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Lesson 2.3: The Sect of the Dog
19 Plays1 month ago
Topics discussed:
- Different characterizations of the philosophy of Cynicism
- Survey of prominent Cynic thinkers
- Overview of the Cynic lifestyle
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Transcript
Leadership Shift After Plato's Death
00:00:03
Speaker
Today we are picking up the story right around the time that Plato dies. This is roughly 348 BCE e and a couple of things are going on in this time period.
00:00:15
Speaker
So first of all Plato has died, the master has died, and so there is the problem of finding a new scholarch for the academy. In other words they need someone new to lead the studies in the academy, Plato's school.
00:00:32
Speaker
You might think that the job would go to his most famous student, Aristotle, but that is not the case. Aristotle gets passed up and instead it someone you've probably never heard of gets the job.
00:00:46
Speaker
His name is Spusippus and he becomes a scholar of the academy. Aristotle meanwhile goes to Macedon, which is rising in strength. That is a Greek kingdom to the north of Athens.
00:01:01
Speaker
And so you can kind of understand what's going on here, it's very likely the case, at least the way I'm reading things, that Aristotle hadn't really reached his point where he was flourishing, right? His fluoroate, as it is sometimes called.
00:01:16
Speaker
Aristotle doesn't seem to hit his peak until a around his late 40s. And so, you know, it's just a case that people did recognize that he was brilliant, but he just wasn't quite there yet, right? So he couldn't be the scholar, yet Spusippus gets the job instead.
00:01:35
Speaker
And so he goes over to Macedon to become the tutor to the king's son. More on that on a subsequent lesson. But now Athens is there. No more Aristotle. No more Plato.
Introduction to Diogenes and Cynicism
00:01:51
Speaker
And during this time period, a homeless man is growing ever more popular. His philosophy has been described as a philosophy for dogs.
00:02:03
Speaker
And we, in fact, have met this man before. His name is Diogenes, although if you ask him, his name is actually the dog.
00:02:15
Speaker
His nickname is Diogenes. And so, yes, my friends, it is time finally for ah lesson on cynicism. I should say that this has nothing to do with the word cynic as it is used today.
00:02:30
Speaker
so just go ahead and clear your mind of any ah associations you have with the label cynicism. If you'd like, think about it as cynicism with a capital C.
00:02:42
Speaker
Because everything that we're going to cover here is very different, that's for sure. So let's just go with it. And I think you'll definitely get some ideas from all this.
00:02:56
Speaker
Not to say you'll agree with them, but it'll make you think.
00:03:01
Speaker
Diogenes the dog was in some ways familiar. He was a little bit like Socrates actually. He could handle you know the weather just fine. you wouldn't get too bothered by heat or by cold.
00:03:16
Speaker
ah He spent a lot of his time outside talking to people. ah In fact, much like Socrates, he would call out those who claimed to know but didn't actually know.
00:03:26
Speaker
Also like Socrates, Diogenes was very much interested primarily in ethics and not at all interested in physics or speculative philosophy, also known as metaphysics, or any of that stuff. He just thought it was all about living well.
00:03:43
Speaker
That is the ah key point. But in another way, he was very much not like Socrates. He has been described as abrasive. Maybe that's a good word for him.
00:03:57
Speaker
Plato called him Socrates gone mad. So he was definitely a little wild. And from the time that Plato died, again, around 348
00:04:09
Speaker
And to the time of his death, Diogenes, for about 25 years, raised hell in Athens. That's the only way to describe it accurately. And even before Plato died, we do know that he, Plato, and Diogenes,
00:04:25
Speaker
had many recurrent run-ins. Diogenes would disrupt Plato's lectures and he would reproach or mock Plato for sucking up the tyrants.
00:04:37
Speaker
So we will talk about those in a little bit. Let me begin by trying to synthesize the essence of cynicism.
00:04:49
Speaker
Now, this will be, you know, sort of a fruitless effort from the get-go because cynicism sort of self-consciously defies definition. I mean, they themselves, if they knew that I had a lesson trying to get at the the main point of cynicism,
00:05:08
Speaker
they would probably disrupt it because they say that philosophy is a physical activity. It is not supposed to be done in classrooms. It is supposed to be lived, right?
Principles of Cynicism: Nature and Self-Sufficiency
00:05:18
Speaker
So out of the lifestyle philosophies that we will cover in this course, this is maybe one of the most, you know, physical lifestyles.
00:05:28
Speaker
So nonetheless, of course, on a lesson on cynicism, we do have to try to capture its essence. That way the rest of the lesson kind of makes sense.
00:05:39
Speaker
So I'm going to try to do this. and None of these are exactly accurate and they're actually not even incompatible with each other. But, you know, it's just stressing different aspects of what it seems like the cynics were all about.
00:05:56
Speaker
Okay, here's try number one. The whole point of Cynic philosophy was to live in accordance with nature. What does that mean? Well, here's the long way of saying it.
00:06:10
Speaker
The Cynics believe that nature gives you all that you need. However, most of us want and take more than what we need. so what you have to do is to train yourself to only want and take what you actually need.
00:06:28
Speaker
And this might involve getting rid of a lot of desires and needs that you think are necessary, but really they're not. And so maybe the short, pithy way of saying this is that for the cynics, to live in accordance with nature, that just means self-sufficiency.
00:06:49
Speaker
It just means you should be able to meet all your needs. And that entails, of course, reducing your needs so that you can actually meet them all yourself.
00:07:01
Speaker
if you think about it right now, I the way I live and the way probably you live, too, you can't really meet all your needs. And I'm going to give you a funny example to kind of start us off here.
00:07:12
Speaker
But just this morning, I was stressed out because I couldn't find my chapstick. And i literally thought to myself, well I need my chapstick. That is shameful thing.
00:07:23
Speaker
shameful And b ah that would be ah you know an unnecessary desire. mean, i mean i want my chapstick, sure, and I like having it.
00:07:34
Speaker
but I don't need it, right? And what the cynics would say is that, well, that's, you know, you shouldn't need that. All right, so get yourself used to living without chapstick. um That would be more self-sufficient or learn how to make it yourself.
00:07:49
Speaker
By the way, I have no idea or nor do I have an intention to learn how to make chapstick. So if I were a cynic, I would just get rid of my need, my desire, my wanting of chapstick.
00:08:03
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Let me give you a cynic idea to help you visualize what the goal of cynicism is. This is called sometimes the cynic hierarchy. And just imagine three levels, right? It's humans at the bottom, and the middle, there's animals in particular. Maybe you can visualize a dog in the central place of the middle strata.
00:08:28
Speaker
And on top are the gods. Okay, so let's explain what each of these levels mean. Let's go back to the bottom. That's most humans, right?
00:08:39
Speaker
Humans are at the bottom because they need a lot of things to survive. If you ask most people what they need to live, ah just look at someone when they're traveling somewhere for, you know, a week or so.
00:08:52
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um They take a whole lot of things that really don't seem necessary or watch someone go camping, right? If it's anything like me, basically, I don't camp. I glamp, right? It's a glamorous kind of camping where I take all these, you know, things to make my stay a little more enjoyable, right?
00:09:10
Speaker
We need a lot of things. We want a house. We want nice clothes. We want food. And actually, you don't even really want food. Many people want a certain kind of food.
00:09:21
Speaker
Maybe you know some people who are very picky. I don't eat carrots when they're steamed. That banana is too mushy. Take your pick, right? Some people find any reason to not eat the food that's right in front of them.
00:09:34
Speaker
So instead they can go, you know, get something else. Or I have a nephew. I think I always talk about my nephews in this ah course. Sorry. ah But I have a nephew who, you know, for a period of his life, essentially would only eat chicken nuggets and, you know, pizza.
00:09:51
Speaker
And his mom would have to go get that every time he you know sat down at dinner. It had to be one of those things or a couple of equally greasy, unhealthy you know foods. Well, that's the way most humans are.
00:10:05
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and you know maybe it's not food, but all of us just seem to have a lot of needs. Right. I need to sleep a certain amount of time. I need my phone fully charged. I need to have music playing all the time because I get bored otherwise.
00:10:18
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I need my headphones when I go to the gym. Whatever that may be, humans are full of needs. Now compare that to the middle level, the level of animals, right? Or think of a dog in particular.
00:10:32
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What do they really need? now I'm not talking about a spoiled dog that we have nowadays in certain households. Think about a stray dog, you know, a dog that's been living on the streets for several years and he can get food for himself and he'll eat whatever he finds, basically.
00:10:49
Speaker
He doesn't need a home. He doesn't need these cute little couches that dog owners buy for their dogs. They'll just, they're fine with the ground. They don't need you to groom them every two or three weeks. They're just going to be okay letting their hair grow and and drinking water from wherever they can. None of this bottled stuff that some dog owners give their dogs.
00:11:11
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A healthy stray dog can completely take care of himself without any aid from humans. They just survive with what nature provides, right? At least that's what the cynics say.
00:11:24
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And then you go to the top level. That's the gods. Now the gods are completely self-sufficient. They need nothing from nature, nothing from humans, nothing at all. They can completely survive on their own.
00:11:38
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Well, according to the cynics, to live in accordance with nature, that is, once more, just to be self-sufficient. In other words, what you should do is move from the current level that we are on the hierarchy, the level of most humans, to up towards the level of the gods who are fully self-sufficient.
00:11:58
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Now, of course, that's basically impossible to do. You cannot become a god. But what you can do is get as close as possible, which is living like an animal, which is in particular living like a dog.
00:12:13
Speaker
That is why cynicism has been called philosophy for dogs. In case you need some more convincing about how it is that self-sufficiency is a good thing, why you should strive to be self-sufficient the way the cynics say, think about this.
00:12:30
Speaker
It is the weak who have more needs than the strong. Think of sick people. They need medicine. They need rest. They need a lot of liquids. Think of children.
00:12:42
Speaker
They need you to make their food for them. They need naps throughout the day. They don't know how things work yet. So sick people and children, they have a lot of needs. But a healthy adult has fewer needs.
00:12:55
Speaker
So you can see that it is better to have fewer needs. It is an improved state, we might say, to have fewer needs. You don't want to be like the sick. You don't want to be a child who has a lot of needs.
00:13:07
Speaker
You want to move away from that. We might say first to the level of a healthy adult, but then even among healthy adults, some have fewer needs than others. So according to the cynics, you want to go away from having needs, right?
00:13:21
Speaker
Reduce the number of needs that you have. And then those needs that you have left over, those necessary needs, you can meet them all yourself. That is a goal of self-sufficiency.
00:13:34
Speaker
Now, maybe that sounds good to you, but you're not, you know, you're not going to probably like what it means. Let me, let me kind of paint this picture of self-sufficiency for you. Let's start with a not so bad one. Okay, first of all, the cynics were locavores.
00:13:50
Speaker
A locavore is someone who only eats things that are grown in their general area, right? Their general environment. So if I'm not mistaken, i had an avocado from Mexico last night and I had some fruit from Nicaragua or some other Central American country this morning.
00:14:13
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure that much much of the food that I eat on a day-to-day basis is not grown, you know, within a 20-mile radius from me, but much, much further away instead.
00:14:25
Speaker
That would have to change, according to the cynics. You have to eat in a way that is simple and easily accessible. And that just means, you know, that you should be able to procure it for yourself. You can either grow it yourself or acquire it from someone nearby you.
00:14:41
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And so you got to be a locavore, according to the cynics. Okay, I started you off with kind of a simple one. But to be a real cynic, let's and show you the rest of it.
00:14:53
Speaker
The cynics saw wealth as the root of multiplication of needs. In other words, they saw wealth as the source of unhappiness.
00:15:07
Speaker
Striving for money and then getting that money actually causes more problems than it resolves. And you know this, right? You can be perfectly rich and perfectly miserable.
00:15:20
Speaker
In fact, a more contemporary philosopher, the notorious B.I.G., also said it more pithily, Mo' money, Mo' problems. So the cynics completely agree with Biggie.
00:15:34
Speaker
And one cynic, Bayon, would kind of point out a certain rich man who seemed to be just full of anxiety because of his wealth. He said of a rich man who basically fretted over every single little penny, he said, he does not own a fortune.
00:15:52
Speaker
Fortune owns him. And so what is a solution to, you know, getting rid of the anxieties caused by money? Just accept poverty.
00:16:06
Speaker
Self-imposed and ever-increasing poverty, right? So you should just give up everything you own, accept a couple of things, I'll let you know what they are in a second, and continuously try to get rid of everything that you just don't need.
00:16:23
Speaker
Here is a nice starting point about what it is that you really need, according to the cynics. All you need is a cloak, right, which is a piece of clothing.
00:16:35
Speaker
It should be simple. It should not require expensive dyes or be fancy or anything like that. Just, you know, very utilitarian, very practical. And with that cloak, you can use it as a bed.
00:16:48
Speaker
You fold it in half for a pillow or use it as a blanket. When it gets cold, by the way, you just fold it in half and you put it on you like that. And so that'll be a double layer. It's like you're wearing two cloaks.
00:17:00
Speaker
So that's one of the things that you need. You also need a knapsack ah and sometimes a walking stick. When you're older, you might need a walking stick. And that is your cynic starting kit. That's all you really need, says Diogenes.
00:17:17
Speaker
At one point, Diogenes had more things. He also had a cup that he would use to get water from streams or whatever so he can drink water. But then he saw a child cup his hands and drink water that way. um And he realized, oh man, I don't need this thing at all.
00:17:35
Speaker
And so he got rid of his cup. And so it is, that's the kind of poverty that you're looking for. Ever increasing poverty. You want fewer and fewer things.
00:17:47
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So you have fewer and fewer things to worry about. Because really, um all you need for survival, you can get without these things, without most things.
Cynicism's Critique of Wealth and Societal Norms
00:17:57
Speaker
Food, shelter, water, you can get them basically without any possessions, right?
00:18:02
Speaker
You can ask for food or you can hunt. Some cynics would apparently hunt. Everything that you need for survival can be easily procured without any actual property being owned.
00:18:16
Speaker
just so you can see how maybe extreme this commitment to poverty is, Socrates was not exactly, you know, ah fat cat who was flashing his wealth all over the place.
00:18:30
Speaker
He, I believe, gave up a lot of it. But Diogenes even rebuked Socrates, of all people, for being too luxurious in his lifestyle.
00:18:42
Speaker
What did Diogenes find so objectionable in Socrates' lifestyle? Socrates wore sandals and Diogenes called that a luxury.
00:18:54
Speaker
So yes, my friends, you don't even need sandals to be a cynic. You can just get rid of your chandles too. Get your feet used to walking barefoot and you'll be fine. You don't actually need them.
00:19:06
Speaker
What else should you do to live in accordance with nature? Well, the cynics looked down on grooming in general, but they were particularly dismayed by the grooming of genitals.
00:19:18
Speaker
So if you are a cynic, my friends, please just gotta go au naturel, okay? No grooming whatsoever. Let the hair grow, let the beard grow, let whatever else grow.
00:19:29
Speaker
it is fine just like that. That would be living in accordance with nature. um What do you do for a home? Well, you can follow Diogenes' example. He lived in a big clay jar.
00:19:41
Speaker
So that was his only home. He would stay there when it was raining or something like that. Most of the rest of the time he would be out there talking to people. And that's all you need. In fact, here is a very Socratic claim that Diogenes would make another similarity with Socrates.
00:20:00
Speaker
Diogenes would say that virtue, you know, living well, living in accordance with nature, according to the cynics, is all you need for happiness. The language that is often used to describe this way of thinking is that virtue is sufficient for happiness. If you live well, if you live virtuously, that suffices to achieving a state of happiness.
00:20:27
Speaker
so Okay, my friends, that is one attempted definition of the essence of cynicism. That does get a lot of it, but let me give you another try at this. Hopefully this one will get some dimensions that I didn't quite emphasize sufficiently the first time around.
00:20:46
Speaker
Another way to think about cynicism is that it is an anti-school movement. And I mean this literally, they were against the philosophical schools of the time.
00:20:59
Speaker
It's hard to call them a school of philosophy if they were against the schools of philosophy. But that is, you know, think about it as a school of philosophy that tore down other schools and then would tear itself down too. I mean, it's a very strange sort of idea here.
00:21:17
Speaker
Another way to put it is this. Cynicism is just a critique of the intellectual culture in Athens and in other Greek city-states.
00:21:29
Speaker
So cynicism is kind of a counter-cultural movement. It is a form of protest. Now let me get one thing clear here. This does not mean that it is an anti-intellectual movement. They aren't against learning in general, or at least not necessarily.
00:21:47
Speaker
What they are responding to though is the intellectual climate in Athens at the time. During this time period, especially after Plato, Plato is sort of a pivotal figure here.
00:21:59
Speaker
It was believed that in order to be rational, in order to live philosophically, maybe is another way to put it, you have to find some philosophical school, accept its principles of reasoning, its principles of rationality.
00:22:15
Speaker
Some might call it its dogmas. And through those tools that the school of philosophy you chose would give you, that's how you would live the philosophical lifestyle.
00:22:29
Speaker
Well, the cynic said to this, rubbish, that is absolutely not what is necessary. You don't need ah fancy school. You especially don't need Plato's school. Remember, Diogenes kind of had it in for Plato.
00:22:44
Speaker
All you need, if you one if you want to live philosophically, all you really need is to live in a accordance with nature. And that doesn't require a fancy degree. That doesn't require studying mathematics for 50 years.
00:22:58
Speaker
You just get out there and do it. You live in ah accordance with nature. And that requires guts. That requires strength. That requires self-control. And that is enough.
00:23:12
Speaker
to live philosophically. That is what living philosophically is. And so get out there. That's the general idea here. You don't need these cute little schools that have been cropping up.
00:23:24
Speaker
We do have a little anecdote about Diogenes that really drives this point home. Apparently someone went up to him and, you know, he wanted to be his student.
00:23:35
Speaker
So he asked for one of his books. And Diogenes, of course, said no, you know. The true training is to come out into the streets and live with me.
00:23:47
Speaker
But you're opting instead for some code of written rules. There are no rules for this. Come into the streets, live with me. That's the way to be a cynic.
00:23:59
Speaker
And so there we go. It's not necessarily anti-learning. It's that if you want to live philosophically, you just have to go out there and do it.
00:24:10
Speaker
You don't have to spend time with a bunch of intellectual activities. It's a physical thing. So get out there and do it. right, so that's another take on cynicism.
00:24:21
Speaker
Let me give you one more. And again, these aren't incompatible with each other, but I'm just stressing different dimensions of cynicism. And I think collectively, if you understand all of them, you're kind of getting the gist of what it means to be a cynic.
00:24:39
Speaker
So here is attempt number three. Cynicism is simply a rejection of the mainstream values of society. On this take of cynicism, the main point is ethics, right? What they are doing is they are critiquing the values of society. In fact, they're trying to refute them.
00:25:02
Speaker
They're trying to show that they're all wrong.
00:25:21
Speaker
So even though I just said that the cynics probably shouldn't be understood as a school of philosophy because they were so anti-school, maybe let's think of them briefly as a school of philosophy so we can kind of systematize what they were saying.
00:25:38
Speaker
Even though, of course, they would absolutely, you know, find it repugnant that I even try to do so. And they would surely barge into my lecture and interrupt it.
00:25:49
Speaker
um But let's look at them this way. According to the cynics, the goal of life is happiness, right? The word that the Greeks used is eudaimonia.
00:26:00
Speaker
Of course, this could mean happiness. It could also be interpreted as flourishing or thriving. Let's use just the word happiness. Most of the schools of philosophy agreed with the cynics about this.
00:26:12
Speaker
What they disagreed about is what happiness is And what virtue is. And virtue, by the way, course, all the schools disagree on what it meant.
00:26:25
Speaker
But it was generally agreed that virtue was conducive to happiness. Some people thought that being virtuous or living virtuously is enough to get to happiness.
00:26:36
Speaker
Others like Aristotle thought it was only a part of getting happiness. But either way, virtue was necessary for being happy. So living the good life, being a good person.
00:26:50
Speaker
But of course, different schools had different takes on what it meant to be virtuous. And the cynics were... of a mind that virtue had to do with nature, had to do with living in accordance with nature.
00:27:06
Speaker
So putting all this together, according to the cynics, living in accordance with nature, in other words, virtue, that guarantees happiness.
00:27:18
Speaker
And so that's their main message. Live in a way that is self-sufficient and you will be happy. And so if that's the key to happiness, the cynics realized that the way most people are living their lives just ain't going to cut it.
00:27:36
Speaker
They're doing it wrong. Most of us live our lives with excess needs and we're nowhere even near self-sufficient. Just think about all the things that you use every day that you can't make for yourself or that you can't fix for yourself.
00:27:58
Speaker
Or some things that you can't even do for yourself, right? Think about all the gadgets and gizmos that you have. Can you make any of them? My guess is probably no.
00:28:10
Speaker
Do you grow your own food? Probably not. Did you build your own car? I highly doubt it. All these things that you use every day, you needed someone else to make or grow for you.
00:28:31
Speaker
That is not being self-sufficient. So according to the cynics, we're like these spoiled dogs that I was talking about earlier. You know, if you drop off one of these spoiled dogs in nature, they can't fend for themselves anymore.
00:28:46
Speaker
Had they been raised in nature, right? If they had been feral dogs their whole life, they will be fine all on their own. Well, that's what humans should strive for too, to live in accordance with nature, to take care of all their needs on their own.
00:29:02
Speaker
You can see here, ethics is absolutely primary on this way of interpreting the cynics, right? They're all about self-sufficiency and taking care of themselves.
00:29:13
Speaker
And so those are behaviors. Those are ways of acting. And so insofar as that's what you want to do, it really doesn't help to know a whole lot about something like speculative philosophy.
00:29:26
Speaker
Remember, Plato would have his ideal philosopher study metaphysics and mathematics for five decades before they really saw the true nature of reality.
00:29:39
Speaker
And the cynics are saying, forget all that. You don't even need to do that. You don't need fancy degrees to be happy. All you need is to become self-sufficient and studying metaphysics gets in the way of doing that.
00:29:53
Speaker
Philosophy for the cynics is a full-contact sport. They're saying, go on and get out there. Start practicing. That's the only way to achieve self-sufficiency.
00:30:05
Speaker
But of course, the cynics had to also get rid of the old values in their own minds and in the minds of others in society. So the way that most people are living, those ways are reinforced with our ways of looking at the world, right? Our values.
00:30:25
Speaker
So part of cynic practice is to, well, let me put it in very blunt terms, destroy those values. If we are being more philosophical, we can use the language that Friedrich Nietzsche uses.
00:30:41
Speaker
It's a re-evaluation of values or a transvaluation of values. But the cynics are basically trying to undermine the values of society. And the way that they do that, well, they have a fancy little word for a little phrase.
00:30:57
Speaker
They call it defacing the currency. So what is defacing the currency? Well, literally, it means taking off the face from a coin. And so what they're going to do to the conventions and values and practices and rituals of society is to take their face off, right?
00:31:17
Speaker
To make them useless, to mock them so much until they're proved to be rotten, to show how useless they really are. We can start with some conventions that we've already critiqued.
00:31:32
Speaker
The cynics might say, well, you know, everyone has shoes. That seems like a value. It's nice to have shoes. But do you really need shoes? Don't your feet work just fine if you are barefoot?
00:31:45
Speaker
Sure, you have to get used to it for a little bit, but after that period of adjustment, you don't need shoes, say the cynics. What else? Most people, it seems, want to marry and have kids.
00:31:59
Speaker
Is that really a requirement? You have to do that? Many cynics did not marry. In fact, most cynics did not marry. And a lot of them also didn't have any kids.
00:32:13
Speaker
So these values that society tries to impose on you, what you have to do is test them. Are they really good values? Can you follow those ways of living and still live in accordance with nature?
00:32:26
Speaker
And the cynics find out, in most cases, no. So what you have to do is reject those values. And whenever you can, mock them. That way, in the end, once you've really gone through all the values of society and seen which ones are actually worthwhile, you can figure out what you really need and what do you really need.
00:32:47
Speaker
The cynics say, not much. And when you live in a way that is totally self-sufficient, where everything that you need, you can provide for yourself, then you'll be living in accordance with nature and by the way, you'll be happy.
00:33:06
Speaker
That is the key to happiness. It's not having a bunch of stuff. It's not social status. It's not political power. It's none of those things. Be able to take care of yourself.
00:33:17
Speaker
And then, well, you'll be like a dog.
00:33:48
Speaker
So those are my attempts at trying to get at the essence of cynicism. Now let's get to know some cynics a little bit better. Let me begin actually with someone that's not a cynic, but he's sort of a proto-cynic, pre-cynic, right? So his name is Antisthenes, and he was a student of Socrates.
00:34:12
Speaker
Now, according to the Stoics, Anticinous was the teacher of Diogenes, who was a teacher of Crates, who has, you know, if you go down far enough, some links to Stoic philosophers.
00:34:26
Speaker
Well, that is probably not true. That's probably just the Stoics trying to have some kind of connection all the way to Socrates himself. That's why Anticinous is sometimes falsely called the founder of cynicism.
00:34:41
Speaker
As I said, he's more of a proto-cynic. But he does have several cynic adjacent to practices. For example, he lived in self-imposed poverty.
00:34:53
Speaker
He practiced a form of asceticism where he would deny himself pleasures. ah He was very funny, which is something that various cynics are guilty of.
00:35:05
Speaker
And he practiced free love with several partners. Now, the poverty, the being funny, the free love, those are all very cynic things. The asceticism, the denying yourself certain pleasures, that's not really very cynical at all. That's not a cynic thing to do.
00:35:23
Speaker
The cynics were not against pleasure. They were against pleasures that you couldn't provide for yourself. Right. So if you could build yourself a yacht, I mean, I guess have at it.
00:35:34
Speaker
It's probably not worth it because it takes your time away from other self-sufficient activities. um But the whole idea for the cynics is to provide your own pleasures. So this denial of pleasure that Antisthenes engaged in is one thing, one aspect of his lifestyle that is not very cynic.
00:35:54
Speaker
Okay, let's move on to the dog himself, Diogenes. Again, as I mentioned at the beginning of the lesson, he was a younger contemporary of Plato.
00:36:06
Speaker
He died around 323 BCE, which means that he lived another decade and change after Plato died. It is really hard to get at his biography in an objective way.
00:36:20
Speaker
If you read all the stories about him, you learn that he is just shrouded in sensationalist myth. I mean, these stories are wild and crazy, and it's unclear that he did all of these things, but he certainly did some of them.
00:36:39
Speaker
And it must be the case that even some of the more outlandish ones are true because to believe that he would be able to do some of these things, he needed to have been guilty of some pretty crazy things already, right? In order for certain stories about you to stick,
00:36:56
Speaker
They need to be based on something. So we can guess that he probably did at least some of these wild things.
Diogenes and His Impact on Society
00:37:04
Speaker
And I'll tell you some of them in a bit. But one thing that we can know for sure about Diogenes is that he took self-sufficiency to the extreme.
00:37:12
Speaker
He went all out in attempting to procure all his own pleasures. And on top of that, we can guess that he was probably very charming or very charismatic.
00:37:24
Speaker
I'll give you two anecdotes to support this claim. One, according to several sources, Alexander the Great sought him out. It was very likely when alex Alexander the Great took the city of Corinth, where Diogenes was saying at the time that Alexander went to look for him. He wanted to talk to the great Diogenes.
00:37:48
Speaker
And he goes up to Diogenes and asks him, What do you need? What can I give you? And apparently Diogenes was sitting there sunning himself, enjoying getting some vitamin d And he says to Alexander, yeah step back a little bit.
00:38:05
Speaker
You're taking up my son. This is kind of shocking because no one talks to Alexander the Great that way. But Alexander seems to have not been bothered by it. he you know What do you expect? You go looking for Diogenes. What do you think he's going to say, right?
00:38:23
Speaker
And as he was walking away, some people were making fun of Diogenes and Alexander the Great said something to the effect of, had I not been Alexander, and would have wanted to be Diogenes.
00:38:37
Speaker
So clearly he had a an aura of charisma about him. Here's another story that we hear about Diogenes. When his jar was broken by apparently some children who were messing around with his little house, the Athenian assembly voted to provide a new one for Diogenes.
00:38:57
Speaker
So at public expense, Diogenes got a new jar to live in That must mean that he was well-liked by the Athenian people.
00:39:08
Speaker
Alright, let's get into some of these stories about Diogenes. Diogenes did everything in public, and including defecation and masturbation.
00:39:20
Speaker
Defecation, if you are not familiar with the word, means pooping. And masturbation, well, i think you know what that means. And the question now might be, why?
00:39:32
Speaker
Well, we do get some justification for Diogenes' as antics a couple of centuries later. One writer named Julian, who, by the way, was the emperor of Rome, was really sympathetic to cynicism and he loved the stories about Diogenes.
00:39:53
Speaker
And he explained why Diogenes would do what he did He said that Diogenes was worried about how much people kind of took all these bad activities that they do every day, you know, without batting an eye.
00:40:08
Speaker
It's fine. Every day people would be greedy or they would give in to temptation. They would commit adultery. They would do all these horrible things, lie, cheat, steal.
00:40:21
Speaker
And they wouldn't think twice of it. They wouldn't be outraged at their own vices, in other words. But here's one thing they would be outraged by. Someone pooping on the street or someone masturbating in public.
00:40:36
Speaker
And what Diogenes was trying to get at is that you shouldn't be nearly as outraged at me pooping than at you lying to others. You being greedy.
00:40:47
Speaker
You being adulterous. That's the real evil. And you need to be outraged at that. Another thing we should mention is that Diogenes would probably masturbate whenever it struck his fancy.
00:41:02
Speaker
And that's because he was not an ascetic. He wasn't against pleasure. And he was for being able to meet all his own needs. So apparently he had this realization when he was waiting for a prostitute once to be, i suppose, done with another client.
00:41:20
Speaker
Well, it took too long for Diogenes. So instead he took care of himself, I guess we can say. And then he realized, so I don't need prostitutes or anyone else for me to meet this need of mine.
00:41:34
Speaker
I can do it on my own. And so there you go. There is another need. that he doesn't have anymore, he doesn't need someone else to meet his sexual needs, he's got it all on his own.
00:41:48
Speaker
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, Diogenes had it in for Plato. They just did not get along. Here's why. Diogenes said that Plato was deaf to his own teachings and he didn't put into practice what he taught.
00:42:06
Speaker
Speaking of what he taught, he also rejected many of Plato's doctrines. For example, he thought the doctrine of the forms was a bunch of hogwash.
00:42:17
Speaker
And he famously said, I can see cups, but I can't see cupness. I can see tables, but I don't see tablehood anywhere. Of course, what Diogenes was getting at is that why should we suppose that some sort of form of tableness exists? Why must we suppose that there is a template for every table that we see on earth?
00:42:41
Speaker
Diogenes also disagreed with Plato's definition of man. Of course, what he meant by this is his definition of human. So Plato defined a human as a featherless biped, right?
00:42:52
Speaker
An animal that stands on two legs with no feathers. So what Diogenes did was he grabbed a chicken, which stands on two legs, of course. He plucked all its feathers off and walked into Plato's lecture holding this plucked chicken.
00:43:10
Speaker
And he said, oh, here you go. Here's Plato's human. We can see this as a form of protest, as I mentioned earlier. and by the way, this is not the only lecture that Diogenes ah interrupted.
00:43:24
Speaker
He also would disrupt the lectures of a man named Anaximenes. And on one occasion, we hear that he went in there brandishing salted fish.
00:43:36
Speaker
In other words, he was swinging around some fish. And of course, that's certainly not a good environment for learning. So I think the lecture was over at that point. ah But yeah, Diogenes was very much into disrupting lectures, especially he thought that the content was a gigantic waste of time.
00:43:56
Speaker
In fact, Diogenes thought Plato's whole school was a waste of time. And he would chide Plato for his luxurious lifestyle, right? He had a nice home and he said, you don't need any of this.
00:44:09
Speaker
We'll get some more stories about Diogenes later, but I think that gives you a general flavor of the kind of person that Diogenes was and his approach to philosophical activity. Two more cynics that I want to mention, Crates and Hipparchia.
00:44:25
Speaker
They are, as far as I know, the only cynic married couple in the history of cynicism. And ah maybe, you know, Maybe they these will be your couple of goals for you.
00:44:37
Speaker
So here's what we know about them. When Crates converted, he gave up his wealth and he just realized that his money could not protect him against life's hardships.
00:44:49
Speaker
But cynic philosophy could. Think about it this way. If you have no property, no land, no nothing, well, then it doesn't matter.
00:45:01
Speaker
that an earthquake hits, right? You're not going to be any more homeless if an earthquake hits. If you don't care about fancy clothes, it doesn't matter that there's a hole in your cloak.
00:45:13
Speaker
It might matter when it gets cold till you get a new cloak. And as long as it's nice and simple, that's all you really need, right? So you don't need possessions to be happy. In fact, cynic philosophy and living virtuously, that's what's going to get you to happiness.
00:45:28
Speaker
Karates was also known for resolving disputes between families, right? So he would go and talk to people that have been fighting and he would make sure that they would make amends with each other.
00:45:41
Speaker
People would call Karates the crasher since he would let himself into people's homes to give him advice. And he married Hipparchia, who has been called the first feminist.
00:45:53
Speaker
Hipparchia would go anywhere that Crates went, right? Including places where women were not supposed to go. But she was so well respected because she took on the hardship of living the cynic life so well that, well, people would let her let her in.
00:46:11
Speaker
It's also the case, of course, that Crates was quite popular and they wanted him to be, you know, at certain events. So they would let Hipparchia into those same events.
00:46:23
Speaker
So for many reasons, they were really breaking the mold when it came to, you know, gender relations. ah Speaking of ah gender relations, Crates and Hipparchia would have sex in public.
00:46:37
Speaker
All the time, apparently. So that is very important to get to realize about the cynics. Anything that you would do in private, you should be okay with doing in public. And if you're not okay with doing in public, well, then what's wrong with what you're doing?
00:46:53
Speaker
Sex, pooping, masturbation, that's one thing. What about those other things that you hide? What about when you lie and you hide it? When you steal and you hide it Those are clearly not okay. So here we have once more the cynics attempting to teach an ethical lesson with what they do in public.
00:47:15
Speaker
Having sex is perfectly healthy and perfectly natural. And this is, of course, a married couple and it's consensual sex. So why should you be outraged at that? You should really be outraged at your vices and how you hide them.
00:47:28
Speaker
Those are what keep you away from happiness. And those are the things you should really be outraged by.
00:47:58
Speaker
Okay, let's now move into the ethics of the cynics. Now, it's kind of all ethics for the cynics. So let's say that you've been convinced that cynicism is a school for you.
00:48:10
Speaker
What do you do now? Well, here's the first problem you might run into. There's actually no official school. There's a place for you to meet with other cynics.
00:48:22
Speaker
If you were lucky enough to find a cynic to teach you, even if we were to transport you back to ancient Athens, honestly, you would probably just get berated by them, right? So one time, a student, a would-be student, went up to Diogenes and asked him if he could, you know, be his pupil, learn his ways.
00:48:45
Speaker
And Diogenes handed him a fish to hold. And after a little bit, well, that was very degrading for the young man because That would be the work of a slave to hold a fish.
00:48:58
Speaker
And so after a while, after holding a fish for most of the day, he just kind of left. And Diogenes laughed because, well, you know, clearly he wasn't ready. ah So it's going to be tough to join a school.
Cynicism's Endurance and Defiance
00:49:12
Speaker
But let me show you all the things that you have to do to live like a cynic.
00:49:17
Speaker
And maybe that will be good enough. It's kind of a solitary existence anyways. So let's do it this way. Let's begin first with the training that you must go through.
00:49:28
Speaker
You have to train to build up endurance because being a cynic sort of presumed an exceptional degree of physical fitness.
00:49:40
Speaker
I mean, we hear that Diogenes had a healthy glow about him. I've said it already that cynicism is a physical philosophy, right? It requires you to be really in control of your body and be able to handle really extreme things.
00:49:55
Speaker
So another story that we hear about Diogenes is that he walked extremely great distances, right? As in between Corinth and Athens. I had to look that up because I have no idea how far that is.
00:50:09
Speaker
It's about 60 miles and he would do this walk regularly. And those are the two cities that he would bounce around from. Those are the his two favorite cities to do his cynic activities in.
00:50:21
Speaker
Another thing you have to train yourself to do is to be indifferent to physical discomfort. You have to become inured is the word. And this means that for starters, you only eat one single vegetarian meal per day.
00:50:39
Speaker
That's at least what some cynics would do. You, of course, go around barefoot because sandals are a luxury. And here are some other forms of training. Diogenes would apparently hug marble statues in the winter.
00:50:55
Speaker
By the way, those are probably extremely cold ah during that time period. And he would roll around in the hot sand in the summer. what he is doing is training himself to not care about, you know, the pain that is caused by cold or by excessive heat.
00:51:14
Speaker
And you might, you know, this might sound ridiculous to you, but but let's think a little bit about how people that you might know, or maybe even you, you get upset over nothing.
00:51:25
Speaker
Earlier, I mentioned that I was upset that I couldn't find my chapstick. Well, The idea behind Cynic Endurance Training is that if you can handle extreme discomfort, if you can hug a marble statue in the middle of winter for an hour, then maybe you won't trip out over all the little discomforts of daily living.
00:51:50
Speaker
Maybe not finding your chapstick isn't that bad. That's the kind of idea that the cynics are pushing. The more capable you are of enduring discomfort, all the little discomforts of everyday life, they become like nothing.
00:52:07
Speaker
Of course, also as part of your training, you must basically abandon all your property. You will become homeless, but also stateless, right? You should try to not feel any allegiance to any particular nation state or city state in the case of the ancient cynics.
00:52:26
Speaker
ah You have to become ah citizen of the cosmos, right? And in this, you will gain some invulnerability. You will not be, you know, if there's an earthquake and some homes are are torn apart, that won't affect you. You already don't have a home.
00:52:44
Speaker
And if some nation gets conquered by some other nation, that also won't affect you. You are invulnerable in the sense that at least your citizenship you know is to the world itself. You are at home everywhere.
00:52:57
Speaker
So it really doesn't matter what city state you're a part of. Now, there's probably some limits to that, but... The general idea for for the cynics in these ancient city-states is you have to train yourself to only maintain those needs which are actually necessary.
00:53:13
Speaker
And some people feel a lot of allegiance towards their city-state or their nation-state. And the cynics might see this as a liability. You don't need these associations. You simply have to be in accordance with nature. And you might even say that cities are not really in accordance with nature.
00:53:30
Speaker
As we know, for most of our history as a species, humans have not lived in cities, right? We've been in fairly small groups, about 150 people. That's called the Dunbar number, by the way. and we were fairly nomadic, moving around as needed.
00:53:48
Speaker
And so maybe even cities, this is a way of saying that even cities are not exactly in accordance with nature. So there that controversial claim there by the cynic.
00:53:59
Speaker
Okay, you've done your training, you are ready for cynic practice, what do you have to do? Well, the most obvious one we've already discussed in detail, self-sufficiency.
00:54:10
Speaker
So no fancy clothes, no home, just a cloak and a knapsack. Everything you need, of course, you must provide for yourself. Typically, for the cynics living in the city, they were remember they were in the city because they were trying to deface the currency.
00:54:28
Speaker
They were trying to nullify the values of society because they thought they were all wrong. And how do you do that? Well, you have to be in the city. You can't go to the woods and do that because then you won't be able to deface any currency.
00:54:41
Speaker
So they were in the city. They were devaluing the conventions and rituals of society. And one way that they would do this is that they would beg for food and beg for a little bit of money so that they can get food.
00:54:56
Speaker
And the general practice there was that, well, they were seeing how healthy and how happy the cynics were. And in so doing, they were showing that homelessness and poverty is perfectly compatible with self-sufficiency and happiness.
00:55:12
Speaker
And the general message there is the way you're living, always working your crappy job that you don't like so you can buy stuff you don't really need, that's completely unnecessary.
00:55:23
Speaker
If you want happiness, you can do it by being poor and homeless as long as you live in accordance with nature.
00:55:33
Speaker
Okay, we've already talked about self-sufficiency quite a bit. Let's move on to self-control. It's very important to the cynics that you are not a slave to your desires. So they say you cannot be a slave either to your belly or to your groin.
00:55:50
Speaker
course, we are a slave to our belly if every time we want to eat something that is maybe a little bit indulgent, we give in. So for the cynics, this is pretty extreme because they would only eat once a day, or at least many of them would.
00:56:05
Speaker
But for many of us, if we want to begin to approach that level of cynic sage, we just have to, you know, not be beholden to our every craving, right? Every time you get a craving,
00:56:20
Speaker
Don't let it discombobulate your rights. Some people are like, oh I want this so bad I can't think about anything else. That's a little slavish to your belly, say the cynics.
00:56:32
Speaker
Of course, you should also not be a slave to your groin. Now, many people spend a whole lot of time in the pursuit of sexual partners.
00:56:43
Speaker
That would be probably considered a massive waste of time from the you know point of view, actually many philosophical schools probably. But from the cynics in particular, they would see that as lacking self-control, being intemperate.
00:57:00
Speaker
Here's another thing that you have to gain mastery over. your thoughts in a way. Much like the Stoics a little bit later, you should only feel aversion for true evil.
00:57:13
Speaker
You should only push away truly evil things, not things that are mistaken for being evil. All right, so here's what they mean by that. A lot of things people think are inherently bad, misfortune, sickness, inconvenience, discomfort,
00:57:31
Speaker
If you get sick, you might get bent out of shape. I know I kind of do. I hate being sick. But for the cynics, this is a mistake. Being sick is not an evil, right? It it happens sometimes. You have to get over it. It's okay. um Even when you can't get over it, even terminal disease, something like that, these aren't true evils for the cynics.
00:57:53
Speaker
The only thing that actually is evil, meaning bad, meaning, you know, something you shouldn't do, is not live in accordance with nature. That's the only real evil.
00:58:05
Speaker
The same thing goes for inconveniences and discomforts. You know what? Sometimes there's a lot of traffic or sometimes you get a job at work that you don't want to do, some tasks that you don't want to be involved with.
00:58:18
Speaker
Or at school, you have to do this project and hey, you hate group projects. I don't want to do it. Well, these are maybe not pleasant, but you shouldn't say that it's bad. oh it's horrible.
00:58:31
Speaker
Don't say that. The only real bad is not living in accordance with nature. So train yourself to whenever you have these thoughts where you're calling things bad when they're really not bad.
00:58:44
Speaker
catch yourself and go back on the right track. Basically, you have to ask yourself, did your actions today further your self-sufficiency? Yes, well then you're good. Were you honest today?
00:58:55
Speaker
Did you share your views brazenly? This is something that the cynics have to do. They always have to share what they think in a blunt way without sugarcoating. Just like dogs, right? if If a dog is sad, you know the dog is sad.
00:59:08
Speaker
if a dog is happy, you know he's happy. Same thing with the cynics. They want to be like dogs, right? So did you share your views brazenly? Then this is good. Being mocked? not bad.
00:59:19
Speaker
Being hungry? Not bad. Feeling pain? Not bad. None of these are true evils. Only failing to be self-sufficient, failing to be honest, failing to reject material desires, only these are bad.
00:59:35
Speaker
So in sum, don't be a slave to your belly, your groin, or your thoughts. Another important aspect of cynic practice we've already discussed, you have to deface the currency, right? So let's think about this phrase a little bit and we can consider it the spiritual practice highlight of the lesson.
00:59:56
Speaker
In a previous lesson, I gave a little summary of the different practices that the different schools of philosophy engaged in and that they taught their students. And one of them was memorization.
01:00:08
Speaker
And so what you have to do for this particular philosophical practice is memorize little pithy sayings that encapsulate the teachings of the school.
01:00:20
Speaker
And for the cynics, deface the currency is exactly that pithy little saying. So you have to, whenever you can, remind yourself, say deface the currency, deface the currency.
01:00:31
Speaker
When people are engaging in some practice in society that you know goes against nature, um You say to yourself, deface the currency and you figure out how to, you know, get people to realize that it is not the right way.
01:00:45
Speaker
Because remember, the cynics, at least one way of looking at them, what they were primarily doing is challenging the values of society, turning them on their head, right? that kind of takes a lot of courage.
01:00:59
Speaker
So the idea behind this pithy little saying was, you know, it will give you the courage, it will remind you to do what you're supposed to do. And, you know, it's hard work to essentially declare war on the conventions of society.
01:01:14
Speaker
Think about it this way. Whatever normal people did, the cynics did the opposite or somehow desecrated it basically. And that takes, mean, I don't know how to say it. It takes like nerve. It takes guts.
01:01:28
Speaker
And so this pithy little saying, deface the currency, deface maybe helps you get those guts. It's almost like you're practicing cynic calisthenics, right? You are stretching and making sure you're ready, you're, youre you know, mentally fit for these acts of, you know, conventional desecration.
01:01:49
Speaker
All right, so what kind of acts are you supposed to engage in when you are defacing the currency? Let me begin with sort of a plain vanilla one, and then we'll get to some more extreme examples.
01:02:01
Speaker
So one thing that Algenius would do is that he would walk into a theater when everyone was walking out, right? So everyone's on their way out, but he's like walking in. And when he was asked about it, he responded with his own question.
01:02:14
Speaker
Are you ashamed to blame me for walking backwards when you are walking in the wrong direction your whole life through? That's kind of a plain vanilla example, but he really is showing, you know, hey, you all think that it's important to go these to these plays and to show off your wealth when you're at these things, but is that really necessary?
01:02:36
Speaker
And so one way he does that is by, you know, literally going against them at the theater. Moving now towards slightly more serious examples, Diogenes had it in for all the values surrounding sport. He thought people spent too much time admiring athletes and not working on themselves.
01:02:59
Speaker
They spent too much money on, you know, being fans. And all this created more wants and needs in them. Oh, I really want my team to win. ah we really need to win this next game.
01:03:10
Speaker
That kind of stuff, right? So Diogenes, of course, was utterly against that. And by the way, we've seen this with other philosophers. Don't forget about Heraclitus and Xenophanes and Socrates, etc.
01:03:23
Speaker
Several philosophers basically just think we waste too much time, money, attention, energy, and the like on sports. So what did Diogenes do? Well, at one set of games, he apparently...
01:03:39
Speaker
I don't know, jumped up on stage and took the crown and crowned himself victor. It looks like that's what he was doing. And the game authorities tried to take the crown away from him, but he was running away.
01:03:53
Speaker
And so it was all a big, what we could safely describe as a circus. But we can see that that was his way of saying, what are you spending your time on? You don't need to be doing this.
01:04:03
Speaker
This is all silly. This is all ridiculous, right? So maybe next time someone is really bent out of shape because their team lost an important game, you can just say, hey, you know, I'm not sure you you should be spending that much time on sports anyway, at least according to the cynics.
01:04:23
Speaker
right, let's move on now to more extreme examples. Of course, self-imposed poverty, that's pretty extreme, but we've already talked about that. Let's talk about the cynic views of burial.
01:04:36
Speaker
For the ancient Greeks, being properly buried was kind of a big deal. If you didn't do everything right, things wouldn't quite go well in Hades for you.
01:04:47
Speaker
So you wanted to make sure that your burial went, you know, in accordance with tradition, you dot all your I's and cross all your T's. But the cynics said that they didn't care what happened to them after they died. They just would say, hey, just toss me in the woods and let the animals eat me. You know, doesn't really matter.
01:05:07
Speaker
It's not important. Why you have these desires that your burial should go a certain way? Those are just more needs, more wants. Get rid of your needs and wants. It doesn't matter what happens after you die.
01:05:22
Speaker
If a cynic were around today and, you know, their mother died, she might end up in the trash can. I have no idea. But it seems to be the case that they just didn't care about those kind of things.
01:05:33
Speaker
Those are conventions that we impose on ourselves that aren't really necessary. And they go against nature. You know, in nature, you just the bodies just lay there and someone else eat some other animal eats it.
01:05:46
Speaker
And there it is. Cycle of life. Right. So we should do the same. Last very extreme example from the cynics, they had no ban on cannibalism.
01:06:01
Speaker
Now that does not mean that they went around killing people to eat them. It means that they said, if you are hungry and all there is, is a human dead body, well then that's okay, right? There is this big outrage over eating humans that was you know held by many people in the ancient world.
01:06:21
Speaker
And today, i think i don't think many of you listening to this are very excited about the idea of eating a taco made out of bicep meat, right? Human bicep.
01:06:32
Speaker
But the cynics thought to themselves, well, you know, why is there this rule against cannibalism? Does it serve any use? Do we see animals in the wild eating other animals of their species? And you do.
01:06:49
Speaker
And so they said, well, you know, doesn't really matter. Why should we enforce this ban? Cannibalism is not recommended, but there's no ban on it, right? If if you need to, well, then I suppose you need to.
01:07:03
Speaker
Again, the goal of all of this is to live by a new code of ethics, one which focused on reducing material needs and always in pursuit of self-sufficiency.
01:07:17
Speaker
I just have to reiterate that, right? Because otherwise their antics just get lost and it's like, why are they doing this? The goal is to have their happiness solely in their hands, right? It's all up to them, not based on anything external, not material possessions, not fame, not power, none of that.
01:07:36
Speaker
The values of society are backwards. The only thing that matters is living in accordance with nature and You should show other people the way, right? So whatever people erroneously value in your society, deface it, desecrate it, ridicule it, destroy it.
01:07:58
Speaker
Let me give you an example that i don't know. I'm not'm not sure it's going to land, but let's see what happens here. You've heard of first world problems, right? Let me give you my own example of a first world problem inspired by a quote by a cynic philosopher named Dio Chrysostom.
01:08:20
Speaker
So let me read the quote first and then I'll explain you know what happened with me. He says, boredom compels them to invent unwholesome dishes, then take to spa treatments to combat the unwelcome side effects of such a diet.
01:08:37
Speaker
In the space of a single day, they often want both breeze and a heavy cloak, heat as well as ice to offset the heat. And what's most absurd, they hanker for hunger as well as thirst.
01:08:51
Speaker
Okay, so let me tell you my ridiculous story here. and all of this is going to sound, it's not humble bragging. I'm literally ashamed of myself. So i was on a cruise.
01:09:03
Speaker
I don't do cruises often, but when I do, why not, you know, indulge. And so I was on a cruise and I remember thinking to myself, oh man, this lunch buffet looks really good.
01:09:15
Speaker
i got to try everything. So I'm going to stuff my face and I tried everything, right? And then I got so full that I felt sick, right? So then we went to the spa to make ourselves feel better about how sick we felt.
01:09:32
Speaker
And so then and took a little nap because that made sense to me. And I was actually hoping as I laid around in bed, as I was waking up, that I get hungry again soon so I can go downstairs and have dinner.
01:09:46
Speaker
and have something you know delicious without getting four too quickly. How ridiculous is that in the same day I both stuffed myself and then really wanted to be hungry so that I can do it again.
Cynical Critique of Modern Lifestyles
01:10:04
Speaker
oh and before I forget, in the spa, I was feeling too hot.
01:10:08
Speaker
So when I got back to the room, I cranked up the AC, right? So I wanted to get hot to feel better, but then I wanted to get cold to feel better from the heat. Okay, I hope you're not judging me too much, but let me put it this way. Here's my own summary of my own debauched lifestyle.
01:10:30
Speaker
We complain about the faulty solutions to problems that we brought upon ourselves. We don't realize that the real problem is how we live.
01:10:42
Speaker
We are obsessed with comfort and pleasure and indulgence. And we abhor even the slightest discomfort. I mean, I didn't really feel that sick to book a spa treatment immediately afterwards. I was just kind of bored.
01:10:59
Speaker
So even just boredom makes you indulge even more. But our strategies for achieving pleasure are irrational. I mean, stuffing myself and going to a spot, none of that actually made me feel better.
01:11:14
Speaker
i was still complaining by the end of the night, right? They just create more problems. Why do we do this to ourselves? We work really hard at doing things that don't make us happy.
01:11:26
Speaker
Does that make any sense? That's what the cynics are saying. That's the main message.
01:11:59
Speaker
Okay, here now are a couple of other things that I want to cover about the cynic way of life. Let me just do a quick couple of minutes on wit.
01:12:11
Speaker
The cynics were hilarious. There's no way around it, basically. So Diogenes in particular, that's who we'll focus on. And he criticized those who, you know, basically sucked up to the political elite.
01:12:26
Speaker
And one person that sucked up to the political elite more than anyone, according to him, was Plato. So many philosophers tried to get some kind of political favor.
01:12:39
Speaker
But Plato went to the court of a tyrant named Dionysus. And so Diogenes was really kind of, you know, railing into Plato for that. So one time, Plato saw Diogenes washing vegetables.
01:12:54
Speaker
Knowing that Diogenes had turned down the opportunity to serve in the court of Dionysus, Plato said to him, you know, if you would have served in the court of Dionysus, you would not now be washing lettuces.
01:13:09
Speaker
And without skipping a beat, Diogenes responds to Plato, you know, if you had just washed lettuces, you wouldn't have to serve in the court of Dionysus.
01:13:21
Speaker
So it's not funny when you explain the joke, but Diogenes is telling to Plato, if you didn't feel like you were too good, to be washing lettuces, you wouldn't have to suck up to tyrants.
01:13:33
Speaker
That's cold, right? So that's cold, but it's funny and it's clever. You need the wit, right? So the cynics would deliver their points in a very witty way, often in hilarious ways. There is one cynic in particular, Demonax, that I thought was just, i was literally laughing out loud while reading his biography. so Another story about Diogenes is about one of his encounters with Alexander the Great.
01:14:00
Speaker
Alexander sent Diogenes, apparently, a bowl of bones, right? So maybe he was a little peeved about when Diogenes brushed him off.
01:14:11
Speaker
But Diogenes, of course, once more, didn't skip a beat. He said that that bowl of bones, that is a meal befitting a dog, right? but not a gift befitting a king.
01:14:25
Speaker
How do you say that to the most powerful man in Greece? But that is exactly what Diogenes did. And again, it's very clever.
01:14:36
Speaker
Hey, this this gift you gave me, that's good because I'm a dog, but that's not worthy of a king. Okay, so now let's move on to love and marriage.
01:14:48
Speaker
The cynics basically saw only three types of sexual acts as acceptable. So here we go. Masturbation, clearly at the top of the list there. um Monogamous sex within matrimony, with consent of course, and free love, with consent.
01:15:05
Speaker
So monogamous sex is exactly what Kratis and Hipparchia practiced. Remember, that is the cynic couple that lived on the streets of Athens together being cynics.
01:15:17
Speaker
I don't know why I think that's kind of cool. And free love is the other form of sex that is acceptable to the cynics. In other words, if you want to have sex and some other person wants to have sex and you all want to have sex with each other, then go for it.
01:15:32
Speaker
That's okay. There is one caveat I should say here real quick. We do have word that Diogenes repudiated adultery. He thought cheating on your spouse is absolutely deplorable.
01:15:47
Speaker
He saw it as adjacent to gluttony and drunkenness, right? You are not being temperate. Just because you have a desire to eat doesn't mean you should eat. Just because you have a desire to drink doesn't mean you should drink.
01:16:01
Speaker
Similarly, just because you have a desire to have sex with someone that isn't your partner doesn't mean you should do it. So you have to control these desires. Another thing that I think is worth mentioning here is that there was this practice in the ancient world of pederasty and that is when older men would have relations with young men now although we can say a lot of things about this including the fact that when these young men became older the older men would you know give them a lot of favors and and do things for them and get them jobs and all that
01:16:37
Speaker
There is still something really weird about the situation to modern ears and even to ancient ears, right? So Diogenes rejected pederasty and he would warn young men about getting taken advantage of by these older men.
01:16:53
Speaker
So those practices, cheating and pederasty, totally not cool. Free love, sex within matrimony and masturbation, totally cool.
01:17:05
Speaker
Those are the cynic views on sex and love. How about marriage? Well, the cynics rebuked family in general, meaning that they didn't see the family unit as necessary.
01:17:21
Speaker
They didn't see it necessarily as according with nature. And I do have something to say about this. um They might be onto something and I don't know how they would know this, but Before settled life, right before agricultural city states, during the 90% of our existence when we were in nomadic hunter gatherers, it looks like there was no such thing as a nuclear family.
01:17:48
Speaker
It was more so your group, you traveled in groups, your group was your family. And so it looks like the cynics were saying something like that. Like you have to look at your social sphere as being the universe itself, right? The larger group, not this small group of people that you, you know, have a special allegiance to and that you might bend the rules for, right? But instead, try to broaden your horizons as to who your social sphere includes. Remember, you have to be a citizen of the cosmos, right?
01:18:20
Speaker
So no families, according to the cynics, or at least it isn't necessary to have a family. Now, this is in a society where being single was sort of a blemish on your reputation, right? and It sort of implied that you're poor, not not wealthy enough to have a ah wife.
01:18:37
Speaker
In fact, in Sparta, there were special laws that sort of encouraged marriage and childbearing. So most of society was for having a family. And so the cynics were challenging that. That's part of what they're doing here.
01:18:51
Speaker
Many people today, by the way, are increasingly living alone and that's okay. So maybe there is a certain sense in which we agree with the cynics on this on this point that family is not necessary.
01:19:04
Speaker
It's a choice, actually. Last but not least, let's talk about death. We've already talked about how they feel about burial. In short, they don't care how you bury them.
01:19:17
Speaker
They don't even care if you bury them. But let's talk about how we know when it's time to die. Since self-sufficiency is key to cynicism, when cynics felt they could no longer care for themselves, they would willingly, let's say, opt out.
01:19:36
Speaker
Demon Axe, someone I mentioned earlier who was extremely funny, when he realized he could no longer be self-sufficient, he just stopped eating. And after a couple of weeks, he died.
01:19:49
Speaker
And then because he was very beloved and many cynics were very beloved by the community, they had this big, you know, civic festival for him to commemorate his life. But the point that I'm stressing here is that self-sufficiency also defines when it's the right time to die.
01:20:08
Speaker
Now, Xenophon had similar views. If you recall the lesson on Socrates and Xenophon, And it gives us a lot to think about. you know it's Many people say they feel that when they can no longer take care of themselves, then it's you know it's time to go.
01:20:26
Speaker
And here is perhaps what you might call a philosophical rationale for that. Self-sufficiency is important to us. And if you believe the cynics, it is what characterizes virtuous activity. It is the good life.
01:20:41
Speaker
And so when you can no longer care for yourself, well, then there's no more good life for you. Maybe there shouldn't be life at all. And so maybe it's time to get your things in order. So that is how you live like a cynic.
01:20:56
Speaker
By way of closing, let me consider one objection to the cynic way of life. Here is the objection that you probably have been thinking this whole time.
01:21:07
Speaker
it goes something like this. This sucks. It is completely outlandish. Maybe in a more verbose way, you might say, the cynics just seem unreasonable.
01:21:22
Speaker
It just doesn't seem necessary that we deprive ourselves of the benefits of civilization and technology and enjoy some luxuries here and there. What's wrong with that? It just seems like the cynics go too far.
01:21:37
Speaker
Meanwhile, though, meanwhile, We are addicted to our devices. People spend all day long glued to their phone or their computer or their tablet.
01:21:49
Speaker
The youngest generation, the generation in which anxiety and depression has skyrocketed, spend upwards of eight hours a day on their phones.
01:22:01
Speaker
Our social media platforms have disrupted our political processes. They've made us more polarized, incapable of even having a civil conversation with each other. And then there's the environment.
01:22:14
Speaker
We have grown as a species past the ecological carrying capacity of the planet. We are heating it up and we will perhaps render it unlivable for ourselves and all future generations of humans.
01:22:30
Speaker
Some militaries, by the way, are preparing for what they're calling climate wars. And if these climate wars happen, well, we risk, of course, annihilation due to nuclear warfare.
01:22:46
Speaker
In short, the way we're living ain't that cool. It is not sustainable. Here are a couple of buzzwords that you might hear now in academia.
01:22:58
Speaker
Degrowth for sustainability. Degrowth? What does that even mean? It means we've gone too far in the wrong direction and now we have to walk it back. And that's a word, degrowth, that you now hear in economics.
01:23:14
Speaker
Now there's talk of existential risks. Existential Existential risk? Like it's a risk that we won't exist anymore? Exactly.
01:23:25
Speaker
Nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, climate change. All of these things might lead, some people say, to our end.
01:23:37
Speaker
And here's the key to all this. We're doing it to ourselves. We're it to ourselves. So the cynics did wage war on our conventions, our our lifestyles, our whole way of being.
01:23:52
Speaker
But if you look at us, at our situation, and you squint in the right way, maybe the direction humanity is going is wrong.
01:24:05
Speaker
Maybe this kind of civilization is a mistake.
01:24:10
Speaker
Maybe Diogenes is using his lantern to shine a light on the folly of our ways. Maybe the right call here is to embrace a philosophy for dogs.