The Nomadic Alternative – Page 202

the Wilderness' and the Cynics were Dogs - the lowest of the low.

Why dogs? Because, said Aristotle, dogs do everything in public.

Dogs eat in public, fuck in public, sleep in public. Dogs lack shame. They are beneath modesty. But dogs do guard (their philosophy) well. The dog is a discriminating animal. It recognizes its friends (those who are suited to doggish philosophy) and snaps at those who are not.

The excesses of the Hellenistic Age demanded an excessive reaction. Immoderate interference with human life by self-important idiots begat immoderate solutions to combat them. The Cynics assumed the world to be a madhouse. Some of its inmates, especially those in positions of power, were madder than others. Material wealth was a disease, because wealth, according to Antisthenes, could never be assessed in men's estates but in their hearts. Once in the magnificent house of a plutocrat, he mistook his host's face for a spittoon. "I cannot", he protested, "find a meaner receptacle."

Nor was the'dog's life' a spiritual quest with rewards in the life to come. It was shamelessly materialistic, a dog's life and nothing more, in which the animal needs of the body were settled at once. "When my body needs sex", Antisthenes said, "whatever comes to hand is good enough for me. Nobody else is going to touch those women." Diogenes masturbated in the market place. "I wish it was as easy to get rid of hunger by rubbing an empty stomach."

A passer-by once threw Diogenes a bone. Diogenes, the dog, sprayed him.

The world knows Diogenes' home was a tub. When he left the tub, he roamed about in rags and slept in an old coat. He shared the opinion of some modern explorers that walking barefoot was healthy for body and mind. As he lived to be ninety and always wore the same serene expression, his comments on the healthy life should not be undervalued. He ate raw meat, raw octopus and lupins. He valued muscular masculinity. Going from Sparta to Athens, he said, was like going from the men's room into the boudoir. He did, however, remark on the depressing effects of over-nourishment on the intellect.