Diogenes
by George Pavlu
ISBN 085905 325 3, (2003 new), Soft cover, illustrated, 185grams
$22.00 + POST
.... here is a book that barks at fleas with cynic wit. And what a restorative sight - Diogenes the Dog snapping at the heels of 'homo consumerus' at prayer in their temples to modernity - Shopping Malls - urging the decidedly un-chic virtue of frugality: to know that enough is enough IS ENOUGH!
This Cynic Dog who eschewed possessions as ludicrous fashion accessories and so inoculated himself against being possessed by possessions, practiced 'back-to-nature' philosophy - that urban fantasy which no full life is without. Living in his barrel, he scoffed at conventions with his inimitable canine insouciance, presenting to the Hellenic world the picture-perfect of Cynic freedom.
But look about you, 0 Diogenes .... how far the world has fallen from your Cynic Arcadia. Even your eponymous namesake, the dog, born free, is everywhere on the leash...says all you need to know about modern society's much vaunted individual freedoms.
And what would Diogenes make of the escalating panoply of borders so fragmenting the peoples of the world from one another that, in self-enclosure and exclusion, they feverishly espouse nationalism? Diogenes was the first to call himself a Cosmopolitan - 'citizen of the world' - thus rejecting citizenship of any nation, favouring instead membership of the human race. Clearly
Diogenes' free-range Cosmopolitan Utopia has still not arrived in this, the Third Millennium.
As Phillip Adams comments, "Yes, we need Diogenes rather badly these days to blast away at a society riddled with pomposity and delusions ... with both barrels." (The Age)