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Eat the rich. (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[-] nehal3m@sh.itjust.works 191 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] Nobody@lemmy.world 21 points 5 months ago

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

[-] MrZweihander@lemmynsfw.com 16 points 5 months ago

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

[-] pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.works 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)

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 82 points 5 months ago

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

...but I like his revolutionary spirit.

[-] Godort@lemm.ee 57 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] MindTraveller@lemmy.ca 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

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Mhmm. Gross.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

He just had that Dog Philosopher in him.

[-] HEXN3T@lemmy.blahaj.zone 51 points 5 months ago

No I think philosophy is cool actually

[-] BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago

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

[-] PugJesus@lemmy.world 22 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[-] 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 8 points 5 months ago

Be the man Marcus Aurelius thinks you can be

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[-] Copernican@lemmy.world 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?

[-] 0xD@infosec.pub 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Camus! Just enjoy everything! Rebel against meaning!

[-] nomous@lemmy.world 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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

But have you asked yourself why?

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[-] RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world 47 points 5 months ago

[-] masquenox@lemmy.world 21 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] MrZweihander@lemmynsfw.com 37 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[-] MutilationWave@lemmy.world 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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[-] hOrni@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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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[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

He was pretty cool with slavery though.

[-] 100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it 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

[-] pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 months ago

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

[-] disgrunty@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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

[-] kandoh@reddthat.com 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah, you got Sundays off and could keep property. Still not a good practice and I don't agree that society wouldn't have been able to function without it (maybe mining)

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[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 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!"

[-] Bye@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Behold, a man!

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 5 months ago

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

Not to kink shame but that's pretty unsanitary.

[-] Speculater@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Kinky. Sanitary. Pick one.

[-] jaybone@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

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

[-] BreadOven@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Did he mean Dionysus?

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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
1253 points (97.3% liked)

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