By contemporary standards, it’s usually pretty easy to sort undesirable types into one of two categories: the gravely cynical and the unnervingly earnest. The former is pessimistic enough to take La Rochefoucauld’s famous maxim about the base-nature of human motives (“Our virtues are, most often, only vices in disguise”) to heart. However, he lacks the good sense to temper his insights with a sense of levity. He broods, sneers and infects those around him with bile.
The latter is optimistic enough to mangle the ever-compounding series of contradictions that is his practical and ethical life (a rich and ever-expanding tapestry of commitments to humanity’s goodness, Mother Gaïa, Hillsong, the digestive wonders of a gluten-free diet, the insights of Hermes Trismegistus, The Zohar, Christian Science and Jakob Böhme and so on) into a tortured theodicy. Whatever good he brings through his naifish smiling at the world is squandered by the palpable unease he causes those around him at every turn. He smiles, sings, touches, preaches and infects those around him with a profound distemper.
It is an unfortunate accident of history that cynicism is today hitched to the wagon of the grave. In the life of Antithenes, or more famously that of Diogenes of Sinope, the cynical way of life entailed a radical rejection of human authority, customs, values, etc., in the course of pursing a life lived according to nature. The freedom from societal norms enjoyed by the cynics gave them a unique outsider perspective on social institutions and customs. From this vantage point, the cynics used what Diogenes referred to as the “most beautiful thing in the world,” παρρησία [parrhēsia], freedom of speech, to point out the contingent, capricious and absurd nature of human life and morality.
While serious, this way of being was far from grave. It was joyful and, frankly, hilarious.
He was great at pouring scorn on his contemporaries. The school of Euclides he called bilious, and Plato’s lectures waste of time, the performances at the Dionysia great peep-shows for fools, and the demagogues the mob’s lacqueys. He used also to say that when he saw physicians, philosophers and pilots at their work, he deemed man the most intelligent of all animals ; but when again he saw interpreters of dreams and diviners and those who attended to them, or those who were puffed up with conceit of wealth, he thought no animal more silly. He would continually say that for the conduct of life we need right reason or a halter.~Life of Diogenes of Sinope, Diogenes Laertius, Book 6, Chapter 24.
The Oilogosphere’s resident cynic is Benjamin Massey, aka @Lord_Bob. The importance of his function to the online hockey community cannot be understated. In the grand scheme of things, the Oilogosphere division of labor allocates the duty of breaking down Oilers mistakes on and off the ice to a fellow like Jonathan Willis. Massey’s role, however, doesn’t encompass diagnostic reporting. His role is to remind us of the grand absurdity that is the Edmonton Oilers.
This function is important; not because it performs some kind of cathartic release, but because it places the patina of normalcy the Oilers and the media who cover them have carefully crafted over the past near-decade of losing into stark relief.
It is one thing to dissect a decadent power or to rant and rave at it. It is quite another thing to reduce that same power to an absurdity. In the former cases, one is still tacitly deferring to authority: “You, institution of authority, are making mistakes! You are terrible!” The latter simply forgoes the assumption that he is bound to grant institutions of authority an unearned legitimacy and treats their power as a trifling matter [When he was sunning himself in the Craneum, Alexander came and stood over him and said, “Ask of me any boon you like.” To which he replied, “Stand out of my light.”]. Without making the assumption that power deserves respect, the cynic is free to lambast its vestments and airs; to ask of power the critical questions: “is Anton Lander dead?”
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