If you see illustrations of Diogenes today, he looks like you would imagine a hippie to look, scruffy, long hair, loose.
Even if some of this image is true, I would like to start by saying that the role model of Diogenes and the ancient cynics was by no means a limp, effeminate stoner, rather the opposite: it was Heracles, the Superman of the Greek world of gods.
But this does not mean that the image of the cynic as a hippy or “alternative” is so completely wrong.
Rather, perhaps the idea of hippies is too much influenced by the media. Even among the hippies, there are certainly more people who are more like Heracles than the mainstream couch potato.
Let us let Diogenes himself say what he thinks of his contemporaries:
Diogenes
“As effeminate as they are, men live more miserably than animals. Water is enough for them to drink and grass to eat, most of them are naked all year round, they never enter a house, do not need fire and live as long as they are destined by nature, provided that they do not die a violent death. They all live together strong and healthy and do not need doctors or medicines. People, on the other hand, cling tenaciously to life and resort to various means to postpone death, and yet hardly any of them reach old age.”