call me the dog philosopher

He called him a dog.

So Diogenes did what any good philosopher would do. He hiked up his leg and took a piss….

Right on the guy that was hurling insults.

Now, I’ve been trying to think up some good life lessons from this. And we’ll get to that later.

Right now, let’s talk about being a cynic.

Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day. Blue jeans, sneakers, black turtle neck. There’s a famous photo of him sitting in a large empty room. There’s no furniture. Just a lamp and some books.

I’d say that at the time, he was the world’s richest minimalist.

Diogenes was a minimalist. But more than that, he was a philosopher of freedom. He believed in freeing yourself from your possessions, your allegiances, even your social obligations.

Diogenes was a greek philosopher that lived around 404-323 BC.

He had no possessions. He lived on the street. He called himself a “citizen of the world”.

He used to make fun of philosophers such as Plato. He even gave a little smack talk to Alexander the Great one time.

I’m not saying all this to build the guy up. Sometimes he acted just the way you might think a homeless schizophrenic would act. Sometimes it seemed like the guy just needed a hug or maybe like he needed some medications.

His philosophy was called Cynicism. The is not the same as we think of “being cynical” today.

Cynicism was a precursor to the more famous Stoicism. It was about pursuing virtue by rejecting society’s ideals of what is good and living according to nature. Now this might sound good but it has some obvious flaws.

For example…

Self control is a virtue. Perhaps, not taking a piss in public is an element of this and therefor more important than breaking society’s rules.

And what exactly does it mean to live according to your nature? Jack the Ripper might say he was just “living his best life” and “rejecting society’s rules” when he went on his killing spree.

So, no, don’t be a cynic. It’s silly.

But we can still learn from the old dog philosopher. We can simplify our lives. We can stop letting our possessions rule us. We can stop caring so much about what other people think and actually try and think for ourselves.

To me, these are the top lessons of cynicism and ones worth taking a deeper look at.

So maybe old Diogenes wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Just don’t call him a dog.

At least not in pissing range.