I’m happy to announce the publication of my new book – or, rather, my new ‘philosophical play’ in six acts – called Deface the Currency: The Lost Dialogues of Diogenes.
Here is the advance praise the book received from Dr William Desmond, author of The Greek Praise of Poverty.
“This is a creative re-enactment of the life, death and ideas of the most influential Cynic of antiquity, Diogenes of Sinope. Lost after 2500 years, the dialogues attributed to him are here recovered through informed historical re-imagination, and in a series of six ‘acts’ Samuel Alexander takes his protagonist from his marketplace teachings through to the final condemnation of his works, and execution of his person. In this quasi-Socratic tragedy, Diogenes’ ideas of simplicity, moderation and natural living are too revolutionary for an oligarchical system to tolerate, and yet prove too resilient to be permanently silenced. Alexander is faithful to the spirit of ancient authors and deftly works in subtle allusions to ancient sources – yet writes ever with an eye to present problems. His Diogenes becomes an essential voice for the revolutionary and potentially apocalyptic transitions of our own time.”
The paperback is available here and the pdf here is available here (on a ‘pay what you want’ basis).
About Samuel Alexander
Samuel Alexander – is a lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs and research fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI), University of Melbourne. He also co-directs the Simplicity Institute.
Samuel has just published his second book of collected essays, Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever. This is the companion volume to Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits, published earlier this year.
The paperback of Sufficiency Economy is available here. For those unable to pay or who would like an electronic version, the pdf is available on a ‘pay what you want’ basis here.
The paperback of Prosperous Descent is available here. The pdf of this book is also available on a ‘pay what you want’ basis here.
Editor Note:
Samuel is very knowledgeable and has written quite a number of well constructed articles. Please take this opportunity to review his books and support his endeavours, by either purchasing the paperback version’s or his generous option to “pay what you want” PDF version’s.
So, as I try and teach Natural Capitalism (you make, you grow), ‘voluntary poverty’ which is how I live, is somehow meaningful? I’ll download the books but my younger students don’t want to be a variation on hippies. And defacing money (I think buddy got the terms wrong which is why I ponder reading any of his work) only screws the common folk. There is a vast difference between currency and money. So, if you want to steal from people who have saved their whole life to live out their ‘golden years’ by shaving off their coinage…meh…The title of this post just says thievery! I might as well read the collected works of Shylock. Pass I think. If Samuel wants to send me the links for free for sure I’ll scan them. After all, he is claiming the debasement of money is a good thing while we have seniors in crisis everywhere because of inflation. Is this what Permaculture has become? Why don’t we add this https://www.spunk.org/texts/places/germany/sp001630/peter.html and show the roots of the green movement. It sure seems like the movement has become PC-Green-Socialist-Nonsense.
Hi Lance, thanks for your comment, although you have missed or misunderstood the point. Diogenes was given his mission ‘deface the currency’ by the Oracle who spoke in riddles, and Diogenes interpreted his mission as ‘changing the coin of custom’, that is, to provoke people into revaluating conventional conceptions of wealth. This book, like most my books, are available in pdf on a ‘pay what you want’ basis (including for free) here: https://www.e-junkie.com/249897 and the introduction to Deface is available here: https://simplicitycollective.com/introduction-to-deface-the-currency
Go well,
SA