenes illustrate the logical consistency of his character. He inured himself to the weather by living in a clay wine jar. After seeing a peasant boy drink water from the hollow of his hands, he destroyed the single wooden bowl that he possessed and then exclaimed: “Fool that I am, I have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time!”
It was contrary to Athenian customs to eat within the marketplace, and still he would eat there, for, as he explained when rebuked, it was during the time he was in the marketplace that he felt hungry.
He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp, stopping in front of people on the street, lifting the lamp to their faces and then moving on. When asked what he was doing, he would answer, “I am just looking for an honest man.” Diogenes looked for a human being but reputedly found nothing but rascals and scoundrels.
When Plato, known for his accurate verbage gave the definition of man as “featherless bipeds,” Diogenes barged into a lecture at Plato’s academy, throwing a plucked chicken into the circle of students shouting: “Behold! I’ve brought you a man,” and so Plato had to ad “with broad flat nails” to his definition.
According to a story Diogenes was captured by pirates while on voyage to Aegina and sold as a slave in Crete to a Corinthian named Xeniades. Being asked his trade, he replied that he knew no trade but that of governing men, and that he wished to be sold to a man in need of a master.
Xeniades liked his spirit and hired Diogenes to tutor his children. Apparently he became “a cherished member of the household”, and was later set free.
It was in Corinth that a meeting between Alexander the Great and Diogenes is supposed to have taken place. While Diogenes was relaxing in the morning sunlight, Alexander, thrilled to meet the famous philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. Diogenes replied, “Yes, stand out of my sunlight.” Alexander then declared, “If I were not Alexander, then I should wish to be Diogenes.” “If I were not Diogenes, then I too would wish to be Diogenes,”
I really LOVE the swag with which Diogenes lived his life. I’m not sure that there’s a big life lesson in the story, but if there is then maybe it’s this:
It has never been different…
2,500 years ago the world was run by morally bankrupt men.
Society lived in pretence, vanity and self-deception only concerned with artificial growth.
It was all coming apart at the seams, clearly humanity was doomed…
But here we are, two and a half millennia later. Humanity has survived, and will survive again. Like Diogenes we all have to decide for ourselves how we want to live our lives, and to hell with opinion.
But make sure you catch the part where the guy whose slave runs away after he loses all his wealth and finds himself on the street, is now the guy who angrily yells at society that they are all living greedy lives of excess. And that living in poverty is the only righteous way to be.
Humans right!?
It has never been different!
-Pierre-
(Your mind is supposed to be your superpower, not your kryptonite. Reclaim your power.)