The death of Diogenes

Diogenes of Sinope (c.410BCE – c.324BCE), a Greek philosopher of some fame and notoriety, lived in Athens most of his life and taught his students in the open. Often referred by his nickname, the Dog, Diogenes lived an austere life with few possessions, begging for food and sleeping in a ceramic barrel in the marketplace.

The Cynic school of philosophy he founded was based on the renunciation of worldly attachments and commitment to a style of living in keeping with nature; that is, what mattered most to a person’s physical and spiritual wellbeing. Using himself as an example, Diogenes taught happiness through simplicity and railed against social conventions, pretence and luxury.

Accounts of the time say there was a large gathering in Athens’ Agora a few days after he died to honour the man and his principles. Of the many speeches given only that of Stanios of Pharsalus, a one-time student of Diogenes, has passed down to us in full:

So, what of the Dog? Why do we remember him?

It would be wrong to speak only about the way he lived as if that was all that explained the man, but neither would it be right to touch lightly on his lifestyle, for it resonated so much with him, made the philosophy he practised, and served as his trusted weapon against all the folly of humankind.

We would all agree that in no other philosopher has there been a closer link between thought and way of life, none as consistent as the Dog. Many people think and talk about what is right, but he actually lived, he lived the righteous path, and what’s more he made his life a touchstone by which others could compare their commitment to what is right and good.

I was with him many times when, in the middle of a fine conversation with a man or woman about some aspect of life or philosophy, he abruptly reached out a great, dirty hand in a gesture of begging. The surprise, the shock, the fluster on the other person’s face told much about their soul. Whenever on these occasions he received an open-hearted and unencumbered response he’d leap into that peculiar Diogenes dance of swinging arms and legs many of us still remember with fondness.

Was he a perfect man? We all know he was not; perfection belongs to the gods. He was stubborn, at times pig-headed, at times lacking display of the human kindness he had in plenty in his heart. More than once he said to me, “Ah, Staniou, the good has left me today. I am too bitter to speak.” He simply could not surrender the belief that other people should aim as high as he did, or could share the same kind of faith and commitment.

He saved his most caustic attacks for the ignorant, the ambitious, the braggarts and windbags, the politicians and the rich; but somehow those whom he stripped to reality with his words, flayed with the fire of his tongue, still came back to speak with him, as if his wisdom was a kind of necessary tonic.

Who can remember the wrestler, Teles? He was the epitome of an Olympic champion with conceit to match. And Diogenes challenged him to a contest, spat in front of him saying he was nothing because his soul was nothing. All of us who crowded round to watch were praying Teles wouldn’t kill him, but the Dog was summoning him to a fight that was not about brawn. Time after time he broke out of Teles’ holds, squirmed and scrounged until the enraged wrestler finally gripped him, holding him well after his body went limp. When he let go Diogenes looked dead, and everybody suddenly turned to Teles, the mood went dark and even the women seemed ready to spring on him. The wrestler had the look of a hunted deer about to be torn apart by hounds. We know that after that day he never wrestled again.

Many years ago, when I first arrived in Athens and began to fall under the spell of philosophy, I would walk past that curious dishevelled man here at the Agora, lounging as he did in the sun by the fountain, talking to the shopkeepers, begging from passers-by. I thought he was a vagrant, perhaps mad. It was a shock when I learnt that this man was one of Athens’ finest philosophers.

Like everyone else, I was interested in the “Why” question – why he lived that way, and how it related to his thinking.

One morning in spring I found the courage to approach him. He was reading, in the sun as always, on the steps of the Temple of Zeus.

“Diogenes, I ... I have a question for you,” I stammered nervously.

He didn’t look up, but kept softly mouthing the words to himself as he read. So I sat down near him and waited.

It was some time, past noon, before he rolled up the parchment and finally acknowledged my presence. He of course knew what I was going to ask him, and I sensed a rehearsed, but not thoughtless, answer would come my way.

He pulled a bunch of grapes from his satchel, tore it in half and shared it with me. Then he shifted and set those calloused feet of his and said:

“A philosopher cannot be anything but what he is, just like a grape cannot be anything but a grape. Can a grape be a pear, or a fig or olive?”

“But philosophers don’t live like you do.”

“Show me another philosopher,” he said.

Sometimes those words of the Dog come back to me. Sometimes I wonder if he was right.

Learning and unlearning

The extant Annals of Philosophy by Stesimachos contains several dialogues involving the Athenian philosopher Aristageles (second half of the 4th century BCE), believed to have been written by his student, Caro. In the following, taken from the Annals, Aristageles is in conversation with a merchant called Phidoxes on aspects of the nature of wisdom.

Phidoxes: What can you teach me about wisdom, Aristageles?

Aristageles: Nothing. I know nothing on the subject.

Phidoxes: Come now, don’t play Socrates with me! By your venerable grey beard, I’d say you would have learnt a thing or two over the years.

Aristageles: A thing or two? Yes, I learnt, but now to me it is as naught.

Phidoxes: How so?

Aristageles: Well, look at me. Do you see wisdom?

Phidoxes: I see only an old man.

Aristageles: Exactly. Wisdom is not something that you see.

Phidoxes: Is it something that you hear?

Aristageles: No.

Phidoxes: Feel?

Aristageles: Absolutely not.

Phidoxes: Well then, what?

Aristageles: Fill a cup with wine, it is full. Empty the cup, it is empty.

Phidoxes: By Zeus, Aristageles, enough with opaque words and let’s have something that makes sense!

Aristageles: Learning and unlearning, accumulating and letting go – that’s the nature of wisdom. If you don’t learn, life is limited and basic. But if you learn and don’t unlearn, you lack the completeness for wisdom.

Phidoxes: Can you say more?

Aristageles: When I was a child, I loved the hearth-side stories of the Trojan War. I wanted to be one of the great warriors who fought at Troy – an Achilles, a Diomedes, an Ajax – and my brother and I used to cover ourselves in bruises running around hacking at each other with wooden swords pretending to be one hero or another.

Then I grew up and gradually realised the adult meaning of those Trojan War stories. All of them are cautionary tales about what goes wrong when you become a slave to your emotions: lust, anger, pride, envy, greed. Achilles was almost permanently in a rage, and it ultimately cost him his life. Ajax’s hurt at being cheated by Odysseus drove him to madness and ultimately suicide. Indeed the whole ghastly slaughter of the war would not have happened if not for Paris’ infatuation with Helen.

Phidoxes: And how does this relate to wisdom?

Aristageles: There are men well into their old age still believing themselves to be Achilles, still pretending to be Ajax or Odysseus, and still enslaved in all the ways of those heroes. Learning requires participating in life, gaining experience, but unlearning is seeing through the boundaries and limits of ordinary life to what lies at its heart.

What do I care if my honour is offended? If someone curses me in the street, I thank them for the opportunity to practise humility, going on my way without responding in kind to create more trouble. If another philosopher has views opposed to my own, what is the use of storming about and writing endless treatises to destroy his position, as so many of our people do? I should rather thank him for what his views can teach me about my work and improve accordingly.

Phidoxes: So wisdom is about being humble?

Aristageles: It is like a sculptor chipping away at stone, taking away the quantities of the bare material of living to find the core and create something beautiful. Wisdom removes the apparent, the obvious and the hard-edged, to get at what is truly life-giving. It is the cool spring high in the mountains that feeds a myriad of streams tumbling to spread a bounty of life below.

Phidoxes: You speak of unlearning, but to me that sounds like removing knowledge. Why would a man spend his whole life learning, only to lose the very thing he sought?

Aristageles: Unlearning is not subtracting knowledge but transforming it. Tell me, as a merchant who no doubt travels much by sea, have you encountered ship’s captains who have been particularly good at what they do?

Phidoxes: Yes, I have.

Aristageles: And can you describe one of these men?

Phidoxes: Well, the best I use is one called Stopheon. He has an uncanny knack of bringing ships through the worst storms and highest seas without damage. His ability to read the winds and the seas, to navigate and steer, to know the sails and how to employ his crew, is peerless. And he has more than a touch of the requisite captain’s sense of humour.

Aristageles: Is it likely this Stopheon would have had to learn much when he started out as a seaman?

Phidoxes: Of course, like everyone working on ships.

Aristageles: And you would say that his knowledge now as a seaman and ship’s captain is great?

Phidoxes: Vast. I have never seen him unsure of himself. He seems to act seamlessly, like the ship is an extension of himself, his own body – he knows how it must move in all conditions, what to do when.

Aristageles: Ah, seamlessly – that is the clue to the unlearning. Stopheon has all the knowledge but it is not mere knowledge any more, the bare facts or ideas of what to do in various circumstances, he has transformed it into something else. Can he sometimes act in ways contrary to received knowledge, unorthodox as it were?

Phidoxes: Yes, I have been on a ship of his when he has steered towards an oncoming storm – not a major one, mind you, but a storm nonetheless – to use the winds. I wonder if sometimes he makes up his own rules as he goes along, but I still have full confidence in him.

Aristageles: So there is wisdom: you learn the rules, you know the rules, the rules are transformed. It is not that a wise man does not observe customs and laws – he lives in the world like everyone else – but that he sees beyond them and operates in a refined way.

Phidoxes: May I remind you, Aristageles, that only a few minutes ago you said you knew nothing about wisdom.

Aristageles: And I don’t.

Phidoxes: Then what you have just said is worthless?

Aristageles: You must let go of it at the appropriate time, Phidoxes. As for me, it is gone – just a pleasant breeze from the west that has graced us for a few moments and disappeared.

Phidoxes: Gone? No more?

Aristageles: It is a feature of being elderly that all that is solid, all that is substantial to younger people, becomes much less so. The older I get the quicker I see through what is present in the world and the quicker I let go. It is as if I am only partially here, reaching into the next world. Sometimes I feel I can almost touch the gods.

Phidoxes: I pray the gods grant us a few more years of enlivening discussions with you, Aristageles.

Aristageles: That, along with everything else, is entirely in their hands.

Fate, chance and neither

The following dialogue between Aristageles, a philosopher, and his younger protege, Caro, took place on a street in Athens sometime in the 4th century BCE.

Aristageles: Caro, I heard about your cousin’s death. My sympathies are with you and your family.

Caro: Thank you, Aristageles. Xanthus and I were quite close, even though he was younger than me. I’m sorry for my glum looks but I’m still very much grieving and in shock.

Aristageles: Of course.

Caro: I have spent the past few days shut up indoors, not wanting to brave this beastly world or speak to anybody. But Torcus, my father’s slave, pleaded with me to go for a walk for my health and sanity. He said it was possible to die from sadness and it made no sense to join Xanthus in Hades’ company. So here I am, as needs must.

Aristageles: Grieving is very hard on the soul, dear friend.

Caro: Yes, it is. My mind is tormented with questions I can’t answer, Aristageles.

Aristageles: I understand. We are but mortals, after all, up against the great Mysteries.

Caro: He was only 17. Did you know that? Just 17 and he had everything before him. Intelligent, brave, athletic; he would have had a fine career in any number of fields had he ripened to a proper age.

Aristageles: And he died after being thrown from his horse? Forgive me for asking.

Caro: Yes, the grey mare. He was riding alone to Marathon, which he’d done many times before. Some passing merchants found his body, with the horse grazing nearby, and said it may have been scared by a rabbit or some other animal and bolted. Judging by where his body lay, he probably hit his head on a rock when he fell.

Aristageles: Sad indeed.

Caro: Yes. But you must answer one thing for me, Aristageles.

Aristageles: If I can. I am better at asking questions than giving answers.

Caro: Was Xanthus fated to die? Perhaps Zeus or another god was angry with him for some reason and sought vengeance. Or do you think his death was pure misfortune? He knew that road well and it is not dangerous; a few more strides by the mare and he would have likely been thrown well clear of the rock and lived.

Aristageles: I can’t provide an adequate response.

Caro: But surely philosophy would guide us in answering this.

Aristageles: Philosophy is a guide, but it affords no certainty.

Caro: Then what can you say, Aristageles? Nothing?

Aristageles: I could say that the death of Xanthus was occasioned by the Fates and by chance, and neither.

Caro: I don’t understand.

Aristageles: Well, let’s firstly look at fate. Is it not about the exercise of will – human or the higher will, the will of the gods? When a man consistently drives his chariot fast and recklessly, we say he is fated to have an accident and hurt himself. And behold, it happens! The higher will of the gods is harder to figure because we do not have their knowledge or power. Someone dies and we say Zeus willed it – but why? Why should it be so? Why was your cousin taken so early? The ways of the higher powers are a mystery. However, the wise tell us that we and the gods are kin and that we can open ourselves to them, through reverence, prayer and patient listening, and become true servants of their will. We can live so that everything makes sense, so that fate speaks to us – not by the typical everyday mode, but in a deeper way.

Caro: I can see where your words lead. After Xanthus was brought home and laid on his bed, I sat with all the relatives around him, and amid the wailing and moaning I had the feeling that his soul was hovering above his body, and that he was being called to service in other worlds. Just in that brief time I understood. Then it passed and everything was black and incomprehensible and infuriating again.

Aristageles: It would not be the world if it were not blissful and hellish at the same time.

Caro: But you say chance played a role in Xanthus’ death as well. How is it possible for both fate and chance to be present at once?

Aristageles: Well, they are not mutually exclusive. Did you not say yourself that had the horse taken a few more strides Xanthus would likely still be with us?

Caro: Yes.

Aristageles: I’ll give another example. In walking here from your house today you must have passed many people. What was the significance for you in each individual who came from the opposite direction?

Caro: I don’t know. I passed no-one who was familiar to me.

Aristageles: Exactly. Then would you say that every incidental fact of life has meaning?

Caro: I suppose not.

Aristageles: Life proceeds in a glorious array of multiplicity. Perhaps the gods are responsible for every minute detail, or maybe they oversee the general sense of it all and allow the spirit of life to proceed as it will under their watchful gaze.

Caro: But last month as I walked the same way I met Ariston, a friend from Megara whom I hadn’t seen in years, and he invited me to visit and be in the company of Demetrius the sophist, as it turns a close friend of his.

Aristageles: Ah! So here meaning arrives and fate and chance are clearly working in hand in hand. Whatever the circumstance – good, bad or indifferent – we are presented with the opportunity of learning, improving ourselves and the lot of others.

Caro: But you said earlier that neither fate nor chance was also at work – how does that hold?

Aristageles: Well, do you see that dog over there scratching in the dirt?

Caro: Yes.

Aristageles: Do you think it cares anything about the discussion we’ve just had? Whether one thing is just so, or another thing something else?

Caro: I don’t expect it to – it’s an animal. It doesn’t reason like we do.

Aristageles: Yet we can still learn much from it. When reason ceases its labours and sits down in the dust to scratch fleas off itself, what are we left with?

Caro: I don’t know.

Aristageles: Nothing, and everything. That is, all as it really is; the hum and the clamour of the universe.

Caro: I don’t understand.

Aristageles: Simple living, simple gratitude for all that is just as it is without concern or striving.

Caro: I am very puzzled.

Aristageles: The wise say that true knowledge begins with utter confusion.

Caro: And will you leave me in such a state?

Aristageles: I leave you so blessed.

Caro: Goodbye, Aristageles.

Aristageles: Goodbye, Caro, and may your grieving from now on be light.

A Dialogue on Place

The following imaginary dialogue happened in a street in Athens sometime in the 4th century BCE. The two people involved are philosophers, Aristageles an older man and Xanthon a younger protégé.

ARISTAGELES: Ho, Xanthon! Where are you off to so hastily on such a fine morning?

XANTHON: I have much to do today, Aristageles.

ARISTAGELES: People have been talking and wondering what has become of the learned Xanthon. You haven’t been seen in weeks, not since the symposium at Alkaios’ house at any rate. Your friends miss you.

XANTHON: I’ve had very much on my mind, Aristageles. The weight of it has been such that I’ve had no time for friends or frivolity, not even for philosophy.

ARISTAGELES: May I enquire what has detained you in such fashion?

XANTHON: Oh, Aristageles, it is something about which I dare not speak for shame. My heart is a hollow vessel of sadness.

ARISTAGELES: Is it something that cannot be shared with one who cares? ‘A heavy sack between two is no burden’, the saying goes.

XANTHON: If only. I’m afraid the grief is solely mine to bear.

ARISTAGELES: But is there no way a friend could help? Remember, philosophy beats paths through all things.

XANTHON: Yes, I know it does, but for me? You see I have no way out.

ARISTAGELES: Out of...

XANTHON: I am going into exile, Aristageles.

ARISTAGELES: Ah, so this is the rock that sits on your soul?

XANTHON: Yes, it is. I was chosen for the expedition against the Macedonians, which as you know is only days away. I’m not a fighter, cannot fight, will not fight again. The very thought of the battlefield sickens me and I have a feeling in my gut that if I go to war again I will die.

ARISTAGELES: It is very normal to hate war, my friend. War is a plague, a curse, and it is a great stain on Athens, on our civilisation, that we have danced to the blood frenzy more than many other cities; even as much as some barbarians. Nor is it unmanly to refuse to fight. Reason is a divine gift, and it makes no sense to walk into butchery, even if sanctioned by the laws of the land.

XANTHON: You are right, Aristageles. But do you know what weighs on me heaviest, even more than being known as a coward and losing my honour? It is the thought of leaving Athens. It fills me with the blackest dread.

ARISTAGELES: Do you fear never returning?

XANTHON: Yes. Athens is home. I have only ever left Attica twice in my life, and then only to Corinth. Athens is everything to me; it is my life, my soul. What will I do without the sight of her hills every day, her temples and squares? The Acropolis, the life of the agora, the processions and singing of the Panathenaea, Boreas sweeping through the leaves of the plane trees by the Ilisos, even the chaos of the Piraeus – all these have made me, have built what I am block by block. And soon I will have only impressions of her for comfort, mere memories, and I will be entirely undone. So here I am, Aristageles, running around furtively making preparations for my voyage.

ARISTAGELES: Did you know that the Ilisos was one of Socrates’ favourite places to walk? It is said he often went there with his companions. They would pay their respects to Pan and the wood nymphs and talk philosophy for hours.

XANTHON: Ah, philosophy. What of it, now? What can it ever say to us when we are in such dolor?

ARISTAGELES: Well, it speaks to us most in the darkest times. It teaches us always to follow the gods, and as you have strived to do so here in Athens, so shall you, I am sure in ... Where is it you are going?

XANTHON: Olbia.

ARISTAGELES: By Zeus, that far! You will be missed.

XANTHON: But how is the pain healed by the gods? How is this city, this soft earth of Athens, to be replaced with anything I find anywhere else?

ARISTAGELES: The wise tell us that gods and men are kin. And as you stand on your ship watching the shore of the Piraeus recede in the distance and weep for your loss, so the great ones will be weeping with you. Every place has its own gods – its temples to a particular guardian, its goddesses in the sacred groves, its satyrs and nymphs in the hills and rivers. Where one city builds shrines to Artemis, another will honour Apollo or Demeter or Hephaestus. But what does the multitude of gods from all the corners of the world have in common? What is the shared thread, whether the sacred garment is woven for one or another?

XANTHON: I confess I don’t know.

ARISTAGELES: Do they not all represent the good, some variation of it?

XANTHON: They represent power, it is true. Of the good, I am not sure. Ares is rarely anybody’s favourite, and Dionysus has a wild edge of intoxication and violence.

ARISTAGELES: Power implies choice. The gods offer us a choice – do we respond to conflict with a neighbour in the way of Athene, with justice and dignity, or descend into bloodshed? Do we accept Demeter’s laws about the tending of the wheat fields or do whatever we like when it comes to nourishing our city and the land? Do we honour Dionysus with wine and song, or become prudish and miserable? If we truly follow the gods, we follow what’s best.

XANTHON: I have had no cause to think deep thoughts in the past few weeks.

ARISTAGELES: All that you have learnt in Athens, all that is noble in this city, all that has nurtured your soul, your family and friends and lovers, the wisdom of philosophy – take these in your heart to your new home. Will you not find the good in Olbia? Not in the same forms as here in Athens, not with the same people or the same soil, but in some local shape nonetheless. And if Olbia prove barren and inhospitable, go to another place and find what you seek there. The world opens to those with the mettle to grasp it.

XANTHON: They are kind, wise words, Aristageles.

ARISTAGELES: And as you go about your new life, friend, be sure to ‘keep your hands soft’. Have you heard that old phrase? It means to change as conditions arise; not in the way of a fool who has no idea what they are doing, but as someone whose hands shape fortune in their life and the lives of others. As Euripides says, ‘that I may lightly change my ways, my ways of today when tomorrow comes, and be happy all my life long’.

XANTHON: Thank you, Aristageles.

ARISTAGELES: And one last thing. Before you set forth on your journey, do pay a visit to Agathe. She hasn’t seen you for a long time and misses you terribly.

XANTHON: I will.

Ask and it will be given

So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Luke 11.9-10

I take the Bible as fascinating, not from the point of view of dogma to be literally believed and obeyed, but from the diamonds of wisdom that are studded through its pages. The above passage quoting Jesus from the Gospel of Luke, rich in poetry and meaning, is one of them.

One of the advantages of our times in the West is the abandonment of religious certainty. Heartbreaking though it is for many of us, it allows us to look back on the spiritual traditions with a different view – one tuned to the basics of the message, the core of the revelation and the wisdom it brings forth. We align ourselves not with the practical details of the tradition, the doctrine, rituals and sacraments (though these have their place and are important in their own right), but with the spiritual quality that is at its heart.

Ask, and it will be given you ... To ask, spiritually speaking, is to pray, and to pray is to establish and nurture a relationship with the divine. To ask is not simply to utter words to God, pleading for one thing or another; it is to place yourself in direct contact, in communion you could say, with the source of life. That’s no small thing, and all religions recognise the grave import of doing so, with paths of ritual leading believers to the right of frame of mind for divine communion.

Asking requires discipline in which a person is in touch with the centre of their own being. From this centre, which is the spark of the divine within, the atman as Hinduism calls it, the individual opens to the world and to spirit. Opening to spirit necessitates abandonment of ego, surrender to the will of the divine (“Islam” means surrender), which for all spiritual traditions is the aim and cornerstone of living.

Spiritual communion requires no goal, no reward – it is an end in itself which replenishes the vital purpose of life. Hence when you Ask, the answer is given you; to search is to find at the same time and to knock on the door is to see it swing open. This does not mean that pain and suffering is abolished for the person who asks, that the cares of the material world are somehow erased, but that there is grace for the true seeker, a spiritual core from which they act and which affords lasting peace.

The passage from Luke is also, I think, about the importance of intention. We have to truly Ask, build a genuine path to God, in order to find spiritual gold. A counterfeit relationship – one based solely around a person’s ego needs, petitioning the divine mystery to satisfy desires, simply does not work. The door will stay shut. When our intention is appropriate we set a course in the right direction and, perhaps immediately, perhaps after years of hard work and patience, by the will of the divine, the seeker finds.

There is another sense in which Jesus’ words are somewhat subversive to the practices of the Church as they manifested over the centuries of Christianity. He does not say “Ask, and a priest will give you God’s blessing” or “Knock, and the door will be opened for you in the afterlife”. There is an immediacy in the words which points to the imminence of God and the availability of unmediated redemption here and now. From the gnostic Gospel of Thomas: “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.” To Ask is to see heaven in the splendour and beneficence of creation here on earth, and the only consequent action is to affirm and preserve that splendour.

On humour

One of the funniest moments that I can recall happened many years ago when I was a university student and doing everything I could, in idealistic twenty-something fashion, to change the world.

I had traveled with a few friends to take part in a mass protest encampment in Canberra against an international weapons exhibition that was being set up on the edge of town. We arrived one morning and pitched our tents, like a few hundred other young folk, in a grassy reserve across the road from the arms fair. Nothing much was planned until later in the day, so we sat around and talked, ate some food and prepared for what protests would be happening.

Among our number was a tall, lean gent we affectionately called Stevie P. He was a few years older than the rest of us, was doing an Honours in politics studying the radical student movements of the 1960s, and loved to talk. Though affable, Steve was a bit edgy and shabby – he wore dirty, knee-holed jeans, had shoulder-length wavy hair and was rarely seen without a can of VB (a cheap beer) in one hand. He’d had a fairly rough working-class upbringing in one of Melbourne’s outer suburbs which took the shine off his idealism and he would bait the more romantic types like me with arguments about the imperfection of what we stood for and the impossibility of meaningful social change.

Stevie also had a nervous condition that made his hands shake. I’d taken little notice of this until that day in Canberra. At some point in the late morning clouds started to gather above us, the sky turned a shade of dark purple and an enormous storm broke, scattering everyone to their tents to avoid the downpour. All except for Stevie – he just happened to be hungry for a peanut butter sandwich. As I ran to gather my belongings I caught sight of him sitting on the ground, trying to spread peanut butter on a slice of bread with hands impossibly flustered. Everyone else’s agitation had accentuated his shakes and the bread was flipping around while he did his damnedest to shove some spread on it. I stopped what I was doing and roared with laughter, so determined was Stevie to have his way in the midst of chaos.

Now and again something will trigger the memory of that moment and it brings a smile. Sure the laughter was at the expense of someone else and their difficulty, but I couldn’t help it. It was a ridiculously funny situation.

Humour has that ability to bring something special to a moment, to lighten and ameliorate whatever is going on. In his 1956 essay Aboriginal Humour, the great Australian anthropologist Bill Stanner related a story of how on a field trip in the Northern Territory an Aboriginal friend of his kept stealing tinned milk from his stores. Eventually it came to a head: “I looked at him and he looked at me. We both knew it was a crisis ... Then he went to the case of empty tins, and held up one or two so that I could see the tiny holes through which he had sucked them dry. He held one tin speculatively, poked at the hole, looked across at me, and said: ‘Rust’.”

Humour doesn’t just make life more bearable, it makes it more whole, more balanced and in tune with the overall conditions of living. It’s telling that the hardest things humans can bear – war, grief, depression – close the door most to humour. Yet even in the middle of darkness unexpected rays poke through, such as when funny stories are told at funerals about the deceased. They demonstrate a kind of completeness of spirit in which joy is not absent even in the most dire of circumstances.

Humour of course can have a sting in it. It can be barbed like a javelin aimed at the powerful, the egocentric and corrupt. In those instances it brings a force of truth that is more irresistible and more palatable to more people because it is delivered in a funny way. Humour invites us to let our guard down and accept whatever is wrapped inside it. And unfortunately it is often used the other way – to belittle the already powerless, to wound and denigrate, and maintain an oppressive status quo.

Like any spark of creative act, humour can be inspired or miss the mark completely. It needs a person to be in the moment, spontaneous, fully alive. I’m a fan of the American stand-up comedian Rich Hall, a master of his craft, who in his routines of funny guitar songs and audience banter laughs as much at himself as at the people he sends up. Humour exposes humanity’s foibles, and in doing so is able to acknowledge without rancour the quirks and imperfections we all share. We can all do with just a little bit more humour in our lives.

The personality

“Do you know the road rules?! Do you know the rules?!” A bearded cyclist was shouting at a taxi driver sitting passively in his car at a rank in central Melbourne.

Clearly there had just been an incident the aftermath of which I was passing on my lunchtime walk from work – possibly one that had caused or nearly caused the cyclist to come off his bike.

There was a smattering of more loud words before the cyclist finished with a curt “I’ve got your number, mate” and took off. Before he disappeared, I was tempted to approach him and tell him his aggression was not on. Then I thought – how would I react if I was on a bike and this was the umpteenth time my life had been endangered by a driver? Would I be able to summon much grace or finesse? I hoped, come such a moment, I wouldn’t display the ugliness of that cyclist.

It made me think of the vagaries of personality, how it was possible for two people to react differently under the same circumstances, and how we can understand and work with our inner forces to make us better people.

Personality is the face an individual presents to the world, coming out of a complex internal matrix shaped by a range of factors including a person’s genes, their parents, life experience, cultural influences, gender, age and physical condition. The matrix also holds a large dose of mystery, the element of unknown as to why exactly someone is the way they are and which rounds off the full, unique package that is their personality.

The personality is, like everything else in the field of time and space, subject to continuous change and to the flux – the ups and downs, conflicts and tensions – that entails. Managing one’s personality is one of the most important things we can do because the good that we create in ourselves inevitably affects others and creates the conditions of loving kindness under which everything prospers. To master the personality is not to somehow get rid of or iron out life’s fluctuations, which is impossible, but to ride the daily waves up and down attuned to wholeness and the better parts of our nature.

The personality could be said to operate according to three principles: the self, the other and the image.

The self is the internally contained driver of the personality in the day-to-day world as well as the set of understandings a person has about who they are. The self responds to the raw facts of daily living and is ultimately responsible for the thoughts, emotions and desires that arise in the personality. Most of what we do most of the time seems automatic because the personality is able to learn from life and act in ways that keep it, generally speaking, functional. However, its own complexity and that of human society inevitably present a host of challenges to the health of the personality which require both a vital sense of self and self-knowledge.

A person with a weak or undeveloped sense of self is at the whim of social forces and their own emotions, thoughts and desires. The task towards a healthy personality is about understanding one’s inner dynamics – what arises when and why – as well as acquiring the skills to make conscious, discerning decisions for the good. These days there is a large variety of self-development modalities with the potential to increase a person’s self-knowledge and improve the functioning of the self. Whatever it is that helps an individual – a particular practice of yoga, meditation or therapy or a combination of things – the requirement is mostly hard work and patience over many years.

The other is a principle of difference that exists because the personality is aware of an external world and has to negotiate relationships. It is the personality’s means to understand and relate to external people and objects, with the personality creating groups, types and labels (often with the assistance of society) to separate the beneficial from the harmful.

For most individuals the other is identified with actual people and objects, but like the self it is actually a dynamic within the personality and not external to it. It generates a framework or structure on reality. And because the other is all about difference, everything within the personality itself that is not in accord or easily assimilated or normalised tends to be drawn into the other and can end up as a view on an external person or object. This is the sense of the term “projection” in psychology, when aspects of what is broken or irrational within are cast outwards. Whole societies as well as individuals can manufacture projections of the other, as happened with the witch craze in Europe and North America in the 17th century, the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany and McCarthyism against Communists in 1950s America. The personality’s response to the other is influenced by its own self-awareness, for when the self is in healthy balance within the personality the other is also experienced with proportion and goodwill.

The image is the transpersonal factor in the personality that opens it to dimensions deeper than the everyday material world. Numinous, transcendent, archetypal, spiritual – all are words for that which is perceived, often dimly if at all, as reflecting mysteries about the nature of the personality and the world as whole. Out of this perception of the unknown comes an image, or multiple images, for the human mind to digest. Dreams are carriers of the image; religions build on and develop the image to create practices and beliefs that nurture relationship to the source of being. God or gods, demons, angels, saints and prophets are various manifestations of the image, pointing to the many layers and levels of the mystery of creation.

It’s healthy for the personality to recognise and find a meaningful relationship with the transpersonal because life is multi-dimensional, evolving, and can’t be reduced to any structure, system or way of thought. The open, inquiring, receptive personality allows the image to speak to it and makes use of the image to enrich its experience of life. Just as with the self and the other, the dangers that exist in relation to the image are about its strength or weakness in the personality. Too strong, concrete or fixed and the personality can become enslaved to the image; too weak or non-existent and the meaning and vitality of living is drained. The key is a creative response within an overall template of balance.