Diogenes and the Cynics are worth studying for any person interested in Stoicism. Stoicism often feels like a moderated form of Cynicism, and Epictetus often invoked the Cynics in his teachings.
As a person with disability, "Enchiridion of Epictetus"[1] helped me a lot.
> If you say "I will only be happy if I never get sick" , then, being mortal, when you inevitably fall ill, you will also be unhappy.
> it is in the nature of humans to get sick, which means it is outside of your control, which means you shouldn' t let it upset you.
> Disease is an impairment of the body, not of the mind, unless the mind so chooses. Lameness is a disability of the body, not of the mind, unless the mind so chooses. Whenever something bad happens, remember that it might be an impediment to something else, but never to your true self - your mind.
Since Epictetus was born into slavery and was crippled(either from birth or due to punishment from slavery), Those with health issues can easily relate to his wisdom.
Good one, thanks for sharing, and rings true, except for the last clause of the quote:
>but never to your true self - your mind.
Advaita (Vedanta) would beg to differ, and say that your true self is the witness (sakshi) of both the body and mind, and of the world through them. :)
Per Wikipedia:
On his way to conquering the world, Alexander (himself of pupil of Diogenes' rival Aristotle), asks Diogenes what he wanted, if Alexander could give him anything. Diogenes told him to step aside: Alexander was blocking his Sun.
To what end, Diogenes? As an unapologetic contrarian, I find articles regarding him interesting but can't really articulate why. Something about being an asshole with strong convictions, I suppose. But to what end?
Diogenes clearly welcomed interruptions. Pissing on patrons, arriving late to theatre, begging from statues. He was always making a point. As for a long life, I very much want that for myself and as a result live well and relax hard. Maybe that's what he did, but he wasn't aiming for it living in barrels and sharing food with dogs.
>"Socrates had been a vigorous naysayer in his time, yet Diogenes outdid him. Nothing brought him more pleasure than doing the opposite of what everybody else was doing. No wonder that, asked once “what was the most beautiful thing in the world,” Diogenes replied:
“Freedom of speech.”
In our age of unapologetic conformism and generalized herding, such a contrarian spirit may be the one thing that can save our lives — politically, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually. Contrarianism shows that there are other manners of acting and being in the world.
In any society, some will have to go against the stream of pious lies."
All of the above (in my post) -- is a snippet, a quote, an excerpt -- from the original article...
It's sort of like if I repost the following quote to HN:
>"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
...Well, that's not me saying that(!) -- rather it's an a snippet, a quote, an excerpt -- from a larger document!
If you wish to compare that or any part of that quote to other things -- then I'm guessing (but not knowing!) that you'd probably want to consult with one or more of the original authors of that document! <g>
So you'd probably want to consult the original author -- for an answer to your question!
Finally, I would suggest and submit to you that there is a "no shooting the messenger", er, "requoter", er "reposter", er "messenger", er, "reposter" -- rule in effect!
(If you don't like the message, then don't question the messenger(!) -- he's just the delivery agent(!) -- he didn't write the message -- he just moved it from place to place! <g>)
Asking me (a much lesser individual than any of these great authors, in the grand scheme of things!) -- to give you an opinion about a quote I reposted -- sort of would lessen and dull the simplicity and greatness of the quote(!) -- when the quote is read by itself without commentary, and by itself alone!
Some anecdotes about Diogenes (which may or may not be true, of course, but they quite fit the character):
Aristotle famously described man as a "featherless biped". Diogenes carried a plucked chicken around, calling it "a man, according to philosophers".
Alexander, at the time the most powerful man in the world, went to visit Diogenes and asked him what he wanted, drawing a shadow while he stood before him. Diogenes responded: "get out of my sunlight".
When asked about his thoughts on masturbation (an art he sometimes practiced in public), Diogenes responded: how happy would we be if the gods allowed us to get rid of hunger by rubbing our stomach!
Diogenes is interesting to me because he prompts a fundamental question concerning the nature of virtue: Who/what would Diogenes be without the attention-seeking behavior? In other words, take the virtuous behavior of Diogenes but remove all public interactions. A person content to wash wild onions outside of the public sphere that stays out of the public sphere.
By definition, we can't count these people who are actually content to be virtuous "nobodies". We don't know who they are or if they in fact actually exist. Who or what is a moral Ramanujan without seeking an immoral Hardy?
It's a question as ancient as Diogenes: Plato asked a variation on this question in the Republic with the Ring of Gyges which granted invisibility to its wearer: Is there anyone who would still act virtuously while being in fact accountable to no one?
I have similar open-ended questions concerning the Buddha and Jesus Christ as found in the Gospel of Mark. Both the Buddha and Jesus are types of "re-wilded" humans that share more similarities with each other, classical Cynicism, Pyrrhonism, and Daoism than with most other philosophical systems.
According to the Pali Canon, the Buddha only became a
sammāsambuddha (viz. a teaching buddha) because of the request of Brahma to remember those on the cusp of enlightenment, otherwise he regarded teaching the Dhamma as an uphill battle not worth fighting: "This Dhamma that I have attained is deep, hard to see, hard to realize, peaceful, refined, beyond the scope of conjecture, subtle, to-be-experienced by the observant. But this generation delights in attachment, is excited by attachment, enjoys attachment. For a generation delighting in attachment, excited by attachment, enjoying attachment, this/that conditionality & dependent co-arising are hard to see. This state, too, is hard to see: the pacification of all fabrications, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the ending of craving; dispassion; cessation; unbinding. And if I were to teach the Dhamma and if others would not understand me, that would be tiresome for me, troublesome for me.” (SN 6:1, tr. Thanissaro Bhikkhu).
If he hadn't acceded to the request to teach, he would've become a paccekabuddha (viz. a buddha on one's own) and no one would've noticed anything except one of the Sakyan princes disappearing from worldly life.
In a similar fashion, Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is portrayed frequently as trying to escape the notice of the public and preventing the knowledge of his "miraculous" works. It's an interesting question to think about (assuming a historical Jesus) what would Christianity look like if his patients had obeyed his injunctions to stay quiet and to just be grateful? Would it exist at all?
Assuming that Jesus did in fact perform good works but he told every recipient to be quiet, how can we epistemologically know how many he actually performed?
It all reminds me of Chapter 17 of the Daodejing:
"The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects. Next comes the ruler they love and praise; Next comes one they fear; Next comes one with whom they take liberties.
[...]
"Hesitant, he does not utter words lightly. When his task is accomplished and his work done, the people all say, ‘It happened to us naturally ["no one intended this; we did it ourselves"].’ (tr. D.C. Lau)"
A friend of mine raised an interesting question a few years back.
If Jesus was godly and perfect all the time, he'd basically be an unemotional miracle engine who could do no wrong.
If he was human but with access to godly powers... would be interesting to know about his mistakes and failings. Like a time he cured a sick man, and this man turned out to be a crook or something.
This was a pub conversation. I'm no theologian, so apologies if the topic is already dealt with in the religious texts.
You might find the notion of the stoic “sage” interesting. It’s more or less the impossible manifestation of perfect human virtues in one human being; something akin to being a perfect human all the time, though not godly.
It wasn’t thought that a Sage would be emotionless at all, but would actually embrace emotions fully. They would just be the ideal emotions to express for the given circumstance.
It’s a far-fetched idea but the case for emotion being unnecessary is refuted well by stoicism and other philosophies (in my opinion). I think the idea that a perfect entity would feel nothing may be inspired by the fact that as humans, we’re often victims of our own emotions and we fear how they can control us. In reality, they’re a useful tool of expression, positive reinforcement, and communication. The only problem is when they aren’t the product of careful reflection and ongoing consideration.
The question is definitely interesting. I'm no theologian either, but I do wonder if that sort of "humanizing" via imperfection would actually appeal a lot to people who already want an anthropomorphic relationship with spirituality anyway.
> Like a time he cured a sick man, and this man turned out to be a crook or something.
Can't resist nitpicking your example, though. If he did this, he'd have something in common with plenty of folks who took the Hippocratic oath. ;) And I bet they'd all say it's not a mistake at all.
You're talking about the dude famous for the command "love your enemy" and fraternizing with all kinds of "unsavory" people. He would absolutely not regard healing a crook as a mistake. It's a little alarming that you would.
Ed: not to mention the fact that, canonically anyway, he would definitely know in advance who/what they were.
Would Jesus heal a super sick / dying man who Jesus knew is gonna murder like 10 people as soon as he's better?
The thought problem in my example was about curing a person who will commit a serious crime in the future only after being healed enough to commit this crime. And the supernatural healer having this foreknowledge.
Some topics/concepts which might interest you; links are to articles from the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, which is generally a solid resource for exploring Christian theology and religion, albeit from a thoroughly Roman Catholic perspective:
Interesting, maybe, but ... next time drop an email address or indicate some other way to contact you that's within your personal comfort zone re: sharing in a comment on HN, while also indicating that you have some software ideas you'd like to explore. I imagine most users on HN would prefer that approach, but I could be wrong.
It wasn't particularly offensive nor bothersome, your comments just seemed out of place and the kind of thing that should be preceded by a private query as to whether the other person is interested in entertaining your proposal/s.
> Plato asked a variation on this question in the Republic with the Ring of Gyges which granted invisibility to its wearer: Is there anyone who would still act virtuously while being in fact accountable to no one?
Also, the main question addressed by most deconstructions of the Superman-type superhero.
Plus, more literally and now that I think about it maybe directly inspired by Plato: The Invisible Man
As always surfing teaches much about this. Fighting the current is futile and achieves nothing but exhaustion and likely the need of others to come to your aid once you give up. If you simply move laterally (while fighting just enough to not go backwards) you soon reach a point where you can making easy progress forward again, and then once ashore take a direct simple path to where you wanted to go.
> In Greek the gesture was known as the katapygon (κατάπυγον, from kata – κατά, "downwards" and pugē – πυγή, "rump, buttocks"). In ancient Greek comedy, the finger was a gesture of insult toward another person, with the term katapugon also referring to "a male who submits to anal penetration" or katapygaina to a female. In Aristophanes's comedy The Clouds (423 BC), when the character Socrates is quizzing his student on poetic meters, Strepsiades declares that he knows quite well what a dactyl is, and gives the finger. The gesture is a visual pun on the two meanings of the Greek word daktylos, both "finger" and the rhythmic measure composed of a long syllable and two short, like the joints of a finger (— ‿ ‿, which also appears as a visual pun on the penis and testicles in a medieval Latin text).
It never ceases to amaze me how many interesting things I read about Ancient Greece from posts like this in HN, from what I was taught in school (most probably I didn’t pay attention).
