Such a Cynic

It’s all over. Stop worrying. You can’t catch it outside. You’ve asked my mate questions. Stop picking on him. Go shopping. Buy a house. Buy a car. Send kids back to school. Don’t hug your mum or dad. We’re washing our hands of everything.

Yesterday, BBC Radio 4 had a programme about how the teaching of classics was a way of keeping the poor in their place. The rich ruling classes could pretend that meritocracy existed. They knew that the amount of schooling to read the classics in the original Greek and Latin was beyond the purse of anyone but the already monied. I didn’t have a classical education. Greek philosophers and the conjugation of Latin verbs were replaced with dinosaurs and learning the names of how lions appear on heraldic flags but as I’ve got older I have become fascinated with how wound into our society and our thinking they have become.

The people who rule us have had this classical education. They know all the Greek Philosophers by name and understand their teachings, applying them to life, as if nothing has changed in the last two thousand three hundred years.

The Greek philosophers fall into different categories, or isms. Often these are named after the person who invented them.

Listening to the programme, I became fascinated with the Cynics. For them, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. They were early, eccentric eco-warriors. Cynicism comes from the Ancient Greek word for dog-like. The most famous of the cynics was Diogenes, who lived on the streets in a ceramic urn. The man on the radio said that there isn’t much written by the original cynics, which probably isn’t a surprise. I can’t think a Greek urn on the corner of a street makes the best writing desk.

I listened to the programme, fascinated. They seemed to think that we should reinvigorate cynicism and at first I agreed. I approach everything we are told by the government with a touch of cynicism. Then they told us about a Diogenes speech, where he defecated on stage. The idea was repulsive enough to make me want to give up cynicism immediately. They explained that it was a very well timed message to seal his shameless and fearless message. Having listened to this in the morning, I can’t have been the only one half expecting Dominic Cummings to end his statement by dropping his trousers and adding some much needed fertiliser to the non-existent blooms in the Downing Street rose garden.

I know they are all ‘cleverer’ than us. They know how to manipulate. They understand the classics. However, I just wish that if the threat is passed they could be honest with us and let us do the things we want to, like see the people we love. The cynics wouldn’t have been very impressed to find their techniques used to put economy over love and nature.