The Nomadic Alternative – Page 203

of athletes. He disliked sharp dressers. "If it's for a man you're a fool. If it's for a woman you're up to no good." One young man complained to him of the irritating attentions he attracted. "Well, don't hang out a sign of invitation." Women, he said, should be held in common and used by everybody. Marriage was undesirable.

"For a young man, not yet; for an old man, not at all."

Cynicism was anti-urban. Diogenes observed that men first crowded into cities to protect themselves from those outside, only to commit the most dreadful crimes against each other, as if this had been the sole object of their coming together. Anti-urban the Cynics might be, but they needed the city as foil for their poverty. Poverty was wasted on the countryside. And as usual many of those who self-consciously returned to nature, did so as long as they could avoid all contact with nature.

In other words the Cynics were bums. Western civilization had its first taste of an intellectual tendency with which it has grown increasingly familiar - slumming. "Poverty", said [illegible]chrysostom, a later Cynic, "seems to have something holy about it." The mystique of the proletariat and the attractions of barbarism, beggary and buggery exert an irresistible fascination for a particular type, which usually combines intellectual pretensions and failed resources.

Even Diogenes adulterated the coinage of his native city, before feeling a revulsion for coinage in general. Regrettably, deliberate self-abasement always has an element of the pretentious. Many Cynics had to face the charge of pride by seeming not to be proud, and deserved Lucian's blistering scorn for their barking, gratuitous obscenity, obsequious charm and grovelling to anyone who would stand them a meal.

But preferring lentils to oysters, tubs to houses and scatological humour to Platonic discourse concealed a purpose that was far from frivolous. With dedication the Cynics weaned as many as possible away from the illusion that civilization was necessarily beneficial. Freedom from possessions emancipated the mind from mundane cares and opened vistas of limitless leisure. "You will see", said Diogenes,