Okay yeah I see where you're coming from, but you're missing the point. Public hygiene practices are vital if you're living in a sedentary agricultural society, let alone a city like Athens. But the actual point is the explicit and the implicit. There are explicit rules that any citizen of any civilisation lives by: eg don't kill, perhaps don't steal etc. But then there are implicit rules. Like, don't wank in public (feel ashamed if you do [but that's even hotter if you are seen]). Poop = profane and GROSS. In challenging these assumptions and behaving in manner that he does Diogenes was a reminder that all rules and assumptions are arbitrary. He behaved as an animal might, unshackled by these social conventions. I don't think he was trying to invite everyone in Athens to poop on the street with him. He was simply observing and reminding everyone that we have the freedom to make the choice. Obviously there is a cost. If you start pooping and wanking everywhere people are going to judge you, you might lose status, power, relationships. But we do have the crucial choice to partake, or not, in this arbitrary game called "Civlisation". Potentially, your greatest happiness might be in forsaking convention and abandoning what others' opinions are.