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Showing posts with the label philosopher

Barrel Life

Historical Fiction “I’m going to die,” declared Diogenes.  He was 96.  By the time you reach the age of 96 you will have acquired the wisdom to know when to die.  You can have such wisdom even earlier.  Depends on what life taught you.  Rather what you cared to learn from life. Diogenes was on a street in Corinth.  Dying.  The street was his home.  When the weather was too good outside he chose to get into a barrel.  Somebody had gifted him that barrel.  Why somebody?  Greece was mad enough to understand the madness of Diogenes and appreciate it.  But Greece was not so mad that Diogenes was prompted to declare with the certainty that comes only to godmen that “Most men are within a finger’s breadth of being mad.” “It takes a wise man to discover a wise man,” declared Diogenes with the same godman-certainty when Xeniades of Corinth bought him from the slave dump.  He had been sold as a slave by one of the administrators of Greece who wished to get rid of his ravi