I’m not sure if Cynicism is healthy because I’m not sure what health is. But I do think that Cynicism has a healthy role to play: it is a healthy corrective to the nonsense of this world, the world that we have made for ourselves.
My doubt serves as an introduction to a typically philosopher’s question. Not ‘is this or that thing healthy?’, which is a question we leave to the scientists, but ‘what is healthy’? What is the essence or best idea that we have of ‘health’? Here are some paradoxical answers characteristic of a Cynic’s idea:
It is healthy to die of something. It is healthy to be ill sometimes. It is healthy to be often hungry, hot or cold, tired, and suffer other natural forms of suffering. It is healthy to be unproductive, to sit around and do nothing when there is nothing that you need to do. It is healthy to be indifferent to material success. It is healthy to look shabby.
According to the Cynic, when you see someone strutting around all puffed up with glory, rich, good looking, adorned with ornamentation, ambitious and driven, a picture of success: when you see this person, you see someone who is not well. They are not a picture of success but a picture of sickness, like an addict high on drugs, like a drunk alcoholic. If you ask them they would say (like anyone high) that they are happy and free from problems, but they can only say such things because they are ignorant and they have hidden their ignorance behind an illusion.
Their appearance advertises that ignorance, whether they know it or not. The Cynic sees them for who they really are: a soul lost in luxury, enslaved to their appetites, hopelessly at the mercy of fortune.
According to the Cynic, it is healthiest to be aligned with nature, free, enjoying simple pleasures, invulnerable to misfortune. They show us this picture of health with their lived example: they are happy and free and untroubled. It is a clear contrast with our modern ideal.
Perhaps I have been ruined by philosophy, but when I look at the two pictures of health, the one that seems so often troubled and that manages to carry on only with the support of so many props (medication, money and luxuries, promotions and awards and the constant promise of more and better); and the other picture, the one that is free, self-reliant, and content with little: I know which one I would choose… It seems to me to be quite obvious which is preferable.
Isn’t it better to be content with less than always needing more? Isn’t it better to maintain your health by your own efforts rather than by relying on external cures? Isn’t it better not to do (or be driven to do) the things that are making you ill?
Addicts don’t see the harm that they do, to themselves or others. They don’t see that they are unwell. How do we show them? By highlighting the harms of their practices. We tell smokers they will get cancer and that they will give it to others with their second-hand smoke; we tell drug users that they will rot their brains and destroy their relationships; we tell drinkers that they will be overweight and have high blood pressure. Not all smokers get cancer, not all drug users rot their brains, and not all drinkers are overweight with high blood pressure, but these warnings are healthy correctives to any tendency towards excess.
This is the healthy role that I see for Cynicism: a corrective to the excesses of our modern world. I think we are excessively luxurious; I think we are excessively driven; I think we are excessively concerned with our appearance; I think we are excessively motivated by material wealth. I think these things are obvious.
And so I say: It is healthier to be indifferent to material success than it is to never be satisfied with what you already have. It is healthier to be unproductive than it is to be so driven that you are incapable of taking a rest. It is healthier to look shabby than it is to be so obsessed with your appearance that you mutilate yourself with repeated cosmetic surgeries.
But if you listen to the marketeers, they will tell you only one thing: ‘Want more!’ It is not healthy. Do not listen to them. They are pushers feeding your bad habit. They are making you ill.
Who can point this out, if not for the Cynic shouting from the sidelines of society: ‘Can’t you see how sick you are?!’
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
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