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How to Swim Against the Stream: On Diogenes
- sec400 4y ago[dead]
- apocalypstyx 4y agoYou can't swim against the same stream twice.
- koolba 4y agoTechnically you can. You just have to flow back down a different one to the source again. The professional analogy would be quitting a 9-5 to do you own thing, building it up, getting acquired, and then repeating the process.
- tom-thistime 4y agoYou can deal a second hand of cards from the same deck. You can't* deal exactly the same hand you dealt the first time. *Limiting case given enough cards. We shuffle before each deal.
- guerrilla 4y agoYou missed the Heraclites reference.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y agoYeah, but the good news is they'll never miss the same reference again.
- koolba 4y agoYou’re grossly overestimating my long term memory.
- coldtea 4y ago>Technically you can. You just have to flow back down a different one to the source again It wont be the same, as all arrangements of molecules would have changed, not to mention be entirely different water molecules. Which was Heraclitus point (metaphorically): the things we wish to do again ("twice"), we'll always have to do them in a changed environment.
- loa_in_ 4y agoSo it is when you blink while swimming in one stream
- lordleft 4y agoDiogenes 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.
- ddalex 4y agoAlso Marcus Aurelius.
- vram22 4y agoEpictetus is great. I like this saying which I think is attributed to him (words are from memory, actual may be different): "Practice yourself in little things, for heaven's sake, and thence proceed to greater."
- Abishek_Muthian 4y agoAs 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. [1] Free, legal download of Enchiridion with illustrations - https://1231047546.rsc.cdn77.org/the_enchiridion_epictetus_by_thomas_eliot.pdf https://1231047546.rsc.cdn77.org/the_enchiridion_epictetus_b... .
- vram22 4y agoGood 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. :)
- tom-thistime 4y agoDude lived in a damn barrel though.
- 082349872349872 4y agoGuess he had the right climate for it. Cf Diogenes & Alexander.
- yamtaddle 4y agoBig "living in a standard shipping container" energy. Diogenes: tiny home enthusiast.
- totetsu 4y agoI wonder if he was the inspiration for Oscar the grouch..
- adversaryIdiot 4y agowow... you might be right
- srik 4y agoThe barrel is the point.
- tom-thistime 4y agoThe barrel may be part of the point. It may also be useful context for anyone who is wondering how much time to invest in learning about Diogenes.
- Y_Y 4y agoThe medium is the message
- swamp40 4y agoNo mention of swimming or streams. Appropriate, I suppose.
- 082349872349872 4y ago1st para? (theatre crowd)
- anononaut 4y agoTo 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?
- 082349872349872 4y agoA long life, of few unsolicited interruptions, followed by long-lasting fame? (the last probably not being one of his ends, but it weighed heavily among his contemporaries' ends)
- anononaut 4y agoDiogenes 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.
- twelve40 4y agolike acting out what the others wrote in parables? he does have a point begging from a statue, for example
- cratermoon 4y ago> To what end, Diogenes? παραχαραττειν το νομισμα
- anononaut 4y agoThis was exactly what I was looking for!
- coldtea 4y agoNot giving a fuck? Independence? Free minded? Living the life in your own terms, not the rat race's?
- californiadreem 4y agoDiogenes 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)"
- zelias 4y agoThis guy arguably invented the concept of "committing to the bit"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- emarsh 4y agoSo, he was the original Andy Kaufman?
- bambax 4y agoSome 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!
- DiogenesKynikos 4y agoThis is one of the primary sources about Diogenes the Cynic, written by a different man named Diogenes: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D2 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...
- aaplok 4y ago> When some strangers expressed a wish to see Demosthenes, he stretched out his middle finger and said, "There goes the demagogue of Athens." Dies anybody know if that gesture had the same meaning as today back then?
- barrikad 4y ago> 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). From here: https://wikiless.org/wiki/The_finger?lang=en#Classical_era https://wikiless.org/wiki/The_finger?lang=en#Classical_era
- ROTMetro 4y agoAs 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.
- NKosmatos 4y agoIt 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).
- dredmorbius 4y agoI'd strongly recommend some ancient philosophy. The History of Philosophy podcast gives a good introduction starting with the Greek / pre-Socratic philosophers. <https://historyofphilosophy.net/ https://historyofphilosophy.net/> There are a few others, including Stephen West's Philosophize This (<https://www.philosophizethis.org/ https://www.philosophizethis.org/>) and Carneades: (<https://www.carneades.org/ https://www.carneades.org/>).
- mickdeek86 4y agoPer 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- peter_d_sherman 4y ago>"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."
- dragonwriter 4y ago> In our age of unapologetic conformism and generalized herding Compared to what?
- sacrosancty 4y ago[dead]
- peter_d_sherman 4y agoYou'll have to ask the original author! 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! So let me ask you a question... What would you -- compare it to? ?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoDiogenes was likely regarded in his time, kind of like we regard Alex Jones and Logan Paul.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoI don’t think Diogenes was using his social media clout to con people. His barrel didn’t even have wifi.
- rramadass 4y agoTwo excellent books on Diogenes and other Cynics; 1) Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes translated by Robin Hard. 2) The Cynic Philosophers: From Diogenes to Julian translated by Robert Dobbin.