this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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1254
Eat the rich. (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 191 points 5 months ago (3 children)

According to legend, Alexander the Great came to visit the philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. Alexander wanted to fulfill a wish for Diogenes and asked him what he desired. As told by Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes replied, "Stand out of my light."

One day while he was eating a frugal dish of lentils, he was challenged by the philosopher Aristippus, who, for his part, led a golden life as he was one of the king’s courtiers. Aristippus scornfully told him: “See, if you learned to crawl before the king, you wouldn’t have to settle for rubbish like this vulgar dish of lentils!” Diogenes replied: “If you’d learned to make do with lentils, you wouldn’t have to crawl before the king!”

Big dick energy. Love this guy.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

“Were I not Alexander, I would want to be Diogenes.”

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

Diogenes: "I feel the same way, bro. I would want to be me too."

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Usually it's translated as "step/stand out of my sun" (just in case someone is wondering which light is meant)

[–] [email protected] 82 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Diogenes was, by all accounts, a gross-ass motherfucker.

...but I like his revolutionary spirit.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 months ago (2 children)

He was a raving homeless man who frequently masturbated in public and antagonized anyone who would approach him. However, beyond all that he was one of the smartest people in the ancient world and lived life never comporimising his principles.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 months ago

That's not true. For a long time he owned a clay cup even though he didn't need it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Mhmm. Gross.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

He just had that Dog Philosopher in him.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago (2 children)

No I think philosophy is cool actually

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I'm being facetious with this, but what philosophers do you like?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Nietzsche is such a wonderful read, because he has the soul of a poet and doesn't give a damn if he's being consistent.

Kierkegaard is harder to parse, but very fascinating.

Marcus Aurelius legit just wants you to be a good human being.

Yamamato Tsunetomo wants you to kill people and don't afraid of anything.

Musonius Rufus is remarkably modern in his thinking for someone of the first century AD.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Be the man Marcus Aurelius thinks you can be

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Well I think Karl Marx agrees on some way. But when you are BFFs with Engels and enjoy Fox Hunts as a pass time, are you eating the rich or just saying everyone should eat like the rich?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Camus! Just enjoy everything! Rebel against meaning!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

One that I really enjoyed during my pretentious phase was the father of modern philosophy himself, Immanuel Kant. He wrote a lot about ethics and aesthetics but the crux of his work boils down to the idea that space and time are just "forms of intuition" that structure our experience and are just appearances we can comprehend. The true nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us.

As someone who has always considered themselves very rational and more of an agnostic than an atheist, his ideas really clicked with me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But have you asked yourself why?

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah... something about the anecdotes told about Diogenes sounds off to me - you don't see homeless people today live the charmed life they say Diogenes got to live.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

It's not implausible. Being a famous wit and wacky character can get someone a lot of latitude. I'm reminded of the Emporer of the United States, a locally famous weirdo who lived in San Francisco way back. Among his other notable hijinks, he was unemployed, yet never went hungry because he printed his own alternate currency (which he insisted was the only valid currency). Many of the local shops and restaurants just accepted it like official money even though it was worthless to anyone else, because everyone enjoyed his antics so much.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

There are characters like this in New Orleans. They just get by and get high with the community. Homeless people really help each other out down there too

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I always say, eating the rich would be disgusting. My proposition is to ground them up and use them as fertiliser. Preferably we grind them alive.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

He was pretty cool with slavery though.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago

At least he was also captured and sold as a slave. Moreover, Dio Chrysostom chose him as his anti-slavery champion in Diogenes or On Servants.

Diogenes argues that it is better not to have slaves at all, observing that:

... nature has made each man a body that is sufficient for looking after himself. — Dio, Oration 10.10

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Child of his time. A working society without slaves wasn't imaginable.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Also slavery was typically ~~nowhere near as~~ a different sort of brutal in that era. Still brutal and terrible, but not "working people to death and then shipping in more people to work to death" brutal.

Edit: changed my wording because slavery has always been fucking horrible, e.g. eunuchs

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

There's also that another apocrypha of him and Plato. Plato once sarcastically claimed that men were "featherless bipeds". Diogenes later showed up with a chicken, whose feathers had been plucked, "Here is Plato's man!"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

Behold, a man!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Eat them with all that well deserved spit on their faces?

Not to kink shame but that's pretty unsanitary.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Kinky. Sanitary. Pick one.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

This is back in a time where like 0.1% of the population was literate.

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