Sunlight be Damned

Dear Reader, it won’t surprise you to find that I was wrong, again.  (What love a rapscallion like me must require, a burden for all but the deepest fonts of forgiveness.)  I used to say to myself, aspiringly, that I was an acolyte of Diogenes.  Ironically, I may still end up living in a large ceramic pot. But I can no longer call myself a student of that great man.  What was that Dear Reader?  Any idiot can be a student?  Then I have found my calling, indeed!  But how can I, with any intellectual integrity, profess to be a student of Diogenes, when my emergent disagreement with him is so fundamental?

Perhaps it was the recognition of failure, thinly veiled as a celebration of poverty in the beginning.  My detractors would certainly describe it so.  But in reality what brought me to the sunlight of Diogenes was heartbreak.  I had endeavored to be able to provide for a family, and the love of my life, who couldn’t have cared less about me, let me know how she felt.  Can you imagine how empty the pursuit of money felt to me then?  That started me on the thoughts that led me to Diogenes, but they were not the thoughts that kept me.  Deep in me, I agree with him.  I felt the sunshine on my face, and more so, I looked into the flames, and peering past them, thought once, that I glimpsed incorruptibility. Just sitting there.  Then it was gone.  Intriguing enough!

But now I have a disagreement.  I see that material wealth can express virtue, and is sometimes the ONLY way to express virtue.

I disagreed with Aristotle that material success was necessary for a ‘good life,’ a phrase we don’t use in the same way, today.  I thought Thomas Aquinas was taking Aristotle, mixing in the teachings of Jesus, and justifying the filling of the Church’s coffers.

Imagine my surprise when I came to hear the wisdom of their words.  I call to your attention my mistake.  As argument, I present this snapshot of myself.  Please do me the courtesy of believing that I am a true advocate of Ukraine.  I have seen the righteousness of their endeavor.  And once seen, the virtue of a thing can only be looked away from, it can never be unseen.  But I am also a pauper.  So I try to give words, and I know they contribute nothing.

The Ukrainians need money to purchase drones, they don’t need my stupid greeting cards.  Aristotle was right.  What good is it to see righteousness, if I am unable to assist it?  Perhaps it would be better not to see, I would not have the shame.  I learned too late, and now I am useless.

I go further in my own prosecution!  Thomas Aquinas raised Aristotle’s advice of earning the means to be virtuous, to the contemplation of a new virtue: charity.  Through charity, we express the religious perfection of loving our neighbor.  I only know charity through labor, and I have no way of providing that to the resilient Ukrainians.  Do you see now why I say I am useless?

Thomas Aquinas referred to Aristotle directly:  Hence the Philosopher says that “many things are needed for action, and the more so, the greater and nobler the actions are.”

I wish I were more acquainted with charity.  It seems like a beautiful virtue, indeed it leads me to some of the most profound images ever to grace my mind.  I see it as deprivation.  Even for the very rich, to give money away is to deprive oneself of it.  To deprive oneself and suffer in that way, with the confidence that the suffering of deprivation you feel has meaning, because somewhere it will lessen the suffering of others.  I stand in awe.  Isn’t this the poetic and selfless idea demonstrated by the crucifixion of Jesus?  Forgive me, I had no idea.

Ukraine has done a miraculous job with the little that they have, and donations are the only life line for them now.  Imagine the suffering that could be prevented by the expression of charity, simple and pure.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has an initiative to contribute directly to Ukrainians, managed by Ukrainians.  It's called United 24. It is an excellent source of official information, and a trusted portal for giving.

Oh, before I go, I have to explain why I can no longer claim to be a student of Diogenes!  Before, I laughed when Diogenes asked Alexander to get out of his sunbeam.  Now, I would ask Alexander the Great for cruise missiles, sunlight be damned.




Here is a recording of the essay above.  The voice is fake and from 11Elevenlabs!  The words are always my own.

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