In Praise of the Doggy Life

Peninsula is really better off fighting someone else besides the cynics of this world. The January issue of the rightwing campus magazine, which takes on cynicism with a vengeance, might do better exposing hatred and oppression.

The staff members argue independently but with one voice that "a new cynicism has arisen," threatening belief, humanity, civilization and patriotism. The writers of Peninsula deserve praise for their industriousness as well as their moral seriousness, if not for their accuracy and understanding. They have chosen a subject that is simply too large to get a hold of, and in doing so, they have cheapened many of the causes they had hoped to champion.

Faith, Western civilization and patriotism come off like tired middle class values, propped up by the likes of Peninsula editors. Surely, Peninsula, that vigorous basher of the liberal status quo, has not slipped into apologies for the two car family? It is not the fate of the magazine that interests me, however. If the former gadflies want to slip into a premature middle age, that is not my concern. But they will not drag faith and Western civilization after them.

It is hard to comment on another person's beliefs, even when the issues at hand are as clear as day. Here they are both unclear and very very big, so a word of caution is due before I start playing fast and loose. It would be naive to argue that the "simple faith" of writer Randy Karger is impossible, when in this day and age of scientific discovery, belief is so nearly impossible as a matter of course. It is not his personal faith I attack, nor the "long and difficult" faith of his colleague Brad Whitman, but their public pronouncements of the character of faith in general.

Whitman writes that for the man of faith, "no greater honor exists than for a man to die for his convictions." Several paragraphs later he sums up the nature of the cynic, who, without the aid of faith, is "reduced to a mere animal groping after the desires of the flesh." What we have here is animality versus spirituality. Whitman's reductionism is unfair to both faith and cynicism.

One might remember that Jesus was spirit made flesh, one might emphasize, contrary to Whitman, His incarnation over His sacrifice. To speak on Peninsula's own terms, one might advise Whitman that it is better to live a Christ-like life than to die for a cause. Religion is not nearly so far off from earthly cynicism as Whitman would have us believe.

The early Cynics were real characters, no doubt about it. Advocates of the doggy life, the Cynics were a breed of mad philosophers, terrorizing Greek antiquity with their rough-edged wisdom. Diogenes, probably the most famous Cynic, is well known for his outlandish behavior and his adoration of the "natural life." When a helpful Alexander asked the doggy sage what he could do to aid him, Diogenes replied, "Get out of my light."

Diogenes was that kind of guy, and the Cynics were that kind of folk. It is crucial to understand, though, that the Cynics, as crude as they were (Diogenes was found masturbating in the marketplace), were not immoral. The Cynics practiced a rugged morality, despising the easy life, greed, hatred and class division.

Perhaps more surprising is that scholars have located Cynicism of this variety in the Gospels. Early Christian missionaries have many affinities with the wandering Cynic, as well, and the "doggy" life is not as far off from the life of Christ-like poverty as one might think.

In fact, Cynicism is not a bad morality for today's man. It has a slapstick quality to it that goes well with the silly po-mo late culture we seem to be stuck in. To be heard these days one needs to act broadly, and we cannot get by on staid neo-Victorianism alone, no matter what The Weekly Standard might tell you. We should revive Diogenes as a folk hero, especially at persnickety Harvard where everyone is so exquisitely sensitive. We can just imagine him thumbing his nose at everybody and his mother, chatting up house masters, and spreading his earthy humanism round about the place.

This is the rub, of course. Western civilization is not the tired-out conventionalism as Peninsula would have you believe. There are sources of great and invigorating wisdom in the old antheap, and we should take such counsel wherever we can get it. In our foraging, however, we must be careful, unlike our fellows over at Peninsula, not to mistake irreverence for unbelief.

Noah I. Dauber's column appears on alternate Tuesdays.