1998
● 1-23-1998: A household mystery: Where do all the paperclips go? I buy new ones not infrequently, yet I don’t mail them out with attached documents; nor do I throw them away (and I reuse them if I see them around loose). I just can’t figure out where they go.
[Later note (2021): Why else than to attach documents would I mail them out? “I couldn’t think of anything to say, but here are some paperclips I thought you might like.”]
[Later note (2-3-2024): Another mystery is what happened to the diary entries of 1995, 1996, and 1997. There are two entries dated 1-1-1995. The next is this one, 1-23-1998. Did I stop writing diary entries on 2 January 1995, and not make a solitary one until over three years later, when I suddenly resumed writing them prolifically? That’s inconceivable. I probably lost a diary covering that period. Oh well.]
● Monday, 1-26-1998: I stay alive, not for the sake of my enjoyment, but rather because I value myself—I feel I’m too great an asset to relinquish. So I make the sacrifice of living with my suffering for the sake of this important asset’s survival. If I were to act according to my own happiness or enjoyment, I would kill myself, because, for me, life is, on balance, unsatisfying, unpleasant, painful.
● 2-8-1998: Sleep can be like suicide: an avoidance of, or withdrawal from, the world, life; but sleep is generally preferable, in that it (temporarily) avoids the finality of death.
● 2-14-1998: Indeed, I dawdle, I do.
● 3-13-1998: Regarding Einstein’s theory of relativity, what’s the significance of the term relativity? Is something posited to be relative to something else? If so, what?
● 3-19-1998: My father and I discussed my piece “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory.” He commented that he was opposed to the Big Bang Theory because, in its prediction of the universe’s ultimate doom by expanding forever or collapsing, it contradicted his view of the universe, or life in it, as endlessly renewing itself. I mentioned to him that my vision of the universe is consistent with his view of endless renewal, because it posits an infinite number of universes like ours (we might call them “miniverses”), giving rise to the possibility that an infinite number of such entities, many containing intelligent life, are always in the process of coming into being and thriving.
[Later note (2020): Of course, we don’t propose, or discard, scientific theories according to what we find agreeable, or what we’d like to think is so. The sole criterion for a valid scientific theory is, or should be, truth. And the truth needn’t, and often doesn’t, coincide with what we’d like to think.]
● 4-13-1998: Size is relative, generally. But the infinitesimal, the finite, and the infinite are absolute. That is, something that’s finite, say, is definitely finite, and cannot be made infinite by comparison with something else.
● Is the essence of God (according to those who believe in God and profess to know such things) justice or power? In other words, if there were an all-powerful being that was not just, could that be God?
Or if a being were very, or even perfectly, just, but not omnipotent, could that be God?
In any event, what sense does it make for a person to attempt to ascertain and do “God’s will”? If God is all-powerful, why does He not simply “do His will” Himself? Why does he need our pitiful help?
What ultimately do we think, or hope, will be accomplished if we do God’s will? That is, what ultimate difference is made if God’s will is done, instead of it not being done? Take two alternative—otherwise identical—situations: one coming into being without God’s will having been done, the other coming to be with God’s will. Exactly how, if at all, is the latter situation better than the other?
If we knew God’s will, but God suddenly ceased to exist, would it still be desirable for us to do God’s will (or what was His will)? . . .
● 4-15-1998: We tend to project our current mood into the future. For example, if you’re feeling energetic, you tend to feel that you’ll continue to be energetic indefinitely into the future.
● 4-19-1998: They say, “No pain, no gain.” And I believe that’s true. I just wish that pain guaranteed gain. . . . I’d be a millionaire by now . . ..
● 4-22-1998: Is it really darkest just before the dawn? And if so, why?
● What’s the difference in your status as a potential being before you were born versus after you die? I believe they’re the same. It’s not as if after you die you couldn’t come again; it’s just that the odds are astronomically (nay, infinitely) great against it, just as they were before you were born. You have an infinitesimal (but greater than zero) chance of coming again, or being reborn.
Moreover, people don’t think of what they’re likely to be reborn as. It’s very unlikely that, if you did come again, you’d be reborn as a human being. It’s much more likely that you’d be reborn as some other kind of animal (and on some other planet); the lower the animal, the greater the likelihood (because they’re more numerous). And given the life forms that you’re likely to be reborn as, you would probably consider yourself fortunate that the odds of being reborn at all are so small. The life of a wild animal seems pretty miserable: no medical help for injuries or illnesses, the likelihood that you’ll be eaten by another animal or die of starvation or thirst. Indeed, even the lives of most humans are pretty wretched.
● 4-25-1998: The problem with manic depression is the depression.
● 5-1-1998: Just because something is easier said than done doesn’t mean that the advice to do it is unsound or useless.
● 5-9-1998: In surveying the history of science and philosophy, it struck me that many scientists and philosophers use the expedient of “God” to solve problems in their various theories. If part of their theory fails to explain certain aspects of a topic, they fill the gap with “God.” For example, if their theory explains how A caused B, B caused C, and C caused D, and yet they can’t account for A, they’ll simply posit that God created A. This procedure reminds me of the advertisements by financial institutions, attempting to induce people to borrow money from them, in that people are urged to consolidate their current debts by replacing many small debts with one big debt. In doing so, one probably ends up actually owing more money, but there’s a satisfaction in having a neater, simpler debt configuration.
I’m opposed to that attempted “solution.” I think it’s intellectually dishonest. In their desire to make their theory true, or to seem true, they resort to the incorporation of nonsense. In our search for truth, it seems more appropriate, constructive, and genuine, to simply and forthrightly admit where the weaknesses are in our arguments or theories. A scientist’s or philosopher’s first commitment should be to the quest for truth, rather than to some particular way of seeing things, just because he invented it. But, alas, pride of authorship is often stronger than the desire for truth.
● I’ve heard it proclaimed that truth and beauty are one and the same (as in “Truth is Beauty; and Beauty, Truth”). It seems to me, however, that they can’t be the same because beauty is subjective, but truth is objective. (Perhaps this observation implies that if two things have different attributes [not the identical set of them], the things are different.) Are falsehood and ugliness one and the same? And yet some interrelationship between them (truth and beauty) may exist. The Occam’s Razor principle, that a simpler plausible theory is more likely to be right than a more complicated one, is a quasi-esthetic doctrine pointing the way to truth; and Einstein once declared that his relativity theory was “too beautiful not to be true” . . ..
[Later note (2021): . . . and if Einstein said it, it must be true . . . and beautiful!]
● 5-11-1998: In writing the three recent papers on substance abuse and the Twelve-Steps program, “A Personal, Secular Version of the Twelve Steps,” “The Twelve Steps Revisited,” and “A Thinking Person’s Twelve-Steps”; I have in effect burned my bridges to recreational drug use, because my pride is involved. Having written what I wrote there, I would look like a fool were I to return to recreational drug use. Of course, this is probably a good thing, in that whatever works is good. I would be a fool to return to drug use.
● 5-15-1998: I’ve just written another (a fourth) short piece on the Twelve-Steps addiction recovery program. I’m very pleased with it; it strikes me as being one of my best pieces of writing to date. I like to think it has what I might call the simple eloquence of clarity.
[Later note (2021): That essay’s being one of my best pieces of writing is a rather unflattering reflection on my body of work!]
● 5-24-1998: Some of a person’s best insights come in the course of revising his own opinions.
[Later note (2021): Perhaps one reason for this is simply that you remember them better, so they’re at the tip of your mind, as it were, readily available to apply to other areas of your thinking where they may be relevant.]
[Later note (7-3-2023): There’s perhaps a simpler reason: It tends to be your more important ideas that you spend the time and effort revising; and revising, refining them, improves them further.]
● 6-3-1998: The deterrent function of criminal law could perhaps be described as the enforcement obverse of the Golden Rule: “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you; if you do, so will we.”
● 6-6-1998: I can corrupt the rent, dangle the stars, red the aristocrat, marry the maze, and damn the full speed ahead, come what may!
● April through 6 June 1998: This enterprise is like trying to start a little fire with flint and sticks: if it gets going, it has to be carefully nurtured from going out—it’s very fragile. But if it can continue, it could turn into a bonfire.
● Faith (in the religious sense) is a specific form of hope.
● Faith is an institutionalized form of hope.
● Faith is irrational belief.
● One reason I would not want to be a lower animal, as opposed to a human being, is that animals don’t have doctors in the wild; when they get sick or injured, if they don’t heal on their own, they’re out of luck. This I think is an interesting comment on the human professions: while we feel it’s unfortunate that animals don’t have doctors among them, it would never cross our minds to feel sorry for them because they don’t have lawyers.
● 6-9-1998: That your every other word is “fucking” doesn’t mean you have twice as much to say.
[Later note (2021): That you talk for twice as long, doesn’t mean you have twice as much to say.]
● 7-2-1998: I may write a novel someday. Perhaps I’ll title it The Great American Novel, to get some free publicity (people are always talking about “the great American novel”). I’m already starting to come up with material for it, like this:
“The bish in the dorken would be outraged!,” he ejaculated. But Julia, apparently quite unmoved by John’s outburst, calmly replied, “That’s none of my concern.” “Well, it ought to be!,” he shot back. By now a great marzaki had settled on the landscape.
Dinkly down she went—down, down, down, into the dumwell. She could feel the sibulence all around her.
● 7-11-1998: It puzzles me that sex and violence are so often denounced in the same breath. For it seems to me that the two things are quite different in this regard, in fact opposite: in general, violence is bad, but sex is good. . . .
● What’s the relationship between character and personality? Is character an element of one’s personality?
● 7-16-1998: Recently I’ve seen so-called public service announcements on television that attempt to discourage drug use among young people. One of these announcements goes as follows: First they show a picture of an egg, and the narrator says: “This is your brain.” Then a picture is shown of a frying pan, and the egg is broken, and its contents are spilled into the pan and the egg starts to be fried in the pan, with the accompanying spoken words, “And this is your brain on drugs.” The ending words are, “Any questions?”
Of course, no opportunity is presented for the viewer to actually ask any questions, even if he had them; but the question is supposed to be a rhetorical one, and designed to imply that the meaning is so clear and self-evident that no reasonable person should have any questions.
But if a person is able to get past the initial fear that not understanding the message is a sure sign that he is somehow mentally deficient (perhaps from having used drugs), the connection between eggs frying in a pan and the effects of drugs on the brain is so far-fetched as to prompt numerous questions, among which are the following:
Most basically, for those of us who don’t get it, exactly what is the point, the message? Supposedly, the broad message is that drugs have an adverse effect on the brain. One reason why that message is problematic is that, we would assume, the whole egg that’s first pictured is a dead egg—it wasn’t just removed from under the hen. So frying is not harming the egg in the sense of killing it. And if the whole egg (as pictured in the shell) was a dead egg, it existed for human food. And, for many persons, the fried egg is better as food than the egg in the shell. But taking the message as it’s presumably meant, the following further questions arise: What are the adverse effects? Are the effects permanent? What are the permanent effects, if any? What drugs are supposed to have these effects on the brain? All drugs? If all drugs, do all drugs have the same adverse effect on the brain? Does this include coffee and tea (that is, caffeine) as well? Does it include marijuana? Do coffee, tea, and/or marijuana cause brain damage? And what doses have these effects—even small doses? And drug use how frequent and how prolonged?
Answers to these questions would no doubt raise further questions.
● 8-3-1998: A politician’s task is to persuade. A philosopher’s task is to convince; or perhaps it’s not even that: perhaps the philosopher’s task is merely to think; and thinking may lead, not to conclusions (as to which he’d want to convince us), but merely to questions.
● In an advertisement for a television program about the history of war, these words appeared: “War is hell. . . . Then why do we keep fighting them?” A partial answer occurred to me, that those responsible for wars are not the ones for whom it’s hell.
● 8-6-1998: If there’s no such thing as a stupid question; does that mean there’s no such thing as an intelligent question, either?
● A possible rule to argue in some court proceedings, by analogy to the rule that a person should be presumed to be telling the truth unless there’s a special reason to believe otherwise:
A person should be allowed to get what he wants unless there’s a good reason to deny it to him.
● What does it feel like to be Christ, God? How does He feel?
– Does He enjoy His work?
– What does He do every day, on a typical day? What is a typical day like for Him?
– Does He take breaks? Does He rest? (After all, dealing with the whole universe must be even more arduous than creating the Earth, and, after doing that for six days, He needed a day of rest.)
– If so, what does He do on his breaks?
– Does He eat or drink?
– Does He use, or abuse, drugs?
– Does He have a physician?
– How is His health? Does His health fluctuate?
● 8-11-1998: I just heard of a book attempting to explain Adolf Hitler, his evil. I’m not sure Hitler is so unusual or mysterious. Perhaps he’s merely a serial killer, much like any other serial killer, but one who managed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, whose circumstances allowed him to get into a position of power at a point in history where he was able to kill more massively and efficiently—that he was able to continue his killing spree for a longer time before being stopped by authorities.
Perhaps a more interesting question is how such a person was allowed by those around him, his immediate subordinates and the German people, to get into such a position of power and to be able to do his evil deeds for so long.
● 8-12-1998: World’s shortest essay: Two. Additionally, two. In sum, four.
● Advice is always easier to give than to take. I believe that I’m very good at giving advice but very bad at taking it.
● 8-14-1998: If we were as creative in finding solutions as we are in finding excuses, we’d need fewer excuses. If we spent our energy in learning from our mistakes instead of in denying or rationalizing them, we’d be far more productive.
● 8-16-1998: I’m trying to make an observation on the difference between happiness and pleasure. One preliminary comment that occurs to me on this is that perhaps pleasure is to happiness as weather is to climate, or as tactic is to strategy.
● Monday, 8-24-1998, 10:35 p.m.: This moment is a milestone. I’ve just completed, in essentially the final version, my large-scale essay titled “An Argument for Drug Decriminalization,” which I began around 15 May 1998. I use that date as the starting point because I recall that I started the piece just very shortly after I finished another piece, a much shorter one, titled “The Twelve-Steps’ Half-Truth,” whose completion date I noted as 5-15-1998. During this period, I wrote both the Decriminalization Argument and a shorter piece titled “Nine Reasons Not to Use Drugs.” I’m hoping to publish, as a collection, titled ESSAYS ON DRUG ABUSE, the (seven) essays I’ve now written about drugs over the past two years.
● In my first draft of that last sentence, I wrote “. . . written on drugs . . .” Then I changed on to about.
● 8-27-1998: A few questions for the religious: Why, when some people make grandiose statements of the value of people or of people’s actions or achievements, does it always have to be connected up with God? For example, why is “God-given talent” better than just “talent”? Is man not good enough to be valued himself, without somehow positing an association with God? Does man have value in himself, or only in connection with God? Does God have value in Himself without an association with man? In other words, if God existed but man (or men) did not, would God be valuable? If God did not exist, would man be valuable? What’s the precise relationship in this respect between man and God?
● 8-31-1998: It’s better that people be unemployed than employed at jobs that are destructive.
● 9-2-1998: I’m scheduled for hernia surgery today.
● I think I should spend more time simply doing the work I need to do, and less time fretting about where to start, and what possible difficulties I may encounter. Perhaps this notion could be summed up: More Do, and less Ado. . . .
● 9-4-1998: Death troubles only the living.
● It’s hard to perform a dissection without doing some cutting.
● 9-6-1998: Christian Science is an oxymoron, if there ever was one!
[Later note (2021): Contradiction in terms would probably be more accurate than oxymoron.]
● I often speak of abstaining from abuse of mood-altering drugs as giving up a short-term benefit for the sake of long-term benefit. This notion is unproblematic regarding a young person; but how does it apply in the case of an old person, who has no long term, but only a short term? . . . It would seem that, in general, the shorter the remaining life, the less strongly the rule applies—until a point is reached (when the remaining life is so short) that the rule favoring the long-term benefit does not apply at all and it becomes more prudent to seek the short-term good than to sacrifice it for longer-term benefit.
The concepts long-term benefit and short-term benefit are not mutually exclusive. They need not conflict at all. Long-term benefit encompasses, or includes, short-term and mid-term benefit. That is, the long-term benefit is not merely the benefit that exists at or near the end of the span in question, but rather the cumulative sum of the good of given sorts that exists at all points along the way, from the immediate to the ultimate. But there are still perhaps different ways of defining or calculating the long-term benefit. For example, to what extent, if at all, is the same unit of good to be given more importance, or weight, if it occurs later than earlier in the given time span?
Of course, when (as in my case) the good in question consists in the creation of art; the calculation is simple: take the course of action that results in the greatest accumulated body of work by the end of the artist’s life.
. . . But, if your aim in life is to accomplish something, it does seem true that, the younger you are, the more compelling is the argument against your abusing drugs . . . Hmm . . . how old am I now? . . .
● Why would we want to do God’s will? Why not do our own will? (Unless it is our will . . . to do God’s will? . . . And if we were thus to do God’s will [because it’s our will to do God’s will] and in this way did a certain action, whose will would ultimately have effected that action?)
● Why should I do God’s will? Why is His will more important than, worthy of taking precedence over, my will? Is it just that might makes right, and He’s more powerful than I, and that therefore if I don’t do His will, assuming I knew what it was, He would punish me? So that doing His will is, not a matter of my moral compulsion, but rather of my selfish interest in avoiding punishment?
● Just hypothetically, if God did not exist, what (instead of God’s will, which would guide us if He did exist) should guide our actions? Should it be, for example, to help, to improve the well-being of, our fellow man? Or perhaps to advance our own will, or values, or goals, or wishes? And, given the answer to this hypothetical question; if we then bring God back into the picture, and again assume that He exists, what is the relationship between the two desiderata? That is, suppose we say that, absent God, we ought to strive to improve man’s well-being; when we reintroduce God, and His will; what role should man’s well-being play in our actions? Should we, in deciding on a course of action, totally disregard the action’s effect on man’s well-being, focusing exclusively on whatever we perceive God’s will to be? Or should we give some weight to the effect on man, along with the carrying out of God’s will?
Would one, even one who believes in doing God’s will, be unreasonable to take the following position?: “I have been unable to determine what God’s will is (though I’ll keep trying to discern it); and so I’ve decided, in the meantime, to attempt to carry out my own will . . . to attempt to advance my values. And [for example] my overriding value is optimizing the well-being of mankind.”
● 9-7-1998: Why would one envy Mozart, or Beethoven, or Shakespeare, or Einstein? . . . They’re dead . . . (That is, if you were, say, Mozart, right now, you’d be dead . . ..)
● 9-8-1998: If you don’t vote, don’t complain. . . . To not vote is in effect to vote against whom and what you would vote for if you did vote. To not vote is to vote for the opposition.
● A punishment fitting the crime . . . a response fitting, or appropriate to, the stimulus.
● One day, Mary was sitting at home, watching television, and her friend June came over. June said to Mary, “Why don’t we go outside; it’s such a beautiful day.” But Mary said, “No, I’m watching this television program and it’s very interesting.”
Another day, June came to Mary’s house, and June said, “Let’s go out, it’s so nice outside.” But Mary declined, saying that she was preoccupied with the television.
Some time went by, and June called on Mary again. When June was about to leave, she urged Mary to come out, saying, “You should come out, it’s such a lovely day.” But, again, Mary chose to stay inside.
A while later, Mary became ill, and she found out from her doctor that she was dying. Later, Mary’s friend June came to visit Mary, and said, “Let’s go out into the yard. The trees and grass smell so sweet.” Finally, Mary complied. The two women went outside and sat down. And Mary said, “Yes, it’s very beautiful out here.” And then she died.
[Later note (2020): on rereading the preceding little story now, I’m not sure what the point was supposed to be. Maybe someone else will figure it out.]
● I not only finish people’s sentences, I sometimes finish their paragraphs.
● “Higher power” as alter ego . . ..
● When I was at university, I attended a group therapy session that met there, as I recall, once a week. At the beginning of each session, the leader would have each group member in turn speak briefly about what he was perceiving at that moment. On one such occasion, when it was my turn, I objected to the process, saying that it was problematic; and to make the point, I started looking around the room and naming objects spaced at more or less definite intervals, or that were in some rough pattern from my point of view, and I said, “I can perceive the chair, I can look at the desk, I can see the lamp, I can see the pen . . . . ” I didn’t precisely articulate my objection to the process, but the leader said she knew what I meant. In retrospect, though, perhaps the problem could be stated this way: the procedure assumes that perception is passive, and can simply be reported on objectively as it occurs; whereas, to a large extent, perception is something we can deliberately focus, or direct.
● An issue came up in my psychotherapy session with Dr. Lynne Weinberg on about 8-20-1998 to the effect that she thought that I valued control in my writing. The implication was that the control was somehow antithetical to emotional expression. I’m not sure that’s true. To so conclude is to think of control in the sense of repression. But I think of control in the sense of power and freedom—the kind of power that facility in a given art form brings to the artist. It’s the kind of control that, say, Mozart had in writing or playing music, as opposed to a musician with very limited musical knowledge and ability. Such control enables the artist to express emotion in a more free and versatile way. Just because the expression is more articulate and subtle doesn’t mean it’s repressed. Perhaps inevitably some elements are suppressed, because in any form of expression a selection of material must be made. Including some elements necessarily involves excluding others, just as a sculpture is a function of both the material (marble or clay, etc.) that’s there, and where that material stops or leaves off. When the sculptor starts with a block of marble and chips away at it till he gets to his ultimate form, he’s creating the work by taking elements away. And specifically about (verbal) writing, editing a piece of writing typically involves making it shorter, removing verbosity.
A related thought is that, when you think back about a situation in which someone took advantage of you, or offended you; when you fantasize about what you could have said but didn’t; the imagined retort is always smoother, more subtle and controlled; it may be less overtly emotional—it’s a more appropriate and effective expression. This is the kind of control that gives you more choices, which may include the more spontaneous, overtly emotional expression—but only when that’s truly more appropriate and effective.
Further, one might say that the difference between aggression and assertion is, in part, control.
● Regarding your question in the last psychotherapy session (9-16-1998) about getting a drug addict to take control over his addiction when he’s in the midst of his active addiction; I said that the addict’s quitting his drug is helpful because it causes the addict’s mind (without the intoxication) to be able to think more clearly about his addiction, and (hopefully) to decide to quit using drugs. But there’s an additional reason why initial cessation of the drug use is helpful in getting the addict to quit. Which is that the habitual behavior (taking the drugs regularly—and frequently) is interrupted. Doing so helps because it gets the addict to realize (in the most graphic and persuasive way, by actually, personally experiencing it) that he can live without continually using the drugs. When we engage in certain acts on a regular basis for a long time, we can come to feel that we somehow need to do it for our lives to continue satisfactorily, to maintain equilibrium. But if somehow the behavior gets interrupted, we may suddenly realize, as if by magic, that we do not in fact need to do the action, and we may at that point simply discontinue it (or perhaps we should say, continue to not do it). The cessation literally breaks the habit (as in providing a break in it, even if just temporarily). Sometimes that’s enough.
● The notion of God may perhaps be viewed as a reification, objectification, or mythologization of the superego.
● Religion perhaps reflects our desire for the security of childhood . . . our desire to be children of a great, universal, protective Parent.
● 9-20-1998: We’re all on death row.
● It seems inconsistent that people who profess to believe that there’s an afterlife, and that they’ll go to Heaven when they die (where they’ll supposedly experience eternal bliss), are nonetheless afraid of dying, and/or sad that they’ll die.
● I’m now older than I’ve ever been, but younger than I’ll ever be.
[Later note (12-16-2023): I recently heard that Eleanor Roosevelt said that.]
● 9-22-1998: I’m financially stable: I’m always broke.
● 9-24-1998: There are at least two corollaries to Murphy’s Law (which states that whatever can go wrong, will):
– Corollary 1: It always takes more time than you think it will.
– Corollary 2: It always costs more money than you think it will.
● If there were a political scandal involving water (such as, say, the pollution of a certain body of water), would we refer to the scandal as “Watergate”?
● Four inspirational phrases to, I hope, help me to work harder: * Gird your loins. * Dig in (that is, to the pile of work that needs to get done); * Push yourself; and * Try.
● I’m truly shocked by the sexual revelations about President Bill Clinton. Why, next thing you know, we’ll find out that he really did inhale! I have a good mind never to vote for a Democrat again. . . . Or, for that matter, for anyone with blue eyes, or anyone whose last name starts with C.
● 9-29-1998: Twelve-Steps says nothing explicitly about abstaining from drug use, or whatever the addictive behavior is.
● “Higher power” . . . Is there a Lower power??
● If Mozart’s music (the same music) had been unpopular and unsuccessful (in that sense), would his music then not be great? (. . . A complicated question.)
● I have a double standard about time. When I do not want to work (when, for example, I want to go to sleep), I consider that I’m on “flexible” time, and I ignore the clock (that is, I stop work and lie down on the bed regardless of the time of day). But I also stop working based on (the excuse of) the time of day, for example, 7:00 p.m., even if I’m not tired or hungry and could continue to work longer if I chose to.
● Regarding mental depression: Where there’s a will, there’s a way; but what if there’s no will??
● Though so-called anecdotal evidence may be unscientific, it’s not irrelevant.
● As a violinist plays the violin, and a pianist plays the piano; a conductor plays the orchestra.
● My toll-free vanity telephone numbers business was a creative success but a financial failure.
[Later note (2021): Of course, that means that, overall, it was a failure, because a business’s purpose is financial, not creative.]
● 10-4-1998: Several decades ago, at a family gathering, perhaps it was Thanksgiving Day dinner, my sister, Jane, said something to the effect that someone was “living hand to foot.” Everyone laughed, and someone corrected her, saying that the expression was “hand to mouth.” I then said, “Well, Jane, you really put your foot in your mouth that time!”
● The theme or moral of Steven Spielberg’s movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind is this: If we can get along with others, why can’t we get along with ourselves? . . ..
● 10-9-1998: (This is a parenthetical statement.)
● 10-11-1998: Another vindication of the truth that you don’t appreciate what you have till it’s gone: Society tries, often successfully, to make us feel guilty about sex. But when we get old and (for one reason or another) we lose our sex drive, we then look back and feel that lust was a very wholesome thing indeed.
● 10-15-1998: I used to be an angry young man; I no longer am. Now I’m an angry middle-aged man.
● 10-19-1998: Sometimes I wonder if white racial bigots’ motivation for discrimination against black people, and their attempts to disadvantage, even decimate, the black population, doesn’t stem from a fear that, if black people ever managed to gain ascendancy, they (black people) would take revenge upon white people for all the harm whites have done them.
● For me, arguing with Twelve-Steps people is like shooting fish in a barrel, except that, unlike the fish, the Twelve-Steps people don’t know they’ve been hit, and they just keep swimming around.
● 10-21-1998: It’s been said that a specialist is one who knows more and more about less and less. Taking this principle to its logical extent, perhaps it can be said, especially of some theoretical physicists, that they know infinitely much about nothing . . ..
● 10-24-1998: What did God do to deserve to be God? Why does He get to be God? I want to be God. Why can’t I be God? I hope He appreciates His position. He’s done pretty well for Himself. . . .
● 11-15-1998: My father, whenever he talks about my originality, cites something he remembers me saying when I was a teenager, which is this: I commented that often people who’d had a car crash would exclaim something to the effect that they were so lucky to have sustained only minor injuries; but I would observe that such people were really unlucky, since the vast majority of people had no accident at all. An interesting observation, I suppose, but hardly one of my finest thoughts or works. Damned with faint praise . . ..
● 11-17-1998: The hourglass image—the sand starting out in the top, as your amount of life. With most people, non-artists, as they get older, as that sand drains out of the top of the glass, it simply disappears. But with an artist, like me, the sand is not lost (though some of mine has been lost); rather, as it drains into the bottom half of the glass, it’s merely converted into creative works, a permanent form of themselves, which may live forever.
● One way in which to define or pose the question of knowledge is: Whether there’s an external or objectively existing reality that corresponds to our mental concepts. But to constitute knowledge, more is required than just a true correspondence between concept and reality—knowledge requires more than mere correct belief. We would also have to have a way to verify that connection. And my position (belief) is that, thus defined, knowledge is impossible, because ultimately we have no way to check it.
● 11-29-1998: It has been argued that one requirement for knowledge is to know that you know; in other words, to know a certain proposition, you must know that you know it. But there’s a problem. Take the proposition “Twice two is four.” Call that proposition P. “I know that P” is the real proposition in question. Call it P1. For P1 to be true, you must know that you know it; in other words, “I know that P1”; call that proposition P2. By the same rule, for P2 to be true, you must know that you know it—it must be true that “I know that P2.” Call that proposition P3. But that chain of propositions never ends; it’s an infinite regress, which is logically impermissible. So, according to this theory, knowledge (of any proposition) is impossible.
Another reason, I think, why knowledge (of propositions) is impossible is that knowledge must, ultimately, be sure knowledge (as opposed to mere true belief), and we could theoretically be deceived as to the truth or falsehood of any proposition. I believe that we can know our own experience itself, but only that. As to propositions, strictly speaking, the best we can do is to believe. I have many beliefs, many of which I hold strongly. For example, I believe that propositional knowledge is impossible. I believe that two plus two is four, and, indeed, that it’s necessarily true. I believe that I exist. And I have an opinion about the opinions of people who disagree with me on certain matters—in many instances, I think they’re not only wrong, but unreasonable (or worse).
● 12-2-1998: Today I complained to my neighbor about her dog’s barking. She replied that none of the other neighbors had complained about it. To which I replied, “Being bothered by it and complaining about it are two different things.”
● 12-4-1998: Science, too, is an art. Some have talent for it, others don’t.
● 12-5-1998: It’s not necessarily unhealthy to focus on the negative in your life, so long as you use it as a source of motivation for constructive change.
● “Okay,” I thought to myself, “if we weren’t even before, we are now. And if we were even, now I owe you one.”
● Sometimes I wonder why people criticize corporations for taking actions, such as merging with other corporations, that result in loss of (corporate) jobs. Is it not good that the corporation finds a way to operate more efficiently, so as to require fewer workers? Would we advocate businesses or individuals hiring people arbitrarily to do useless work? For example, should I hire someone full-time to stand outside my front door and thumb his nose with his left hand, with the index finger of his right hand inserted in his right ear, while slowly rotating his body in a counterclockwise direction? Of course, I’d pay him a decent wage, maintain good working conditions, and allow him to join the nose-thumbers’ union. Actually, I assume that such criticisms of corporations have good reasons, about which I’m simply ignorant.
● 12-8-1998: If I can solve, or at least successfully deal with, my own personal problems, perhaps I can help others deal with theirs. This is a thought I sometimes try to use as an incentive to working harder to solve my own problems. Conversely, a possible technique you can use to work on your own problems is to imagine that your problems are someone else’s and you’re advising that other person; then at least you may discover what you should do, and you’re left with the more difficult half of the solution: taking (implementing) the advice. But maybe pride of authorship will motivate you to do so—you’ll implement your own advice to prove to yourself what good advice it is.
● 12-18-1998: Perhaps belief in God serves a salutary purpose for people in allowing them to believe that somehow there’s (good) reason for existence as it is, that things make sense. It helps us avoid the feeling that things exist by accident and without a meaningful purpose.
● If I believed in God, I would think that He should be impeached, removed from office, for dereliction of duty, and indicted for crimes against humanity. Among the issues in the case to be explored would perhaps be these:
1. What is God’s purpose in humanity’s existence (or just in existence)? What are God’s values in this?
2. What is or was God’s purpose in creating a world full of misfortune and suffering? What values of God’s are advanced by the presence of such suffering?
3. Could God have eliminated or avoided man’s misfortune, pain, and suffering?; could He have created a better, happier world? If so, why did He not?
● 12-20-1998: I’ve heard the view expressed that a morality based on religion is somehow more solid than one that’s not, or that’s based on something else. It seems to me, however, that the opposite is true. It seems to me that the good acts of a person who is kind to other men because he loves humanity are somehow more natural, genuine, and deep, than those of one whose good behavior comes just out of a sense of duty to God—just as I would feel better about, more grateful toward, a person who gives me a gift because he wishes to help me than I would toward one who does so because he wants to please, or to ingratiate himself with, my parents. Moreover, what happens to the good intentions and good deeds of the man whose philanthropy is God-based, if he stops believing in God? My argument might be capsuled this way: Whose goodness is more substantial: one who treats other people well because he feels . . . that God wants him to treat people with compassion, or one who does so because he feels . . . compassion? Indeed, I think that many people who act “morally” based on religion, do so, not to help others, or even to help God, but rather to get into Heaven. That’s not morality; that’s self-interest.
● 12-21-1998: I had a nightmare in which, as a sign of my growing evil (resulting from my unwholesome contact with a certain other person, against my better judgment), my nose, or my nasal passageway, glowed red when I breathed. I therefore had to make sure that, when I slept, there was sufficient opacity of material around me so that no one else could observe my rising and falling red glowing spot; no undrawn curtains, surely, for example.
● 12-24-1998: Why is it that when we know a person through his works (for example, having heard him on the radio), we’re disappointed when we finally see him? It has something to do with the discord between our original mental image of him and his actual image. Perhaps we expect there to be a connection between looks and personality, though no such connection exists.
● Who the hell is God . . . that we should worship him, pray to him, thank him; but not question or criticize him, or demand anything from him?!
● 12-27-1998: In one sense, religion can be thought of as an attempt to recreate in adult life the peace, safety, and security we felt as children in the family home. God becomes a substitute for our parents, who actively watched over us as children.