He used to say, moreover, that we ought to stretch out our hands to our friends with the fingers open and not closed.
Menippus in his Sale of Diogenes tells how, when he was captured and put up for sale, he was asked what he could do.
He replied, "Govern men." And he told the crier to give notice in case anybody wanted to purchase a master for himself.
Having been forbidden to sit down, "It makes no difference," said he, "for in whatever position fishes lie, they still find purchasers."
—Diogenes Laërtius, 6.29
I can't decide if he's ironically honoring people who flake or if he's making a point about the futility of social structures.
ReplyDelete(I might also be misunderstanding some context here...I'm reading these choices as vocational, Diogenes might be looking at them as purely material/honorific).
Given how most of us will do these things for all the wrong reasons, I'm going with the latter!
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