Folly

I was reading about Diogenes and said to my boyfriend, "Diogenes was such a dick.  Listen to what he did."  I read aloud:

"On one occasion, when no one came to listen to him while he was discoursing seriously, he began to whistle.  And then when people flocked round him, he reproached them for coming with eagerness to folly, but being lazy and indifferent about good things."

I complained about how it was ridiculous for Diogenes to criticize people for appreciating something that is so natural for people to appreciate, such as music.  I did not think that he should not have expected people to gather around him to listen to his discourse, when it is likely that he had made no announcement that he was going to talk about something he thought was important.  I though that his deliberately provoking people and putting them down made him an asshole.

After listening to my rant, my boyfriend told me about something the actor and comedian Andy Kaufman used to do.  Kaufman, who was famous for his character Latka Graves in the show Taxi, would put on comedy shows.  At these shows, audience members would beg him to act like his character in Taxi, and Kaufman, annoyed that people did not wish to see his new material but only old character, would in response, sit and read The Great Gatsby for the remainder of the show.  Here, Kaufman was like Diogenese in his frustration that people were not interested in what he wanted to communicate.  I guess I can kind of understand where Kaufman and Diogenese were coming from.