Adebowale Oriku

Recently when I wrote an article about the list in which the leader of the Redeemed Church, Pastor Adeboye featured, one of those who commented on the article thought it was nuanced with cynicism. My response of not being cynical, though an oblique rejoinder to the accuser, was taken by yet another commenter as an ‘apology’ for writing about the pastor.

I wanted to acknowledge the latter commenter for his congenially admonitory words and set it straight that being an apostle of freethought, I would never apologise for airing my views, not even on pain of guaranteed perdition. I would not snail and slime my way back into any defensive shell, especially about opinions that were expressed without any ulterior intent. But I realised that a second reply would open a leeway for lateral defensiveness and this might only go on ad infinitum. So far as I was concerned, I had fully expressed what I wanted to express about that particular issue and that was that.

This, then, is by no means a gloss on the earlier article, but I would like to say a word or two about cynicism. Cynicism is a word that has taken a lot of phatic flak. It is one of the most misused and misunderstood words in English, and there is the tendency to commit the common error of thinking cynic is the right word to describe someone who is needlessly sarcastic, tart, sardonic, disparaging and bloody-minded.  All of this may be true of cynicism and its backformation cynic, but the mistake in this way of deconstructing the word is the notion that employing all these devices in speaking or writing is often unnecessary or wicked, a relatively modern vulgate that is invariably unflattering. Before, cynicism - or rather Cynic - used to be a mere word, neither good nor bad, a word with philosophical as well as scholastic underpinnings.

Before I skate onto treating the modern usage of cynicism, I’d go a bit back and define the original meaning of the word cynic. It came from the Greek attributive, kunikos, doglike or doggish. kyo n was the word for dog. kyon was the nickname given to Diogenes of Sinope, the foremost Cynic philosopher. Diogenes of Sinope was the first of the several Diogeneses who were thinkers or historians, and he remains the most impressive, the most original and idiosyncratic, and certainly the shrewdest. Just like Jesus Christ - whom he predeceased by several centuries - was the retroactive founder of Christianity, so was Diogenes the posthumous founder of the School of Cynics. And just as the very scourge of Christianity, Friedrich Nietzsche, thought ‘there has been only one Christian and he died on the cross,’ I too dare say, there was only one Cynic and he coaxed himself to death by deliberately stopping to breathe - which was one of the ways Diogenes was said to have expired. The others include a poisonous death from dogbite, which would have been a fitting end for the first philosopher-dog.

Diogenes of Sinope was the soul of austereness, he was an ascetic, he foreswore mundane pleasures. He held in contempt those who wallowed in artificiality, vanity and social climbing. He pooh-poohed self-deceit, self-importance and materialism. He lived a hermit’s life in a tub right in the centre of the city. He owned a wooden bowl from which he ate frugal meals, but he gave up the bowl when he saw a boy eating out of his small hand. He considered himself stateless, a citizen of the world. He once walked about town with a lantern, proclaiming that he was looking for a human being, but that all he was able to find were hypocrites and deceitful human beings. Diogenes once masturbated in public, and when he was chided for doing that, he replied ‘if only it was easy to soothe my hunger by rubbing my belly.’

Diogenes used his middle finger to point at people, instead of the more traditional index finger, essentially telling everyone to eff off. This was what he told Alexander the Great, when the overawed ruler told the philosopher to ask any favour he needed from him. Diogenes told the emperor that he should kindly step aside as he was blocking the sun from shining on him.

Diogenes also recalled Fela Anikulapo Kuti to me, they share the same characteristic of being gymnosophists, that is ‘naked philosophers.’ Just as Fela saw nothing wrong in padding about his house and Shrine in scanty underpants, Diogenes only wore loincloths and believed there was nothing wrong with being in the altogether - he saw this as the beginning of soul-baring. 

Diogenes loved dogs because he believed they live authentic lives. He thought humans should emulate dogs (witness the rather un-Diogenic Snoop Doggy Dogg). Dogs are not burdened by anxieties, dogs are so honest as to bark at the truth, dogs do not use the prism of ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ to judge, as a matter of fact dogs do not judge. Dogs are selfless, in contradistinction to the push of selfishness which invariably determines human behaviour. Diogenes stressed the importance of honesty and virtuous life and what was considered his carping against his fellow citizens was more in service to goodness than mere viciousness.

It was in late 1500s that the word cynic took on the sense ‘faultfinder, a rather strictured meaning that casts a pretty long shadow. The ‘faultfinder’ rendition developed from the behaviour of Diogenes and the other Cynics who came after him, who pointed out the flaws in others in other to expound on virtue.

So a true cynic always has an intention, there is always the desire to catalyze criticism into betterment, there is the desire to flip up the blind of ignorance and shadowiness and offer us a peek, if not a shaft, of light. As far as reasoned faultfinding goes, guys like Okey Ndibe and Sonala Olumhense may be called cynics, as a matter of fact the majority of contributors to NVS may even be called cynics.

But far more than political analysts or historians, those who write critically about religion and religionists like Pastor Adeboye would lay themselves more open to the label of cynic. Of course before you could write any sort of critique of religion and its captives you would at least be equipped with a sliver of sceptical mind. Thomas Didymus, the disciple who doubted whether Jesus Christ had truly risen, would have been the patron saint of atheists and other disbelievers if they had been inclined to adopt patron saints from the Bible (some have indeed cynically done that). Thomas was a sceptic in the fundamental sense of the word and in these days he would have been found on a Sunday morning putting his feet up, lounging on a deck chair, reading the Sceptic magazine.

Scepticism is all about doubt, questioning, and upending of the facile assumptions of faith and the pretensions of faithoids. The Bible is like a compost heap where sceptics could plant the thorny brambles of doubt, if not outright confutation.

When an arch-sceptic like the British-American author/journalist, Christopher Hitchens, keelhauls religion and its artificers, scepticism easily enjambs into cynicism. Hitchens could even be described as cynisceptic - if one may coin a handy portmanteau word - having succeeded in bringing neoclassical chic to what cynics of old used to do. Although he is not a moralist or a virtuous man himself, he has been able to lay into political figures like Henry Kissinger with gusto. He has used cynicism as the broadsword to cut through the mincemeat that is the Bible and its chompers like the late American Pentecostal loudmouth, Jerry Falwell. On national TV, Hitchens called Falwell evil, racist, bad and unpleasant. He sees Mother Theresa as no more than a careerist Christian with a mission to turn the world into a Roman Catholic supercathedral at all and any cost. Hitchens writes about how unscrupled Mother Theresa was, panhandling money from the disgraced Charles Keating and befriending and offering grace to Jean-Claude Duvalier, the former Haitian dictator.

Cutting the figure of a modern Demosthenes, Hitchens has been able to carry the duty of cynical faultfinding to a fault. The title of his 2007 book, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, is a synecdoche for the contents of the book - even now, Hitchens still insists that religion truly poisons everything. But the point of latter-day cynicism is that you need not be a man reaching after virtue like Diogenes to be a true cynic. You could be a whisky-swigging, cantankerous bighead like Hitchens and still be a damn good cynic, because your intention now errs on the side of truth and honesty than moralism and preachiness.

My piece on Adeboye was only cynical in so far as it tried to point out the folly of placing religion on a pedestal it does not deserve or even occupy in a brighter newer world. As I wrote in the article, there was little to go on about the man except that he heads a large Christian movement. But if cynicism had been my intention, Mr Adeboye’s simple mien could easily have been further watered down into simplemindedness, into laughable gormlessness, considering that he said he drove for a couple of hundred miles, fuelled only by miracle. It would have been easy to come up with how the traffic logjam caused by the monthly revival on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway had spawned contretemps, even tragedies.

And the kneeling bit. Well, that would have elicited the snarky charge of showiness against the pastor, of wearing his devoutness on the sleeve of his striped suit. This would even have led to how the sleeves of his suit had grown from safari style to more sartorial, and so on. If cynicism had been my intention I would easily have plastered on the image of the black slave that was used by abolitionists to campaign against slavery and slave trade in the early 19^th century.  The picture was called ‘Kneeling Slave.’ This was one of the most powerful, lasting, yet topical, images during the dying days of slavery: a black slave in chains, kneeling, imploring the white master with the question: ‘Am I not a Man and a Brother?’ Even after the abolition of slavery the image was still used widely to depict the grateful freed slave thanking God for granting him liberty. The image was propagated than 200 years ago, but I have known the picture since I was in short trousers, and more from the first time I saw it has remained vivified in my mind. Of course, when I saw the Nigerian pastor, the only person kneeling among the so-called Global elite, I remembered the kneeling slave-in-chains picture and truly the urge to connect the images was high - which would have been an example of cynical overkill that is sometimes quite effective if well-deployed. But I thought there was no point highlighting such a parallel in the Year of Obama. 

Robot  # 1 | 23.01.2009 03:28

Cynicism is a word that has taken a lot of phatic flak. It is one of the most misused and misunderstood words in English, and there is the tendency to commit the common error of thinking cynicism is the right word to describe someone who is needlessly sarcastic, tart, sardonic, disparaging and bloody-minded....Read the full article.