The Cynics were contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle. They sought to perfect their souls by deriding and rejecting the material world. The greatest of these was a fellow called Diogenes. He would roam the streets of Athens in search of a wise man, claiming he could never find one. He would often lie around all day, living off of the donations of his students; in other words he was a bit of a slug. It is said that when Alexander the Great found Diogenes lying naked in a bathtub outside, he asked him, "What can Alexander do for you?" To which Diogenes replied, "You can get out of my sun." Ironically, this greatly impressed Alexander, who later said that if he could not be Alexander, he would be Diogenes.
Fortunately, the great Aristotle was not as impressed as Alexander. Aristotle taught that true happiness and virtue came not from disengaging, but from actually participating in the real world. When Diogenes died, the Cynics became aimless, shiftless beggars. When Aristotle passed away, Aristotelian thought became the bedrock for most of what we know as Western civilization.
In the decade after Diogenes went to his bathtub in the sky, a fellow named Zeno started a school of philosophy while sitting on a porch in Athens. "Porch" in Greek is "Stoa," and he and his students were called Stoics. Fast-forward 300 years to the next great Stoic philosopher—a Roman slave named Epictetus—who taught that the key to happiness was to understand the nature of the material world and then control your thoughts, desires, and opinions toward it. The Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was the last famous Stoic; he lived a few years after Epictetus and wrote in his diary, "You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."
While the Cynics say "People are stupid" or "People are evil" and walk away, the Stoics say, "Some people are stupid and I can't change that; I can only control myself and choose to help them anyway," or "Some people are evil but I can't change them; I can, however, fight them to protect the innocent from the guilty."
As we spoke to that graduating class I noticed two young women who were undoubtedly idealistic; much like Plato they are going to change the world. I looked at the Sarge, 29 years of law enforcement under her belt, and I knew that while she'd probably been like those rookies once upon a time, like me she learned that you can't change the world or the nature of people. But you can affect the world around you. When evil arrives, we'll battle it. When blood runs, we'll stem the flow. When someone acts foolishly, we'll save them from themselves.
