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Diogenes - That’s My Dog
There's a time and place for every ism. And right now, cynicism is fashionable.Actually, having come into this world in 1971, I don't remember a time when cynicism was not the in-thing. It just seems to be at an all-time high at the moment - to the point where it's not just popular but obligatory, though I can't provide you with any longitudinal studies to back me up.
The lament is not a new one and it certainly won't be the last either. And a good argument can be made for why we need cynics. They are the yang to the ying of American optimism.
Cynicism can be traced to Diogenes, who didn't have quite the following of Socrates, Plato or Aristotle, but managed to make a name for himself in his own right. They called his followers "dogs," and they didn't mean it in the "that's my friend/homie" sense of the modern vernacular either. The ancient Greeks used the word kynikos (cynikos), which literally means "dog-like."
According to my trusty Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, Diogenes' dogs were "ancient Greek philosophers who sneered at wealth and personal comfort." Robert Hendrickson's Word and Phrase Origins says the Original Cynics "believed that independent virtue formed the sole basis for happiness, scorning freedom, honor, art, learning, health, riches - life itself. Insolently self-righteous, this small but influential band of ascetics derided all social customs, even sleeping in kennel-like quarters."
And Diogenes was hard-core with it, too. He went around begging, like Buddha, and when he was asked why he was begging, Diogenes said: "To get practice in being refused." That's that Old School Cynicism. It's what Alexander Pope was talking about when he said: "‘Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude."
There's something to be said for classical cynicism. But the stuff many of us are on now is a bad drug. And I'm hooked, even though I know where this road leads - right to Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic: "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Somewhere along the way a cynic went from being someone who sneers at wealth and illegitimate power to being a know-it-all who snarls sarcastically at everything and everyone in the guise of realism.
But a funny thing happened. My wife and I were in the capital of cynicism last week, ya know, Washington, D.C. With family and lots of friends in the area, I've been there many times before. But this was the first time my wife had actually set foot in the city. So we did the tourist thing, on foot (D.C. is a great place to walk).
We hit up all the monuments and museums we could in two days. And when we came back home, I realized something shifted inside me. I just can't say exactly when or where. It wasn't when I stood on one of my favorite thinking spots in the world, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Dr. King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. It wasn't when I visited the Vietnam Memorial wall. And it wasn't in seeing the many involuntary Diogenes sleeping on the streets of downtown D.C.
I don't even think it was in seeing the creative mind on display in the museums, or encountering so many genuinely nice people - many of whom were government workers or public service employees.
I think it happened when we were walking up F Street toward 14th Street behind these two guys in suits chatting about politics. I don't remember what they said but it was all cynicism, with a heavy dose of fatalism. It was revolting. And I loved every minute of it.
But enough already, I thought to myself. This is far too commonplace. Cliché. And I'm an addict. Why can't you be firmly planted in reality without being cynical? Isn't it possible to be skeptical without being cynical?
Nowadays, it's easy to be cynical. It's endemic on the right, pervasive on the left and everywhere in the center. But now I can't get Sartre's voice out of my head: "Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth."
Truth is supposed to inspire; not make you want to disengage. Back in dog days of Diogenes, being cynical was hip. Cutting-edge. Needed. Now, it's not only merely popular and counterproductive, it's boring and predictable. Can't say I'm going cold turkey, but isn't the first step to recovery admitting you have a problem?
I've got to get in touch with an old acquaintance, Paul Rogat Loeb, who just re-issued his anti-cynical book, Soul of a Citizen. Maybe he knows of a good 12-step program. Either that or I'm going to have to up my cynical game and get committed like Diogenes.
46 Comments so far
Show All"A man who lives on hope dies farting". - Benjamin Franklin, noted cynic
Did Ben really say that?
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." -Oscar Wilde
I read it in Bill Bryson's "Made in America"
Another one I like is by Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical you get, it's hard to keep up.
Yes, and Ben also said in his advice to a young man about marrying an older woman:" Put a bag over her head, they're all the same. "
Now That's cycnical!
Thank you, Saul, for a dose of reality.
Let me know when you find the 12 step program for cynical behavior.
Question **everything**. Including your own questioning.
? ??
Despite the good natured humor of the author, the first of the twelve steps is not about cheering up, but rather deals with waking up to the real mess you are in. Our present situation is no comedy, and a few chuckles will not make it all go away. I reccomend Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Bright-Sided (how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America). Have a good one!
we swim through a river of Sh*t everyday. we hear the voices and see the bobbing heads of other kind, decent people around us, swimming upstream against the brown current. But the voices are muffled and unclear and the bobbing heads disappear under the flood, sometimes permanently.
As if the entire ecosphere and ethosphere were enduring a flood on the scale of Katrina or the BP spill.
We open our mouths to speak and the flood washes in before we are heard. We just can't bail that fast; we can't swim that fast. Too many dead rats, gators and people floating past; too much flotsam and jetsam. We end up hoping that James Lovell is right; that there will be a "great die-off", leaving about 650 million people on a ravaged and utterly different planet. If only because it would be a much quieter place.
Hope, I guess, isn't hope unless it continues when there is no cause for it. Gonsalves reads Paul Loeb. I read the brave Rebecca Solnit. It ain't much to cling to, but f**k it! If I'm going down, I'm going down swinging and singing.
Cheer up! When life hands you a piece of shit, make a shit sandwich! :)
Good one jareilly. I like your style.
Searching for an honest man in DC is folly.
The problem with cynicism is that it is mostly the opposite of what it is professed to be: a rejection of social convention. In fact cynicism is so widely embraced that those who embrace hope are sneered at, while those who sneer are cheered.
My old teacher John Schaar wrote an essay once in which he said of all the evils loosed upon the world by Pandora, the worst was hope. When I was younger, the idea intrigued me, and I suspected he was right. Now that I'm much older, I think hope is vitally important to us. As anyone who has read Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning knows, hope is sometimes the only thing that can keep a person alive.
A culture that intentionally gives up on hope is a dying culture, and not something to be celebrated.
I have always embraced scepticism, and been very careful to point out to people the difference between it and cynicism.
Unfortunately, here in the US, most people confuse the two, but I think the cool sarcasm of the cynic has a teenage mentality to it. It's like the snarky kid in eighth grade who had the bad acne but knew how to tell dirty jokes like a grown-up, like he had the experience. We knew he didn't, but his smarminess made sex seem so dirty that we felt like we could pretend we were grown ups already, which is how I think of cynics when they try and talk philosophy when what they're really doing is following the crowd which is the opposite of philosophy but then they're just mistaking paradise for that dawg house across the road.
A bankrupt culture that is sustained only by hope and wishful thinking is a dying culture, and not something to be celebrated.
You are right, but if we work to make culture more meaningful, understanding, exciting, humorous, embracing, challenging, and generous--as well as hopeful--we make it more than dumb-ass hopeful and become instead smart-ass hopeful. Is it an impossible dream? Probably. What choice do we have? Do we accept defeat?
Do we fight for survival? I think the evolutionary record shows we will fight for survival. Capitalism may inspire you to think you understand human nature, but I think the Great Warming will lead to a much different world where hope will need to be present in civilization to get over a five-hundred year 'hump'. It's that or listening to John the Revelator tell us our time is up, and that script is even more nauseous than the Pollyanna one you rightfully dislike.
You cannot find hope until you have found compassion.
Yeah I think hope comes from caring for and being cared for by others. Hope nurtures us but it is senseless when we stand on the roof of a house and pray for the Lord to save us if there's a boat already waiting for us. So too the idea of esteem, which has been turned on its head. Esteem originally meant the respect others had for someone who gave of himself--and this person was recognized for his or her social esteem--the degree to which society esteemed someone worthy of respect. Beginning thirty years ago, when the self-esteem movement was getting on up, the notion of that old school esteem was replaced with pride and egotism. That egotism blocks our compassionate nature, and only letting go with compassion frees us of its chains.
You can read whatever or whomever you want, but you really have to find it within yourself to put one foot in front of the other day after day. And yes Sean, it is possible to be skeptical without being cynical; the two concepts are not related.
The story is told that Alexander the Great made a point of going to see the great Diogenes during his travels and visited him at the mouth of the bathtub where he lived. The conquerer asked the philosopher if there was anything he could do for him.
Diogenes: "Yes, you can stand out of my light." The best double-entendre I've ever heard.
Thank you for an enjoyable read. I'm with you brother, I was born in 1971 too...lol
Cheers to the queers and have a gay day!!!
Thank you for an enjoyable read. I'm with you brother, I was born in 1971 too...lol
Cheers to the queers and have a gay day!!!
It is utterly impossible to be too cynical about the wealthy and the powerful, who REALLY should reflect that they continue their existences at our sufferance.
Good 'ol boys may be dumb, but most ain't evil.
Damn, I'm both
a skeptical cynic that sees no hope
Oscar Wilde's quip was about critics, not cynics.
It seems to me that most of what is called cynicism is actually camp. As pop culture accelerates, yesterday's cool is today's high camp. TV commercials show a lot of camp these days -- to the point where their relevance to the product is not apparent.
Cynicism about politics serves the private commercial sector because if one cannot obtain something from government, it must be obtained from them. Conservative cynicism drowns the hope that radical politics represents. If radicals failed in the past, that was because they were snuffed out by conservative cynics. Cynicism is supposed to reject platitudes about human nature, not offer up a dead bouquet of purported failings.
Comment relocated below.
I find it interesting how Class War-related words and their definitions have changed 180 degrees over time. Cynic is one and Tyrant another. The tyrant was the one who rescued democracy from the rich oligarchy subverting it; thus, a tyrant and his tyranny was good for commonfolk and bad for the rich and powerful. Today as we all know it has the opposite meaning. It would appear that Obama and his ilk want to redefine change and hope: Change now means status quo/static/inert; hope now means forlorn/desperate. I'm sure if Orwell were alive he'd point out others.
Mr. Gonsalves, I think you're mistaking frustration due to futility for cynicism. Cynics generally just criticize. The rest of us who grew up as dreamers, who wanted to make a difference, make the world a better place, are now experiencing frustration with the fact that there are no more options. This overcrowded planet is poisoned. And it will not clean itself in our lifetimes and possibly never again in such a way as to sustain a viable "civilization" of human beings.
The author asks: "Why can't you be firmly planted in reality without being cynical?" Perhaps because that's the direction in which current reality leads. I'm with Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical you get, it's hard to keep up."
But the author also appears to conflate cynicism with fatalism and non-involvement. They aren't quite the same thing, although it's not always easy to resist the "learned helplessness" tactics of the slavemasters who strive mightily to reinforce that correlation.
As the master of futility encouragement would say: "So?"
I wish I could get up my nerve to panhandle or at least busk, but it is too hot up here in Saskatchewan ( 90 F) and the food bank bread and broccoli is just a short walk away.
I like some of the ideas of the Diogenes though. Why not form a new band of Gen X ascetics who practice down sizing Mc Mansions to more appropriate kennel like quarters. Despising life and art goes hand in hand with these abodes. Reuse the extra commodes as thrones of plenty planters.
Meanwhile, I will try to deride my chrome molly Rolls of a racing bike so I and my Border collie can ride off our winter fat.
crome molly schwinn, super le tour 12.2
only year they were made in Japan 1976,
still have with original shimano derailer
diacomp brakes,
I believe crome molly one of the best for
money frames you could buy, sure survived
a few of my accidents, I used crank over
a hundred miles for warmup, wish I could
get it going again, there are few experiences
in my life that matched the adrenalin high.
Cynicism is SO tired. Its a way to hide from your fears about not being cool. All young hipsters trying to be way hip and so cynical and urban and techie and all- get over it! I challenge you to find your totally naive, kind, easily impressionable, happy, silly, least cynical self and let loose. Dance around like a maniac. The best of you is still like a child. Don't wait until you get old to free yourself from the tyranny of feeling you have to act mature and bored.
One can be cynical about the future and still dance and be happy in the moment. Cynicism is sometimes the most authentic response to reality. It's true that denying the truth can sometimes be "healthier". I still choose truth.
You can speak truth to power. At some point, you realize power isn't listening. Ergo, cynicism.
ubrew, I disagree. And perhaps you have unwittingly shown why cynicism can distort reality as much as optimism. You are right to question the left dogma of "speaking truth to power." As Chomsky says, that doesn't make sense. We should speak truth to people who will do something about it.
Having said that, though, just b/c the power elite don't listen doesn't (or shouldn't) lead to cynicism. And here's where cynicism distorts. The power elite are only powerful in so long as WE listen to them. That was what Gandhi and King were talking about! The powerful have NO POWER without willing, obedient subjects. If WE stop listening, their power evaporates. In fact, the elites throughout history have worried about this, whether you're talking about David Hume or Walter Lippmann, the elite have been worried for centuries about what academic types have called a 'crisis of legitimacy.'
So actually, I think, you give us an example of a cynical distortion of reality in concluding that b/c the powerful don't listen, we should be cynical; when that's exactly backwards. It's b/c WE listen that they have power at all.
IC : Does your dog bite?
Rec : No
IC : Hello doggy.
Dog : Grrrrrr!! (as dog bites)
IC : I thought you said your dog does not bite?
Rec : That, is not my dog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXn2QVipK2o
Dewg, n'est pas?
Bring America Back !!!!
****Another Philosopher Cynic wrote:
****THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE LESSONS OF THE PAST
ARE CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT......
Vietnam, Pearl Harbor, WTC anyone here remember ??
****Good old Diogenes never did find even one honest man
in Greece, and he sure would not find one in the USA,
either !!!!
Where have all the good folk gone, long time passing !!
We live in a culture that sustains itself on Washington and Madison Avenue produced bullshit. Does joyfully exposing the vast layers of bullshit to get at an approximation of truth make one a cynic? If this is so then I proudly accept the title of Lord High Priest of the cynics.
Diogenes stood at the market place masturbating. when asked why he replied 'if only hunger can be so easily sated'. When first meeting Alexander the Great, Alexander asked if there was anything he could do, Diogenes replied, 'yes you can move, you are blocking my light'. Diogenes owned a cloak and a cup, on seeing a small boy drink from a puddle with his hand, he threw away his cup.
The modern Cynicism is a far cry from the dog like cynics of Ancient Greece, but really the modern idea of the Classical World is a bourgeois fairy tale
I memorized these aphorisms more than 50 years ago. It's not too late for you.
"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it."
--George Bernard Shaw
ALSO
"It is my business to be right when others are wrong."
--George Bernard Shaw
On these two premises I built my life and psychological career. Now everybody hates me 1) for always seeing accurately through their bullshit and 2) for being right when they are wrong.
But I am loved by cats, dogs, the occasional wild bird, and the odd woman, briefly until I don't do what she wants in exchange for (hoo hah) favors.
Trylon
I prefer "disappointed idealist".
Cynicism can be a healthy BS detector but too much can make one morally impotent.
On the other hand, one cannot be too idealistic.
Another slant on cynicism is that it holds that people are motivated only by self-interest.
I ask you, can you point out ANY action done outside of self-interest?
I know, you'd throw yourself in front of a bus to save a child; you'd dive into a river to save someone drowning; you'd throw yourself on a grenade to save the platoon; you give money to panhandlers.
I'd argue you'd do all these things because you'd feel awful if you didn't. Self-interest.
Growing up I was friends with a super smart African American guy with whom I had many discussions. He told me he hated when white people did things "for" black people out of conscience and kindness. He said the only sincere motive was self-interest. I was puzzled and pointed out that many white people worked for Civil Rights out of conscience. He asked me why I did it and I told him I was sick of seeing people being pushed around and sick of not being able to have the friends I wanted, date the people I wanted. He said "Like I said, self-interest".
Joe
My dog knew better than to hold a lamp in daylight or look for an honest man, but I appreciate the splendour of Diogenes' hope
because, of course, Diogenes did not hold the lamp so that he himself could see
and, mostly by his lamp, we have seen something of Diogenes in our discourse since.
.
But to hold the same light to the same face in the same circumstance too many times makes waste. There are many reasons for optimism, but very few in office.
Great piece and appreciate Sean's kind words. I deal with cynicism a lot in Soul of a Citizen, because it's toxic to social change--a way to make ourselves feel superior, above it all, while the world gets worse and worse.
The challenge, I think, is to go in eyes open, and act even knowing that lots of the time we'll lose and other times we'll get disappointed, but that if we keep on that's how progress happens.
Paul Loeb
Author Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times.
I think some people on The Left simply like to impress people with their more-fatalistic-than-thou rantings. They want to show people how cynical they can be. It's ideological splatterpunk and nothing more.