The privations of Diogenes

Nine exceedingly passive ‘activists’ glued themselves to the floor of a Volkswagen factory in Germany and complained about being humiliated, left overnight in the cold and the dark and without ‘facilities’. Should they not have rejoiced at such deprivations to which the whole world ought, in their view, to accustom itself if it is to be saved? The ancient cynics could teach these narcissists a thing or two.

‘Cynicism’ derives from the ancient Greek kuôn, ‘dog’, the epitome of shamelessness. Diogenes (c. 410-320 bc) agreed, admitting that he lived in accordance with nature rather than custom and arguing that human conventions – marriage, family, politics, reputation, wealth, power, etc – stifled one’s true humanity. He claimed to value those inner resources which could be nurtured only by severe physical and mental self-discipline: self-sufficiency, freedom of speech, and indifference to hardship and shame.

Diogenes lived in a large clay wine-storage jar, carrying out all the usual human functions in public, living the life of a beggar and sage, and attracting a large following of admirers (including, apparently, Alexander the Great), who relished his put-downs. He called an ignorant rich man ‘the sheep with the golden fleece’. Asked what wine he enjoyed drinking, he replied, ‘somebody else’s’.

He once begged from a statue. Asked to explain why, he said: ‘To practise being refused.’ Seeing the child of a prostitute throw stones at a crowd, he cried out, ‘Take care you don’t hit your father.’ Put up for sale as a slave, he pointed to a rich man and said: ‘Sell me to him: he needs a master.’ He famously claimed to be a kosmopolîtês, ‘citizen of the world’ (dogs do not make cultural distinctions).

If today’s protestors were to embrace such an attitude, switch off their power supplies and destroy their credit cards, passports, driving licences and mobile phones, they might win a little more credibility. Otherwise let Diogenes have the last word about them: ‘Yes, a great crowd, but few that could be called men.’